Sign up for an AWS account Create a user with administrative access Grant programmatic access (Recommended) Configure permissions for automatic rollback

Setting up AWS AppConfig

If you haven't already done so, sign up for an AWS account and create an administrative user.

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

To sign up for an AWS account

Open https://portal.aws.amazon.com/billing/signup.
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 a 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 a user with administrative access

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

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.
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 a user with administrative access

Enable IAM Identity Center.

For instructions, see Enabling AWS IAM Identity Center in the AWS IAM Identity Center User Guide.
In IAM Identity Center, grant administrative access to a 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 user with administrative access

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.

Assign access to additional users

In IAM Identity Center, create a permission set that follows the best practice of applying least-privilege permissions.

For instructions, see Create a permission set in the AWS IAM Identity Center User Guide.
Assign users to a group, and then assign single sign-on access to the group.

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

Grant programmatic access

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. For the AWS CLI, see Configuring the AWS CLI to use AWS IAM Identity Center in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide. For AWS SDKs, tools, and AWS APIs, see IAM Identity Center authentication in the AWS SDKs and Tools Reference Guide.
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. For the AWS CLI, see Authenticating using IAM user credentials in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide. For AWS SDKs and tools, see Authenticate using long-term credentials in the AWS SDKs and Tools Reference Guide. For AWS APIs, see Managing access keys for IAM users in the IAM User Guide.

Which user needs programmatic access?

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.

For the AWS CLI, see Configuring the AWS CLI to use AWS IAM Identity Center in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.
For AWS SDKs, tools, and AWS APIs, see IAM Identity Center authentication in the AWS SDKs and Tools Reference Guide.

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.

For the AWS CLI, see Authenticating using IAM user credentials in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.
For AWS SDKs and tools, see Authenticate using long-term credentials in the AWS SDKs and Tools Reference Guide.
For AWS APIs, see Managing access keys for IAM users in the IAM User Guide.

(Recommended) Configure permissions for automatic rollback

You can configure AWS AppConfig to roll back to a previous version of a configuration in response to one or more Amazon CloudWatch alarms. When you configure a deployment to respond to CloudWatch alarms, you specify an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role. AWS AppConfig requires this role so that it can monitor CloudWatch alarms. This procedure is optional, but highly recommended.

Note

Note the following information.

The IAM role must belong to the current account. By default, AWS AppConfig can only monitor alarms owned by the current account. If you want to configure AWS AppConfig to roll back deployments in response to metrics from a different account, you must configure cross account alarms. For more information, see Cross-account cross-Region CloudWatch console in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.
For information about metrics to monitor and how to configure AWS AppConfig for automatic rollback, see Monitoring deployments for automatic rollback.

Use the following procedures to create an IAM role that enables AWS AppConfig to rollback based on CloudWatch alarms. This section includes the following procedures.

Step 1: Create the permission policy for rollback based on CloudWatch alarms
Step 2: Create the IAM role for rollback based on CloudWatch alarms
Step 3: Add a trust relationship

Step 1: Create the permission policy for rollback based on CloudWatch alarms

Use the following procedure to create an IAM policy that gives AWS AppConfig permission to call the DescribeAlarms API action.

To create an IAM permission policy for rollback based on CloudWatch alarms

Open the IAM console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/.
In the navigation pane, choose Policies, and then choose Create policy.
On the Create policy page, choose the JSON tab.
Replace the default content on the JSON tab with the following permission policy, and then choose Next: Tags.

Note
To return information about CloudWatch composite alarms, the DescribeAlarms API operation must be assigned * permissions, as shown here. You can't return information about composite alarms if DescribeAlarms has a narrower scope.
```
{
        "Version": "2012-10-17",
        "Statement": [
            {
                "Effect": "Allow",
                "Action": [
                    "cloudwatch:DescribeAlarms"
                ],
                "Resource": "*"
            }
        ]
    }
```
Enter tags for this role, and then choose Next: Review.
On the Review page, enter SSMCloudWatchAlarmDiscoveryPolicy in the Name field.
Choose Create policy. The system returns you to the Policies page.

Step 2: Create the IAM role for rollback based on CloudWatch alarms

Use the following procedure to create an IAM role and assign the policy you created in the previous procedure to it.

To create an IAM role for rollback based on CloudWatch alarms

Open the IAM console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/.
In the navigation pane, choose Roles, and then choose Create role.
Under Select type of trusted entity, choose AWS service.
Immediately under Choose the service that will use this role, choose EC2: Allows EC2 instances to call AWS services on your behalf, and then choose Next: Permissions.
On the Attached permissions policy page, search for SSMCloudWatchAlarmDiscoveryPolicy.
Choose this policy and then choose Next: Tags.
Enter tags for this role, and then choose Next: Review.
On the Create role page, enter SSMCloudWatchAlarmDiscoveryRole in the Role name field, and then choose Create role.
On the Roles page, choose the role you just created. The Summary page opens.

Step 3: Add a trust relationship

Use the following procedure to configure the role you just created to trust AWS AppConfig.

To add a trust relationship for AWS AppConfig

In the Summary page for the role you just created, choose the Trust Relationships tab, and then choose Edit Trust Relationship.

Edit the policy to include only "appconfig.amazonaws.com", as shown in the following example:


{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": "appconfig.amazonaws.com"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }
  ]
}

Choose Update Trust Policy.

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Document Conventions

What is AWS AppConfig?

Creating