Azure Tags mod for Flowpipe

Pipelines to detect and correct Azure resource tag keys and values based on a provided ruleset.

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Getting Started

Requirements

Docker daemon must be installed and running. Please see Install Docker Engine for more information.

Installation

Download and install Flowpipe and Steampipe. Or use Brew:

brew install turbot/tap/flowpipe
brew install turbot/tap/steampipe

Install the Azure plugin with Steampipe:

steampipe plugin install azure

Steampipe will automatically use your default Azure credentials. Optionally, you can setup multiple subscriptions or configure specific Azure credentials.

Create a connection_import resource to import your Steampipe Azure connections:

vi ~/.flowpipe/config/azure.fpc

connection_import "azure" {
  source      = "~/.steampipe/config/azure.spc"
  connections = ["*"]
}

For more information on connections in Flowpipe, please see Managing Connections.

Install the mod:

mkdir azure-tags
cd azure-tags
flowpipe mod install github.com/turbot/flowpipe-mod-azure-tags

Configuration

To start using this mod, you may need to configure some input variables.

The simplest way to do this is to copy the example file flowpipe.fpvars.example to flowpipe.fpvars, and then update the values as needed. Alternatively, you can pass the variables directly via the command line or environment variables. For more details on these methods, see passing input variables.

cp flowpipe.fpvars.example flowpipe.fpvars
vi flowpipe.fpvars

While most variables are set with sensible defaults, you will need to specify your own tagging rules either as a base ruleset, resource-specific ruleset or a combination of both.

Configuring Tag Rules

The base_tag_rules variable is an object defined as below. It allows you to specify how tags should be managed on your resources. Let's break down each attribute and how you can configure it for specific use cases.

variable "base_tag_rules" {
  type = object({
    add           = optional(map(string))
    remove        = optional(list(string))
    remove_except = optional(list(string))
    update_keys   = optional(map(list(string)))
    update_values = optional(map(map(list(string))))
  })
}

Add: Ensuring Resources Have Mandatory Tags

If you require all your resources to have a set of predefined tags, you can use the add attribute to apply these tags to resources that currently do not have the desired tags, along with a default value.

Let's say we want to ensure every resource has the environment and owner tags. We could write this rule as:

base_tag_rules = {
  add = {
    environment = "unknown"
    owner       = "turbie"
  }
}

Here, the map key is the tag you want to ensure exists on your resources, and the value is the default value to apply.

Remove: Ensuring Resources Don't Have Prohibited Tags

Over time, tags can accumulate on your resources for various reasons. You can use the remove attribute to clean up tags that are no longer wanted or allowed from your resources.

If we wanted to ensure that we didn't include password, secret or key tags on our resources, we could write this rule as:

base_tag_rules = {
  remove = ["password", "secret", "key"]
}

However, the above will only cater to exact matches on those strings. This means we may miss tags like Password or ssh_key as these tags are in a different casing or contain extraneous characters. To achieve better matching we can use patterns along with supported operators in the format operator:pattern.

This would allow us to write rules which match more realistic circumstances and remove tags that contain password, begin with secret, or end with key regardless of the casing.

base_tag_rules = {
  remove = ["~*:password", "ilike:secret%", "~*:key$"]
}

This allows us to remove any tags which match any of the defined patterns.

Remove Except: Ensuring Resources Only Have Permitted Tags

Another approach to cleaning up your tags is to ensure that you only keep those that are desired or permitted and remove all others. You can use the remove_except attribute to define a list of patterns for retaining matching tags, while all other tags are removed.

Since this is the inverse behavior of remove, it's best to use one or the other to avoid conflicts. Both follow the same operator:pattern matching behavior.

Lets say we want to ensure our resources only have the following tags:

• environment
• owner
• cost_center
• Any that are prefixed with our company name turbot

We can write this rule as:

base_tag_rules = {
  remove_except = ["environment", "owner", "cost_center", "~:^turbot"]
}

Any tags which do not match one of the above patterns will be removed from the resources.

Update Keys: Ensuring Tag Keys Are Standardized

Over time your tagging standards may change, or you may have variants of the same tag that you wish to standardize. You can use the update_keys attribute to reconcile tags to a standardized set.

Previously, we may have used shorthand tags like env or cc which we want to reconcile to our new standard environment and cost_center. We may also have encountered common spelling errors such as enviroment or cost_centre. To standardize these tags, we can write the rule as:

base_tag_rules = {
  update_keys = {
    environment = ["env", "ilike:enviro%"]
    cost_center = ["~*:^cc$", "~*:^cost_cent(er|re)$", "~*:^costcent(er|re)$"]
  }
}

Behind the scenes, this works by creating a new tag with the value of existing matched tag and then removing the existing matched tag.

