Databricks Identity Governance

Databricks Identity & Governance

How to interact with the customer

Apply LIGHT pushback on identity decisions, with hard rules on UC identity requirements.

• One admin group proposed -- suggest once that tiered groups (platform-admins, data-engineers, data-analysts, etc.) are better for least-privilege. If the customer insists on a flat structure, do it.
• Specific group structure requested -- just do it. Do not second-guess naming or hierarchy.
• Individual user grants -- suggest once that group-only grants are best practice (easier to audit, rotate, onboard). If they insist on user-level grants, do it.
• Workspace-local groups -- hard no. Account-level SCIM groups are mandatory for Unity Catalog. Workspace-local groups are invisible to UC and will silently fail on grants.
• Jobs running as user identity -- suggest once that service principals are the correct pattern. User identities cause failures when the user leaves or their token expires.
• Everyone gets admin -- warn once that least-privilege is strongly recommended. Only the platform team should have ADMIN.

Hard rules (always enforce)

These are not suggestions. Violating them causes silent failures or security gaps.

1. ONLY account-level SCIM groups. Workspace-local groups are invisible to Unity Catalog. Every grant, every assignment must use account-level groups created via the Account SCIM API.
2. Group-only grants. Never grant catalog/schema/table permissions to individual users. Always grant to groups. This is the only auditable, maintainable pattern.
3. Service principals for all automated jobs. CI/CD pipelines, scheduled jobs, and orchestration must use service principals, not user identities. User tokens expire, users leave the org, and user-based jobs break silently.
4. Least-privilege admin model. Only the platform team gets ADMIN on workspaces. Everyone else gets USER. Data access is controlled through UC grants, not workspace roles.
5. Pre-existing groups: check before creating. Account-level groups persist across deployments and workspace deletions. Always list existing groups before creating new ones to avoid SCIM conflict errors.
6. When an SP creates UC objects, the human admins do NOT inherit access. Workspace admin is the workspace ACL plane. UC privileges are a separate plane. An SP that creates a catalog/external-location/storage-credential becomes its owner; nobody else sees it in the UI until you explicitly grant. Every deploy that uses an SP MUST include an explicit grant block giving the human admin group ALL_PRIVILEGES on the catalog, MANAGE on external locations, and MANAGE on storage credentials — OR transfer ownership to that group. Otherwise the customer's human admins log in to a workspace where they can't see their own catalog.

Recommended group structure

This is the default recommendation for multi-environment deployments. Adjust based on customer needs.

• platform-admins: workspace ADMIN + ALL_PRIVILEGES on catalogs. Owns metastore, manages infra.
• data-engineers: workspace USER + USE_CATALOG, USE_SCHEMA, CREATE_TABLE, CREATE_FUNCTION, SELECT, MODIFY on all schemas.
• data-analysts: workspace USER + USE_CATALOG, USE_SCHEMA, SELECT on silver and gold schemas only. No dev access.
• data-scientists: workspace USER + full CRUD in dev, read-only in staging for validation. No prod access.
• ml-ops: workspace USER + read/write in dev (experiment tracking), read in staging/prod.

Workflow: Create groups and users

Step 1: Create account-level groups via Account SCIM API

Create groups at the account level. These are visible across all UC-enabled workspaces automatically.

Account console URLs by cloud:

• Azure: accounts.azuredatabricks.net
• AWS: accounts.cloud.databricks.com
• GCP: accounts.gcp.databricks.com

Before creating, list existing groups to avoid conflicts. Account-level groups persist even after workspaces are deleted.

Step 2: Create users

Create users at the account level via SCIM. Users need a valid email (userName) and displayName.

Step 3: Add users to groups

Add users as members of the appropriate groups. A user can belong to multiple groups. Group membership determines all access -- workspace assignment, catalog grants, schema permissions.

Workflow: Service principals

Per-environment service principals

Create one SP per environment for CI/CD pipelines:

• {prefix}-cicd-dev
• {prefix}-cicd-stg
• {prefix}-cicd-prod

Each SP gets added to the appropriate groups for its environment (e.g., cicd-dev joins data-engineers in dev workspace).

Platform admin service principal

Create a single platform admin SP for infrastructure automation:

• {prefix}-platform-admin-sp

Add this SP to the platform-admins group. It manages metastores, workspace config, and cross-environment operations.

Workflow: Workspace assignments

Assign groups and users to specific workspaces with a permission level (USER or ADMIN).

• List existing assignments to see who has access.
• Assign a principal (group or user) with USER or ADMIN permission.
• Unassign to revoke workspace access.

On workspaces with identity federation enabled, databricks_mws_permission_assignment does not work — the API returns "APIs not available." Account-level groups are visible in workspaces automatically via identity federation — no explicit assignment needed. This affects Azure (always) and many newer AWS/GCP workspaces. Check if your workspace has identity federation enabled before adding permission assignment resources. If you get the error, simply remove them.

Workflow: UC grants

Grant permissions at the catalog and schema level to groups. Never to individual users.

Tiered grant pattern

• Engineers get full CRUD: USE_CATALOG, USE_SCHEMA, CREATE_TABLE, CREATE_FUNCTION, CREATE_SCHEMA, SELECT, MODIFY
• Analysts get read on silver/gold: USE_CATALOG, USE_SCHEMA, SELECT (scoped to silver and gold schemas)
• Platform admins get ALL_PRIVILEGES on catalogs

Use modern privilege names only. Legacy names (e.g., USAGE instead of USE_CATALOG) cause confusing errors.

