Connect with a Service Account

Sometimes you may need to authenticate to a ZenML server from a non-interactive environment where the web login is not possible, like a CI/CD workload or a serverless function. In these cases, you can configure a service account and an API key and use the API key to authenticate to the ZenML server:

zenml service-account create <SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME>

This command creates a service account and an API key for it. The API key is displayed as part of the command output and cannot be retrieved later. You can then use the issued API key to connect your ZenML client to the server through one of the following methods:

• using the CLI:

zenml connect --url https://... --api-key <API_KEY>

• setting the ZENML_STORE_URL and ZENML_STORE_API_KEY environment variables when you set up your ZenML client for the first time. This method is particularly useful when you are using the ZenML client in an automated CI/CD workload environment like GitHub Actions or GitLab CI or in a containerized environment like Docker or Kubernetes:

export ZENML_STORE_URL=https://...
export ZENML_STORE_API_KEY=<API_KEY>

To see all the service accounts you've created and their API keys, use the following commands:

zenml service-account list
zenml service-account api-key <SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME> list

Additionally, the following command allows you to more precisely inspect one of these service accounts and an API key:

zenml service-account describe <SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME>
zenml service-account api-key <SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME> describe <API_KEY_NAME>

API keys don't have an expiration date. For increased security, we recommend that you regularly rotate the API keys to prevent unauthorized access to your ZenML server. You can do this with the ZenML CLI:

zenml service-account api-key <SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME> rotate <API_KEY_NAME>

Running this command will create a new API key and invalidate the old one. The new API key is displayed as part of the command output and cannot be retrieved later. You can then use the new API key to connect your ZenML client to the server just as described above.

When rotating an API key, you can also configure a retention period for the old API key. This is useful if you need to keep the old API key for a while to ensure that all your workloads have been updated to use the new API key. You can do this with the --retain flag. For example, to rotate an API key and keep the old one for 60 minutes, you can run the following command:

zenml service-account api-key <SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME> rotate <API_KEY_NAME> \
      --retain 60

For increased security, you can deactivate a service account or an API key using one of the following commands:

zenml service-account update <SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME> --active false
zenml service-account api-key <SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME> update <API_KEY_NAME> \
      --active false

Deactivating a service account or an API key will prevent it from being used to authenticate and has immediate effect on all workloads that use it.

To keep things simple, we can summarize the steps:

1. Use the zenml service-account create command to create a service account and an API key.

2. Use the zenml connect --url <url> --api-key <api-key> command to connect your ZenML client to the server using the API key.

3. Check configured service accounts with zenml service-account list.

4. Check configured API keys with zenml service-account api-key <SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME> list.

5. Regularly rotate API keys with zenml service-account api-key <SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME> rotate.

6. Deactivate service accounts or API keys with zenml service-account update or zenml service-account api-key <SERVICE_ACCOUNT_NAME> update.

Important notice

Every API key issued is a potential gateway to access your data, secrets and infrastructure. It's important to regularly rotate API keys and deactivate or delete service accounts and API keys that are no longer needed.