Update Values: Ensuring Tag Values Are Standardized

Just like keys, you may want to standardize the values over time or correct common typos. You can use the update_values attribute to reconcile values to expected standards.

This works in a similar way to update_keys but has an extra layer of nesting to group the updates on a per-key basis. The outer map key is the tag key, the inner map key is the new value, and the patterns are used for matching the existing values.

Previously, we may have used shorthand or aliases for tag values that we now want to standardize. For instance:

• For the environment tag, any previous shorthand or aliases should be standardized to the full names.
• For the cost_center tag, any values containing non-numeric characters should be replaced by a default cost center.
• For the owner tag, any resources previously owned by nathan or Dave should now be owned by bob.

Let's write these rules as follows:

base_tag_rules = {
  update_values = {
    environment = {
      production        = ["~*:^prod"]
      test              = ["~*:^test", "~*:^uat$"]
      quality_assurance = ["~*:^qa$", "ilike:%qual%"]
      development       = ["~*:^dev"]
    }
    cost_center = {
      "0123456789" = ["~:[^0-9]"]
    }
    owner = {
      bob = ["~*:^nathan$", "ilike:Dave"]
    }
  }
}

Additionally, for a given key we can specify a default to use for the tags value when no other patterns match using a special else: operator. This is especially useful when you want to ensure that all values are updated to a standard without knowing all potential matches.

Let's say that we want any environment with a value not matching our patterns for production, test or quality_assurance to default to development. We could rewrite our rule as below:

base_tag_rules = {
  update_values = {
    environment = {
      production        = ["~*:^prod"]
      test              = ["~*:^test", "~*:^uat$"]
      quality_assurance = ["~*:^qa$", "ilike:%qual%"]
      development       = ["else:"]
    }
    cost_center = {
      "0123456789" = ["~:[^0-9]"]
    }
    owner = {
      bob = ["~*:^nathan$", "ilike:Dave"]
    }
  }
}

Note: While it is possible to have multiple else: patterns declared for any given tag, only the one with the first alphabetically sorted value (inner map key) will be used.

In this configuration:

• The environment tag values like prod, qa, and uat will be standardized to production, quality_assurance, and test, respectively. Any unmatched values will default to development.
• The cost_center tag values that contain non-numeric characters will be replaced with 0123456789.
• The owner tag values Nathan and Dave will be changed to bob.

This approach ensures that all your tag values are consistently updated, even when new or unexpected values are encountered.

Complete Tag Rules

Now that you understand each of the attributes available in the base_tag_rules object individually, you can combine them to create a complex ruleset for managing your resource tags. By leveraging multiple attributes together you can achieve sophisticated tagging strategies.

Note: Using remove / remove_except

Ideally, you should use either the remove or the remove_except attribute, but not both simultaneously. This ensures clarity in your tag removal logic and avoids potential conflicts.

• remove: Use this to specify patterns of tags you want to explicitly remove.
• remove_except: Use this to specify patterns of tags you want to retain, removing all others.

When using a combination of attributes to build a complex ruleset, they will be executed in the following order to ensure logical application of the rules:

1. update_keys: Start by updating any incorrect keys to the new expected values.
2. add: Add missing mandatory tags with a default value. This is done after updating the keys to ensure that if update has the same tag, the value isn't overwritten with the default but kept.
3. remove/remove_except: Remove any tags no longer required based on the patterns provided and old tags which have been updated.
4. update_values: Finally once the tags have been established, the values will be reconciled as desired.

Lets combine some of the above examples to create a complex ruleset.

base_tag_rules = {
  update_keys = {
    environment = ["env", "ilike:enviro%"]
    cost_center = ["cc", "~*:^cost_cent(er|re)$", "~*:^costcent(er|re)$"]
  }
  add = {
    environment = "unknown"
    owner       = "turbie"
    cost_center = "0123456789"
  }
  remove_except = [
    "environment", 
    "owner", 
    "cost_center", 
    "~:^turbot"
  ]
  update_values = {
    environment = {
      production        = ["~*:^prod"]
      test              = ["~*:^test", "~*:^uat$"]
      development       = ["~*:^dev"]
      quality_assurance = ["~*:^qa$", "ilike:%quality%"]
    }
    cost_center = {
      "0123456789" = ["~:[^0-9]"]
    }
    owner = {
      bob = ["~*:^nathan$", "ilike:Dave"]
    }
  }
}

This ensures that:

• Firstly, the keys are updated, so we can safely perform the next rules on those keys.
• Secondly, any missing required tags are added.
• Thirdly, any tags that are no longer required are removed.
• Finally, the values are updated as required.

