Access to Snowflake via key pair authentication

[bergen288]

Currently, Power BI has access to Snowflake via user/password as shown below:

I have Snowflake Service Account with key pair authentication in Python so I can define snowflake configuration dictionary as below for snowflake connection:

snowflake_config_devl_basic = {
'account': account,
'user': user,
'private_key_file': private_key_path,
'private_key_file_pwd': private_key_file_pwd,
}

According to Snowflake document: Key-pair authentication and key-pair rotation | Snowflake Documentation, Python is a supported client for key-pair authentication, but Power BI is not in the list.  Do you have a plan to support it?  If not, how can we request for it?

[datatoolspro]

Hey there @bergen288 .. One option you can use to get you by is a Snowflake access token (similar to a personal access token) in place of a password. With all of the authentication changes to Snowflake including introduction of user types, restrictions on users w/o MFA, Power BI badly needs key pair authentication.

To get you by, for your existing service user in Snowflkae you can generate an access token now and use that in place of the password. 

Just be mindful of that token refresh interval. Becuase there is no concept of key vault and automated rotation like Azure or AWS. I have put Snowflake into our key rotation schedule until the authentication and access story plays out.

[mbyhar]

any updates on it?

[RobWalker]

Any update on Key Value Pairs for PBI/Snowflake  This was the update from Chris Webb on Dec 7, 2023 where he was collaborating with MS and Snowflake, noting support for KV Pairs? 

Strong Authentication: Snowflake recently announced plans to deprecate single-factor password authentication (see the timeline). Power BI already supports External OAuth for connecting to Snowflake (more on this here). Snowflake continues to work diligently with Microsoft to add additional strong authentication options between Power BI and Snowflake, which we expect to be released throughout 2025, including support for key-pair (although we already see many Power BI customers using programmatic access tokens for authentication).

[bergen288]

There are 2 ideas to request Access to Snowflake via key pair authentication.  I voted both.

Thanks.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi @bergen288,

Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.

Currently, Power BI does not support key-pair authentication with Snowflake. Please follow below step:

Please submit a feature request to Microsoft through their Power BI Ideas platform. Before submitting, search to ensure the idea doesn't already exist, or upvote it if it does.
https://ideas.fabric.microsoft.com/ 

If this post helps, then please consider Accepting as solution to help the other members find it more quickly, don't forget to give a "Kudos" – I’d truly appreciate it!

Regards,
Vinay Pabbu

[jikuja]

Did you check if there are already existing feature requests and did you check if this feature is already work in progress?

In November 2025 Basic auth will be removed => No more data from Snowflake to Power BI. I wonder what exsting customers will do after BI tool they chose does not get updates to support more secure authentication methods.

It is really shame that there has been zero communications if/when MSFT will fix this issue. I wonder if we just should change BI tooling.