HashiCorp Vault vs Azure Vault: A comparison of secret management tools
As businesses move towards the cloud for their information technology needs, they increasingly face challenges around securely managing secrets such as database passwords, API keys, certificates, and other sensitive information. This has led to the development of secret management tools such as HashiCorp Vault and Azure Vault. In this post, we'll compare these tools in terms of capabilities, ease of use, scalability, and pricing.
Capabilities
In terms of capabilities, both tools provide extensive functionality for secrets management. Both tools offer encryption of secrets, access controls, audit trails, and integration with other services. However, there are some differences between the two tools.
HashiCorp Vault supports multiple authentication methods such as LDAP, OAuth2, and GitHub, while Azure Vault primarily relies on Azure Active Directory for authentication. On the other hand, Azure Vault has better integration with other Azure services such as Key Vault, which provides a secure store for cryptographic keys.
Ease of Use
When it comes to ease of use, both the tools have different approaches. HashiCorp Vault is simpler to set up than Azure Vault, but it requires more configuration to get started. Whereas, Azure Vault is more complex to configure, but it provides better workflows when it comes to Azure services.
Scalability
Both HashiCorp Vault and Azure Vault are built to scale, but there are differences in how they do it. HashiCorp Vault uses sharding, which allows it to distribute secrets across multiple nodes for better performance. On the other hand, Azure Vault relies on multiple instances of the service to scale horizontally.
Pricing
When it comes to pricing, the cost of the two tools is tied to their respective cloud provider's pricing strategies. HashiCorp Vault follows a self-hosted model, with free and enterprise versions available. Azure Vault pricing is based on the number of transactions, number of keys, and number of secrets stored.
Conclusion
Both HashiCorp Vault and Azure Vault are excellent tools for secrets management in the cloud. With extensive capabilities, integration with other services, and ease-of-use, it really comes down to your specific needs and what cloud provider you prefer. Ultimately, it would be best to assess your own specific requirements before deciding on either one.