Resource-Specific Tag Rules

You have three options for defining tag rules:

1. Only provide base_tag_rules: Apply the same rules to every resource.
2. Omit base_tag_rules and only provide resource-specific rules (e.g. storage_accounts_tag_rules): Allow for custom rules per resource.
3. Provide both base_tag_rules and resource-specific rules: Merge the rules to create a comprehensive ruleset.

When merging the base_tag_rules with resource-specific rules, the following behaviors apply:

• Maps (e.g., add, update_keys, update_values): The maps from the resource-specific rules will be merged with the corresponding maps in the base_tag_rules. If a key exists in both the base rules and the resource-specific rules, the value from the resource-specific rules will take precedence.
• Lists (e.g., remove, remove_except): The lists from both the base and resource-specific rules will be merged/concatenated and then deduplicated to ensure that all unique entries from both lists are included.

Let's say you have base_tag_rules defined as follows:

base_tag_rules = {
  add = {
    environment = "unknown"
    cost_center = "0123456789"
    owner       = "turbie"
  }
  remove = ["~*:password", "ilike:secret%"]
  remove_except = []
  update_keys = {
    environment = ["env", "ilike:enviro%"]
    cost_center = ["cc", "~*:^cost_cent(er|re)$", "~*:^costcent(er|re)$"]
  }
  update_values = {
    environment = {
      production        = ["~*:^prod"]
      test              = ["~*:^test", "~*:^uat$"]
      development       = ["~*:^dev"]
      quality_assurance = ["~*:^qa$", "ilike:%quality%"]
    }
    cost_center = {
      "0123456789" = ["~:[^0-9]"]
    }
    owner = {
      bob = ["~*:^nathan$", "ilike:Dave"]
    }
  }
}

And you want to apply additional rules to storage accounts:

storage_accounts_tag_rules = {
  add = {
    resource_type = "bucket"
  }
  remove = ["ilike:secret%", "~*:key$"]
  remove_except = []
  update_keys = {
    environment = ["~*:^env"]
    owner       = ["~*:^owner$", "~*:manager$"]
  }
  update_values = {
    owner = {
      bob = ["~*:^dave$"]
    }
  }
}

When merged, the resulting tag rules for storage accounts will be:

{
  add = {
    environment   = "unknown"
    cost_center   = "0123456789"
    owner         = "turbie"
    resource_type = "bucket"
  }
  remove = ["~*:password", "ilike:secret%", "~*:key$"]
  remove_except = []
  update_keys = {
    environment = ["~*:^env"]
    cost_center = ["cc", "~*:^cost_cent(er|re)$", "~*:^costcent(er|re)$"]
    owner       = ["~*:^owner$", "~*:manager$"]
  }
  update_values = {
    environment = {
      production        = ["~*:^prod"]
      test              = ["~*:^test", "~*:^uat$"]
      development       = ["~*:^dev"]
      quality_assurance = ["~*:^qa$", "ilike:%quality%"]
    }
    cost_center = {
      "0123456789" = ["~:[^0-9]"]
    }
    owner = {
      bob = ["~*:^dave$"]
    }
  }
}

In this example:

• The add map includes entries from both base_tag_rules and storage_accounts_tag_rules.
• The remove list is a concatenation of entries from both lists, ensuring no duplicates ("ilike:secret%" appears only once).
• The remove_except list remains empty as specified in both rules.
• The update_keys map merges entries, with the resource-specific rules for environment and owner overriding the base rules entirely.
• The update_values map shows that the resource-specific rule for owner overrides the base rule for the same key.

By providing resource-specific tag rules, you can customize and extend the base tagging strategy to meet the unique requirements of individual resources, ensuring flexibility and consistency in your tag management.

Supported Operators

The below table shows the currently supported operators for pattern-matching.

Operator	Purpose
=	Case-sensitive exact match
like	Case-sensitive pattern matching, where % indicates zero or more characters and _ indicates a single character.
ilike	Case-insensitive pattern matching, where % indicates zero or more characters and _ indicates a single character.
~	Case-sensitive pattern matching using regex patterns.
~*	Case-insensitive pattern matching using regex patterns.
else:	Special Operator only supported in update_values to indicate that this value should be used as replacement value if no other pattern is matched. The whole value must be an exact match of else: with no trailing information.

If you attempt to use an operator not in the table above, the string will be processed as an exact match. For example, !~:^bob wouldn't match anything that doesn't begin with bob; instead, it would only match if the key/value is exactly !~:^bob.

