Setting up Amazon SQS - Amazon Simple Queue Service

Setting up Amazon SQS

Before you can use Amazon SQS for the first time, you must complete the following steps.

Step 1: Create an AWS account and IAM user

To access any AWS service, you first need to create an AWS account, an Amazon.com account that can use AWS products. You can use your AWS account to view your activity and usage reports and to manage authentication and access.

To avoid using your AWS account root user for Amazon SQS actions, it is a best practice to create an IAM user for each person who needs administrative access to Amazon SQS.

Sign up for an AWS account

If you do not have an AWS account, complete the following steps to create one.

To sign up for an AWS account
  1. Open https://portal.aws.amazon.com/billing/signup.

  2. Follow the online instructions.

    Part of the sign-up procedure involves receiving a phone call and entering a verification code on the phone keypad.

    When you sign up for an AWS account, an AWS account root user is created. The root user has access to all AWS services and resources in the account. As a security best practice, assign administrative access to an administrative user, and use only the root user to perform tasks that require root user access.

AWS sends you a confirmation email after the sign-up process is complete. At any time, you can view your current account activity and manage your account by going to https://aws.amazon.com/ and choosing My Account.

Create an administrative user

After you sign up for an AWS account, secure your AWS account root user, enable AWS IAM Identity Center, and create an administrative user so that you don't use the root user for everyday tasks.

Secure your AWS account root user
  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console as the account owner by choosing Root user and entering your AWS account email address. On the next page, enter your password.

    For help signing in by using root user, see Signing in as the root user in the AWS Sign-In User Guide.

  2. Turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA) for your root user.

    For instructions, see Enable a virtual MFA device for your AWS account root user (console) in the IAM User Guide.

Create an administrative user
  1. Enable IAM Identity Center.

    For instructions, see Enabling AWS IAM Identity Center in the AWS IAM Identity Center User Guide.

  2. In IAM Identity Center, grant administrative access to an administrative user.

    For a tutorial about using the IAM Identity Center directory as your identity source, see Configure user access with the default IAM Identity Center directory in the AWS IAM Identity Center User Guide.

Sign in as the administrative user
  • To sign in with your IAM Identity Center user, use the sign-in URL that was sent to your email address when you created the IAM Identity Center user.

    For help signing in using an IAM Identity Center user, see Signing in to the AWS access portal in the AWS Sign-In User Guide.

Step 2: Grant programmatic access

To use Amazon SQS actions (for example, using Java or through the AWS Command Line Interface), you need an access key ID and a secret access key.

Note

The access key ID and secret access key are specific to AWS Identity and Access Management. Don't confuse them with credentials for other AWS services, such as Amazon EC2 key pairs.

Users need programmatic access if they want to interact with AWS outside of the AWS Management Console. The way to grant programmatic access depends on the type of user that's accessing AWS.

To grant users programmatic access, choose one of the following options.

Which user needs programmatic access? To By

Workforce identity

(Users managed in IAM Identity Center)

Use temporary credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs.

Following the instructions for the interface that you want to use.

IAM Use temporary credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs. Following the instructions in Using temporary credentials with AWS resources in the IAM User Guide.
IAM

(Not recommended)

Use long-term credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs.

Following the instructions for the interface that you want to use.

Step 3: Get ready to use the example code

This guide includes examples that use the AWS SDK for Java. To run the example code, follow the set-up instructions in Getting Started with AWS SDK for Java 2.0.

You can develop AWS applications in other programming languages, such as Go, JavaScript, Python and Ruby. For more information, see Tools for developing and managing applications on AWS.

Note

You can explore Amazon SQS without writing code with tools such as the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or Windows PowerShell. You can find AWS CLI examples in the Amazon SQS section of the AWS CLI Command Reference. You can find Windows PowerShell examples in the Amazon Simple Queue Service section of the AWS Tools for PowerShell Cmdlet Reference.

Next steps

You are now ready for Getting started with managing Amazon SQS queues and messages using the AWS Management Console.