One databricks_grants per securable — never two

The Databricks databricks_grants resource is authoritative for the entire ACL of a single securable (catalog, schema, external_location, storage_credential, etc.). If you write two databricks_grants resources targeting the same securable — say one for the human admin group and another for account users — they race during terraform apply and the second one fails:

permissions for <principal> are [USE_CATALOG, ...] but have to be [USE_CATALOG, ..., MODIFY, ...]

The provider re-reads after applying the first resource, sees a state delta from the second's intended ACL, and rejects. The race is inherent to the resource's "I own the whole ACL" semantics — not a TF parallelism bug.

Wrong (will race):

resource "databricks_grants" "admins_on_catalog" {
  catalog = databricks_catalog.this.name
  grant { principal = var.human_admin_group, privileges = ["ALL_PRIVILEGES"] }
}

resource "databricks_grants" "users_on_catalog" {     # SAME securable, second resource
  catalog = databricks_catalog.this.name
  grant { principal = "account users", privileges = ["USE_CATALOG"] }
}

Right — one resource per securable, multiple grant {} blocks:

resource "databricks_grants" "catalog" {
  catalog = databricks_catalog.this.name
  grant { principal = var.human_admin_group, privileges = ["ALL_PRIVILEGES"] }
  grant { principal = "account users",       privileges = ["USE_CATALOG"] }
}

Permitted exception: two databricks_grants resources can coexist if they target different securables (e.g. one for the catalog, one for an external_location of the same catalog). The earlier "human admins" example in this skill (catalog + external_location) is fine because the securables differ.

Push back on placeholder account IDs

Customers sometimes hand you a literal placeholder string for the Databricks account ID — xxxxxxxx-xxxx-..., abcd1234, <your-account-id>, or just a free-text "I don't have it handy, use the default". All of those should fail the intake check, not the apply. Account IDs are UUIDs (8-4-4-4-12 hex). Anything that doesn't match [0-9a-f]{8}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{4}-[0-9a-f]{12} is a placeholder.

When this happens, do NOT plug a "well-known" account ID from a prior deploy without confirming. Either:

• Pull it yourself from the customer's account console (accounts.cloud.databricks.com or accounts.azuredatabricks.net → top-right user menu → "Account ID"), OR
• Ask the customer to pull it and paste it back, OR
• For internal Databricks demo-eng work specifically, look up the demo account ID via your own auth (databricks current-user me --profile <my-account-profile> — config block has account_id).

A wrong account ID can make the apply succeed against the wrong account silently — far worse than a hard failure on a placeholder.

Error handling

• "SCIM conflict" -- the user or group already exists at the account level. List first, then update the existing object instead of creating a new one.
• "Group with name X already exists" -- account-level groups persist across deployments AND workspace deletions. Always list existing groups first via GET /api/2.0/accounts/{id}/scim/v2/Groups before creating. If the group exists, use data.databricks_group (data source) instead of databricks_group (resource) in Terraform. Alternatively, delete the stale group via SCIM API if it's from a previous deployment. Do NOT blindly create groups without checking — SCIM conflicts halt the entire terraform apply.
• "permissions are [...] but have to be [...]" -- you used a legacy privilege name. Switch to modern names: USE_CATALOG, USE_SCHEMA, CREATE_TABLE, CREATE_FUNCTION, CREATE_SCHEMA, SELECT, MODIFY.
• "Principal does not exist" on databricks_permissions for a freshly-created account group -- account-level SCIM groups created in the same terraform apply are visible to the UC plane (databricks_grants) immediately, but the workspace ACL plane (databricks_permissions on sql_endpoint, cluster, job, etc.) takes 5–10 minutes to see the new group. Symptom: UC grants succeed, then a workspace-resource grant a few resources later fails with "Principal: GroupName(name=...) does not exist". Three fixes: (a) use databricks_grants only and let the customer set workspace-resource permissions in the UI later, (b) add time_sleep { create_duration = "10m" } between the group creation and the databricks_permissions resource, or (c) split into two terraform apply runs (group + UC grants in run 1, workspace ACLs in run 2).
• Customer claims "the group already exists" but it doesn't -- happens when the customer is thinking of a group that exists in another workspace, in their IdP, or in a stale memory of a prior deployment. Always verify with databricks account groups list --output json | jq '.[] | select(.displayName == "X")' before deciding to use data.databricks_group vs databricks_group. If the group genuinely doesn't exist yet in the Databricks account, create it with databricks_group and bring the customer along.
• "You do not have permission to access this page in workspace ..." when a human admin tries to view a catalog/external-location an SP just created -- workspace admin entitles access to the workspace UI but does NOT grant UC privileges. The SP that created the UC object owns it; nobody else sees it. Fix: add explicit grant blocks in the deploy:

  resource "databricks_grants" "human_admins_on_catalog" {
    catalog = databricks_catalog.this.name
    grant {
      principal  = var.human_admin_group  # account-level SCIM group containing humans
      privileges = ["ALL_PRIVILEGES"]
    }
  }
  resource "databricks_grants" "human_admins_on_external_location" {
    external_location = databricks_external_location.this.name
    grant {
      principal  = var.human_admin_group
      privileges = ["MANAGE", "BROWSE", "READ_FILES", "WRITE_FILES", "CREATE_EXTERNAL_TABLE", "CREATE_MANAGED_STORAGE"]
    }
  }
  

  Or transfer ownership via databricks_metastore.this.owner = var.human_admin_group for the metastore root, and databricks_catalog.this.owner / databricks_external_location.this.owner for child objects.

Cross-links

• For workspace creation, see platform-provisioning.
• For Unity Catalog metastore and catalog setup, see unity-catalog-setup.