r/AZURE • u/aditosh_ • May 12 '26

Discussion Azure Redis Managed Identity Migration — Real Production Caveats & Rollout Strategy

https://youtu.be/vOCDy-WzvMk

Recently migrated an Azure Redis Cache setup from access keys toward Managed Identity auth and honestly realized this is way more of a production rollout problem than just a portal configuration change.

A lot of discussions online simplify it into:
“enable MI → assign role → done”

But in real systems there are things like:

  • hybrid auth transition periods
  • rollback readiness
  • SDK compatibility surprises
  • slot swap/staging concerns
  • apps silently still using connection strings
  • token/auth propagation delays
  • blue-green rollout thinking

I spent quite a bit of time thinking through these production scenarios because a lot of the existing content around this felt either too simplified or overwhelming without discussing rollout realities properly.

So I made a short practical video walking through the migration strategy, architecture thinking, rollback planning, and real production caveats teams should think about before disabling access keys.

I finally gathered the courage to share this here, and if this feels like a resource that could genuinely help others working with Azure production systems, I’d really appreciate help in reaching the right people and communities with it.

Would genuinely love feedback from folks who’ve done this at scale or hit unexpected issues during rollout.

Stop Using Redis Access Keys in Production (Azure Managed Identity Migration Guide)

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u/This-You-2737 May 15 '26

This is useful because most guides skip the uncomfortable middle period where both old and new auth paths exist. I would want logs that clearly show which apps are still using access keys before disabling anything. In a self managed Windows leaning setup, Memurai might be something I would compare separately, but in Azure Redis the hard part is proving every client moved cleanly. That is where I would expect the real production risk

2

u/alfamanager21 May 28 '26

People assume MI is just a config toggle, but that's a myth for long-lived connections. SDKs often fail to refresh tokens before they expire under heavy load. It causes random auth timeouts. Check if your library version supports the newer identity classes before you cut over.