Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

User Guide

AWS Documentation » Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling » User Guide » Controlling Access to Your Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Resources

Controlling Access to Your Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Resources

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), a service that enables you to do the following:

For example, you can create an IAM policy that grants the Managers group permissions to use only the DescribeAutoScalingGroups, DescribeLaunchConfigurations, DescribeScalingActivities, and DescribePolicies API operations. Users in the Managers group could then use those operations with any Auto Scaling groups and launch configurations.

You can also create IAM policies that restrict access to a particular Auto Scaling group or launch configuration.

For more information, see Identity and Access Management (IAM) or the IAM User Guide.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Actions

You can specify any and all Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling actions in an IAM policy. Use the following prefix with the name of the action: autoscaling:. For example:

"Action": "autoscaling:CreateAutoScalingGroup"

To specify multiple actions in a single statement, enclose them in square brackets and separate them with commas, as follows:

"Action": [
    "autoscaling:CreateAutoScalingGroup",
    "autoscaling:UpdateAutoScalingGroup"
]

You can also use wildcards. For example, use autoscaling:* to specify all Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling actions.

"Action": "autoscaling:*"

Use Describe:* to specify all actions whose names start with Describe.

"Action": "autoscaling:Describe*"

For more information, see Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Actions in the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling API Reference.

Required Permissions

When calling the following actions, you must grant IAM users permissions to call the action itself, plus additional actions from Amazon EC2 or IAM.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Resources

For actions that support resource-level permissions, you can control the Auto Scaling group or launch configuration that users are allowed to access.

To specify an Auto Scaling group, you must specify its Amazon Resource Name (ARN) as follows:

"Resource": "arn:aws:autoscaling:region:123456789012:autoScalingGroup:uuid:autoScalingGroupName/asg-name"

To specify an Auto Scaling group with CreateAutoScalingGroup, you must replace the UUID with * as follows:

"Resource": "arn:aws:autoscaling:region:123456789012:autoScalingGroup:*:autoScalingGroupName/asg-name"

To specify a launch configuration, you must specify its ARN as follows:

"Resource": "arn:aws:autoscaling:region:123456789012:launchConfiguration:uuid:launchConfigurationName/lc-name"

To specify a launch configuration with CreateLaunchConfiguration, you must replace the UUID with * as follows:

"Resource": "arn:aws:autoscaling:region:123456789012:launchConfiguration:*:launchConfigurationName/lc-name"

The following Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling actions do not support resource-level permissions:

For actions that don't support resource-level permissions, you must use "*" as the resource.

"Resource": "*"

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Condition Keys

When you create a policy, you can specify the conditions that control when the policy is in effect. Each condition contains one or more key-value pairs. There are global condition keys and service-specific condition keys.

The following condition keys are specific to Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling:

For more information about global condition keys, see AWS Global Condition Context Keys in the IAM User Guide.

Supported Resource-Level Permissions

The following table describes the Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling API actions that support resource-level permissions, as well as the supported condition keys and resources for each action.

Predefined AWS Managed Policies

The managed policies created by AWS grant the required permissions for common use cases. You can attach these policies to your IAM users, based on the access that they need. Each policy grants access to all or some of the API actions for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, plus additional API actions for Amazon EC2, CloudWatch, Elastic Load Balancing, IAM, and Amazon SNS.

The following are the AWS managed policies for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling:

Customer Managed Policies

You can create custom IAM policies that grant your IAM users permissions to perform specific actions on specific resources. The following are example policies for Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling.

Example: Require a Launch Template

When you create or update an Auto Scaling group, you can specify a launch template, a launch configuration, or an EC2 instance. When you specify a launch template, you can configure the Auto Scaling group to use a specific launch template version, the latest version, or the default version when launching instances.

The autoscaling:LaunchTemplateVersionSpecified condition key is a Boolean value that is set as follows:

The following policy grants users permissions to create or update an Auto Scaling group using a specific launch template version, and access the Amazon EC2 resources specified in the launch template.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "autoscaling:CreateAutoScalingGroup",
                "autoscaling:UpdateAutoScalingGroup"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "Bool": {
                    "autoscaling:LaunchTemplateVersionSpecified": "true"
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "ec2:*"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

Example: Create and Manage Launch Configurations

The following policy grants users permissions to use all Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling actions that include the string LaunchConfiguration in their names. Alternatively, you can list each action explicitly instead of using wildcards. However, the policy does not automatically apply to any new Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling actions with LaunchConfiguration in their names.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [{
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "autoscaling:*LaunchConfiguration*",
      "Resource": "*"
   }]
}

The following policy grants users permissions to create a launch configuration if the instance type is t2.micro and the name of the launch configuration starts with t2micro-. They can specify a launch configuration for an Auto Scaling group only if its name starts with t2micro-.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [
   {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "autoscaling:CreateLaunchConfiguration",
      "Resource": [
          "arn:aws:autoscaling:us-east-2:123456789012:launchConfiguration:*:launchConfigurationName/t2micro-*"
      ],
      "Condition": {
          "StringEquals": { "autoscaling:InstanceType": "t2.micro" }
      }
   },
   {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
          "autoscaling:CreateAutoScalingGroup",
          "autoscaling:UpdateAutoScalingGroup"
      ],
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
          "StringLikeIfExists": { "autoscaling:LaunchConfigurationName": "t2micro-*" }
      }
   }]
}

