Manage identity with Anthos Identity Service

Anthos clusters on Azure supports OpenID Connect (OIDC) as an authentication mechanism for interacting with a cluster's Kubernetes API server, using Anthos Identity Service. Anthos Identity Service is an authentication service that lets you bring your existing identity solutions for authentication to multiple Anthos environments. Users can log in to and use your Anthos clusters from the command line or from the Google Cloud console, all using your existing identity provider.

For an overview of how Anthos Identity Service works, see Introducing Anthos Identity Service.

If you already use or want to use Google identities to log in to your Anthos clusters, we recommend using the gcloud containers azure clusters get-credentials command for authentication. Find out more in Connect and authenticate to your cluster.

OpenID Connect authentication

Before you begin

1. To use OIDC authentication, users must be able to connect to the cluster's control plane. See Connect to your cluster's control plane.

2. To authenticate through the Google Cloud console, you must register each cluster that you want to configure with your project fleet. For Anthos clusters on Azure, this is automatic once you have created a node pool.

3. To allow users to authenticate through the Google Cloud console, ensure that all clusters you want to configure are registered with your project fleet. For Anthos clusters on Azure, this is automatic once you have created a node pool.

Setup process and options

1. Register Anthos Identity Service as a client with your OIDC provider following the instructions in Configuring providers for Anthos Identity Service.

2. Choose from the following cluster configuration options:

   • Configure your clusters at the fleet-level following the instructions in Configuring clusters for fleet-level Anthos Identity Service. With this option, your authentication configuration is centrally managed by Google Cloud.

   • Configure your clusters individually following the instructions in Configuring clusters for Anthos Identity Service with OIDC.

3. Set up user access to your clusters, including role-based access control (RBAC), following the instructions in Setting up user access for Anthos Identity Service.

Accessing clusters

After Anthos Identity Service has been set up on a cluster, users can log in to clusters using either the command line or the Google Cloud console.

• Learn how to log in to registered clusters with your OIDC ID in Accessing clusters using Anthos Identity Service.
• Learn how to log in to clusters from the Google Cloud console in Logging in to a cluster from the Google Cloud console.