Setting up

If you've already signed up for Amazon Web Services, you can start using Amazon Athena immediately. If you haven't signed up for AWS or need assistance getting started, be sure to complete the following tasks.

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, 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

• For your daily administrative tasks, grant administrative access to an administrative user in AWS IAM Identity Center (successor to AWS Single Sign-On).

  For instructions, see Getting started in the AWS IAM Identity Center (successor to AWS Single Sign-On) 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.

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 (successor to AWS Single Sign-On) 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.

Attach managed policies for Athena

Athena managed policies grant permissions to use Athena features. You can attach these managed policies to one or more IAM roles that users can assume in order to use Athena.

An IAM role is an IAM identity that you can create in your account that has specific permissions. An IAM role is similar to an IAM user in that it is an AWS identity with permissions policies that determine what the identity can and cannot do in AWS. However, instead of being uniquely associated with one person, a role is intended to be assumable by anyone who needs it. Also, a role does not have standard long-term credentials such as a password or access keys associated with it. Instead, when you assume a role, it provides you with temporary security credentials for your role session.

For more information about roles, see IAM roles and Creating IAM roles in the IAM User Guide.

To create a role that grants access to Athena, you attach Athena managed policies to the role. There are two managed policies for Athena: AmazonAthenaFullAccess and AWSQuicksightAthenaAccess. These policies grant permissions to Athena to query Amazon S3 and to write the results of your queries to a separate bucket on your behalf. To see the contents of these policies for Athena, see AWS managed policies for Amazon Athena.

For steps to attach the Athena managed policies to a role, follow Adding IAM identity permissions (console) in the IAM User Guide and add the AmazonAthenaFullAccess and AWSQuicksightAthenaAccess managed policies to the role that you created.

Note

You may need additional permissions to access the underlying dataset in Amazon S3. If you are not the account owner or otherwise have restricted access to a bucket, contact the bucket owner to grant access using a resource-based bucket policy, or contact your account administrator to grant access using a role-based policy. For more information, see Access to Amazon S3. If the dataset or Athena query results are encrypted, you may need additional permissions. For more information, see Encryption at rest.