Example: Create and Manage Auto Scaling Groups and Scaling Policies

The following policy grants users permissions to use all Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling actions that include the string Scaling in their names.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [{
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["autoscaling:*Scaling*"],
      "Resource": "*"
   }]
}

The following policy grants users permissions to use all Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling actions that include the string Scaling in their names, as long as the Auto Scaling group has the tag purpose=webserver. Because the Describe actions do not support resource-level permissions, you must specify them in a separate statement without conditions.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [
   {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["autoscaling:*Scaling*"],
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
          "StringEquals": { "autoscaling:ResourceTag/purpose": "webserver" }
      }
   },
   {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "autoscaling:Describe*Scaling*",
      "Resource": "*"
   }]
}

The following policy grants users permissions to use all Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling actions that include the string Scaling in their names, as long as they don't specify a minimum size less than 1 or a maximum size greater than 10. Because the Describe actions do not support resource-level permissions, you must specify them in a separate statement without conditions.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [
   {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["autoscaling:*Scaling*"],
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
          "NumericGreaterThanEqualsIfExists": { "autoscaling:MinSize": 1 },
          "NumericLessThanEqualsIfExists": { "autoscaling:MaxSize": 10 }
      }
   },
   {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "autoscaling:Describe*Scaling*",
      "Resource": "*"
   }]
}

Example: Control Access Using Tags

To grant users permissions to create or tag an Auto Scaling group only if they specify specific tags, use the aws:RequestTag condition key. To allow only specific tag keys, use the aws:TagKeys condition key with the ForAnyValue modifier.

The following policy requires users to tag any Auto Scaling groups with the tags purpose=webserver and cost-center=cc123, and allows only the purpose and cost-center tags (no other tags can be specified).

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [{
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
          "autoscaling:CreateAutoScalingGroup",
          "autoscaling:CreateOrUpdateTags"
      ],
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
          "StringEquals": { 
              "aws:RequestTag/purpose": "webserver",
              "aws:RequestTag/cost-center": "cc123"
          },
          "ForAllValues:StringEquals": { "aws:TagKeys": ["purpose", "cost-center"] }
      }
   }]
}

The following policy requires users to specify a tag with the key environment in the request.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [{
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
          "autoscaling:CreateAutoScalingGroup",
          "autoscaling:CreateOrUpdateTags"
      ],
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
          "StringLike": { "aws:RequestTag/environment": "*" }
      }
   }]
}

The following policy requires users to specify at least one tag in the request, and allows only the cost-center and owner keys.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [{
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
          "autoscaling:CreateAutoScalingGroup",
          "autoscaling:CreateOrUpdateTags"
      ],
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
          "ForAnyValue:StringEquals": { "aws:TagKeys": ["cost-center", "owner"] }
      }
   }]
}

The following policy grants users access to Auto Scaling groups with the tag allowed=true and allows them to apply only the tag environment=test. Because launch configurations do not support tags and Describe actions do not support resource-level permissions, you must specify them in a separate statement without conditions.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [{
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "autoscaling:*Scaling*",
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
          "StringEquals": { "autoscaling:ResourceTag/allowed": "true" }, 
          "StringEqualsIfExists": { "aws:RequestTag/environment": "test" },
          "ForAllValues:StringEquals": { "aws:TagKeys": "environment" }
      }
   },
   {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [ 
          "autoscaling:*LaunchConfiguration*",
          "autoscaling:Describe*"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
   }]
}

Example: Change the Capacity of Auto Scaling Groups

The following policy grants users permissions to use the SetDesiredCapacity action to change the capacity of any Auto Scaling group.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [{
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "autoscaling:SetDesiredCapacity",
      "Resource": "*"
   }]
}

The following policy grants users permissions to use the SetDesiredCapacity action to change the capacity of the specified Auto Scaling groups. Including the UUID ensures that access is granted to the specific Auto Scaling group. If you were to delete an Auto Scaling group and create a new one with the same name, the UUID for the new group would be different than the UUID for the original group.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [{
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "autoscaling:SetDesiredCapacity",
      "Resource": [
          "arn:aws:autoscaling:us-east-2:123456789012:autoScalingGroup:7fe02b8e-7442-4c9e-8c8e-85fa99e9b5d9:autoScalingGroupName/group-1",
          "arn:aws:autoscaling:us-east-2:123456789012:autoScalingGroup:9d8e8ea4-22e1-44c7-a14d-520f8518c2b9:autoScalingGroupName/group-2",
          "arn:aws:autoscaling:us-east-2:123456789012:autoScalingGroup:60d6b363-ae8b-467c-947f-f1d308935521:autoScalingGroupName/group-3"
      ]
   }]
}

The following policy grants users permissions to use the SetDesiredCapacity action to change the capacity of any Auto Scaling group whose name begins with group-.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": [{
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "autoscaling:SetDesiredCapacity",
      "Resource": [
          "arn:aws:autoscaling:us-east-2:123456789012:autoScalingGroup:*:autoScalingGroupName/group-*"
      ]
   }]
}

On this page:

• Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Actions
• Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Resources
• Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling Condition Keys
• Supported Resource-Level Permissions
• Predefined AWS Managed Policies
• Customer Managed Policies