Azure DevTest Labs: Personal secret store

You're often asked to enter a complex secret when using Azure DevTest Labs: password for your Windows VM, public SSH key for your Linux VM, or personal access token to clone your Git repo through an artifact. Because secrets are usually long and have random characters, making sure that the input is correct can be tricky.

To solve this problem but also keep your secrets in a safe place, DevTest Labs has introduced a personal secret store for each lab user. There, you can save your secret with a name into the key vault that DevTest Labs creates for you, and use it later.

In the DevTest Labs portal, when a secret is needed to create a VM or to use an artifact, in addition to an input box asking for the secret, you'll see a check box where you can select to use the secrets from the secret store. After it's selected, the input box will turn into a drop-down list, where you can simply pick a secret.

To save your secret into your secret store, go to My secret store and enter a name and your secret as the value.

In addition to creating VMs and using artifacts, you can save your secret name with formulas and Azure Resource Manager templates. Here's an example of how it's used in a Resource Manager template to provision a new lab VM:

Please try it today and let us know what you think about it! If you have an idea for how to make it work better for you, submit your feedback (or vote for others) at the Azure DevTest Labs feedback forum.

Have a question? Check out answers or ask a new question at the MSDN Community forum.