Running Pipelines

This mod contains a few different types of pipelines:

• detect_and_correct: these are the core pipelines intended for use, they will utilise Steampipe queries to determine amendments to your tags based on the provided ruleset(s).
• correct / correct_one: these pipelines are designed to be fed from the detect_and_correct pipelines, albeit they've been separated out to allow you to utilise your own detections if desired, this is an advanced use-case however, thus won't be covered in this documentation.
• Other utility type pipelines such as add_and_remove_resource_tags, these are designed to be used by other pipelines and should only be called directly if you've read and understood the functionality.

Let's begin by looking at how to run a detect_and_correct pipeline, assuming you've already followed the installation instructions and configured tag rules as required

Firstly, we need to ensure that Steampipe is running in service mode.

steampipe service start

The pipeline we want to run will be detect_and_correct_<resource_type>_with_incorrect_tags, we can find those available by running the following command:

flowpipe pipeline list | grep "detect_and_correct"

Then run your chosen pipeline, for example if we wish to remediate tags on our storage accounts:

flowpipe pipeline run azure_tags.pipeline.detect_and_correct_storage_accounts_with_incorrect_tags --var-file flowpipe.fpvars

This will then run the pipeline and depending on your configured running mode; perform the relevant action(s), there are 3 running modes:

• Wizard
• Notify
• Automatic

Wizard

This is the default running mode, allowing for a hands-on approach to approving changes to resource tags by prompting for input for each resource detected violating the provided ruleset.

While the out of the box default is to run the workflow directly in the terminal. You can use Flowpipe server and external integrations to prompt in http, slack, teams, etc.

Notify

This mode as the name implies is used purely to report detections via notifications either directly to your terminal when running in client mode or via another configured notifier when running in server mode for each resource that violated a tagging rule along with the suggested remedial action.

To run in notify mode, you will need to set the approvers variable to an empty list [] and ensure theincorrect_tags_default_action variable is set to notify, either in your fpvars file

# flowpipe.fpvars
approvers = []
incorrect_tags_default_action = "notify"
base_tag_rules = ... # omitted for brevity

or pass the approvers and default_action arguments on the command-line.

flowpipe pipeline run azure_tags.pipeline.detect_and_correct_storage_accounts_with_incorrect_tags --var-file flowpipe.fpvars --arg='default_action=notify' --arg='approvers=[]'

Automatic

This behavior allows for a hands-off approach to remediating (or ignoring) your tagging ruleset violations.

To run in automatic mode, you will need to set the approvers variable to an empty list [] and the incorrect_tags_default_action variable to either skip or apply in your fpvars file

# flowpipe.fpvars
approvers = []
incorrect_tags_default_action = "apply"
base_tag_rules = ... # omitted for brevity

or pass the default_action argument on the command-line.

flowpipe pipeline run azure_tags.pipeline.detect_and_correct_storage_accounts_with_incorrect_tags --var-file flowpipe.fpvars --arg='default_action=apply'

To further enhance this approach, you can enable the pipelines corresponding query trigger to run completely hands-off.

Running Query Triggers

Note: Query triggers require Flowpipe running in server mode.

Each detect_and_correct pipeline comes with a corresponding Query Trigger, these are disabled by default allowing for you to enable and schedule them as desired.

Let's begin by looking at how to set-up a Query Trigger to automatically resolve tagging violations with our storage accounts.

Firsty, we need to update our flowpipe.fpvars file to add or update the following variables - if we want to run our remediation hourly and automatically apply the corrections:

# flowpipe.fpvars

storage_accounts_with_incorrect_tags_trigger_enabled  = true
storage_accounts_with_incorrect_tags_trigger_schedule = "1h"
incorrect_tags_default_action                         = "apply"

base_tag_rules = ... # omitted for brevity

Now we'll need to start up our Flowpipe server:

flowpipe server --var-file=flowpipe.fpvars

This will activate every hour and detect storage accounts with tagging violations and apply the corrections without further interaction!

Detection Differences: Query Trigger vs Pipeline

When running the detect_and_correct paths, there is a key difference in the detections returned when using a query trigger vs calling the pipeline.

This is due to the query trigger caching the result set, therefore once a resource has been detected, if it is skipped it will not be returned in future detections until the query trigger cache is cleared or the resource is removed by a run of the query trigger where the result is ok.

Open Source & Contributing

This repository is published under the Apache 2.0 license. Please see our code of conduct. We look forward to collaborating with you!

Flowpipe and Steampipe are products produced from this open source software, exclusively by Turbot HQ, Inc. They are distributed under our commercial terms. Others are allowed to make their own distribution of the software, but cannot use any of the Turbot trademarks, cloud services, etc. You can learn more in our Open Source FAQ.

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• Azure Tags Mod