Managing Yandex Key Management Service keys with Hashicorp Terraform

Written by

Yandex Cloud

Improved by

Danila N.

Updated at November 5, 2025

Adding keys
Managing key access
See also

The Terraform provider for Yandex Cloud supports the use of Yandex Key Management Service keys.

Adding keys

To create a key:

Describe the parameters of the yandex_kms_symmetric_key resource in the configuration file:
```
resource "yandex_kms_symmetric_key" "key-a" {
  name                = "<key_name>"
  description         = "<key_description>"
  default_algorithm   = "AES_128"
  rotation_period     = "8760h"
  deletion_protection = true
  lifecycle {
    prevent_destroy = true
  }
}
```
Where:
- name: Key name. The name format is as follows:
  - It must be from 2 to 63 characters long.
  - It can only contain lowercase Latin letters, numbers, and hyphens.
  - It must start with a letter and cannot end with a hyphen.
- description: Key description.
- default_algorithm: Encryption algorithm. The possible values are AES-128, AES-192, or AES-256.
- rotation_period: Rotation period (how often to change key versions). To create a key without automatic rotation, do not specify the rotation_period parameter.
- deletion_protection: Key deletion protection. To create a key without deletion protection, do not specify the deletion_protection parameter.
- lifecycle.prevent_destroy: Key deletion protection when running Terraform commands. To create a key without such protection, do not specify the lifecycle section.
Warning

Deleting a KMS key destroys all data encrypted with that key: the data becomes unrecoverable after the key is deleted. The deletion_protection parameter and the lifecycle section are required to prevent the deletion of the key (e.g., with the terraform destroy command).

For more information about resource parameters in Terraform, see the provider documentation.
Check the configuration using this command:
```
terraform validate
```
If the configuration is correct, you will get this message:
```
Success! The configuration is valid.
```
Run this command:
```
terraform plan
```
The terminal will display a list of resources with their parameters. No changes will be made at this step. If the configuration contains any errors, Terraform will point them out.
Apply the configuration changes:
```
terraform apply
```
Confirm the changes: type yes into the terminal and press Enter.

This will create all the resources you need in the specified folder. You can check the new resources and their configuration using the management console or these CLI commands:
```
yc kms symmetric-key list
```

Managing key access

To manage access to keys in Terraform, assign the necessary roles for the folder that contains the key.

For example, assign the kms.keys.encrypterDecrypter role to the service account permitting it to encrypt and decrypt data with keys from a specific folder:

resource "yandex_resourcemanager_folder_iam_member" "admin" {
  folder_id = "<folder_ID>"
  role      = "kms.keys.encrypterDecrypter"
  member    = "serviceAccount:<service_account_ID>"
}

Managing Yandex Key Management Service keys with Hashicorp Terraform

Adding keysAdding keys

Managing key accessManaging key access

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Adding keys

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