Sign In to the Console
AWS Cloud9
User Guide

AWS Documentation » AWS Cloud9 » User Guide » Setting Up AWS Cloud9 » Additional Setup Options for AWS Cloud9 (Team and Enterprise)
The AWS Documentation website is getting a new look!
Try it now and let us know what you think. Switch to the new look >>

You can return to the original look by selecting English in the language selector above.

Additional Setup Options for AWS Cloud9 (Team and Enterprise)

This topic assumes you have already completed the setup steps in Team Setup or Enterprise Setup.

In Team Setup or Enterprise Setup, you created groups and added AWS Cloud9 access permissions directly to those groups, to ensure that users in those groups can access AWS Cloud9. In this topic, you will add more access permissions to restrict the kinds of environments that users in those groups can create. This can help control costs related to AWS Cloud9 in AWS accounts and organizations.

To add these access permissions, you create your own set of policies that define the AWS access permissions you want to enforce. (We call each of these a customer-managed policy.) Then you attach those customer-managed policies to the groups that the users belong to. (In some scenarios, you must also detach existing AWS managed policies that are already attached to those groups.) To set this up, follow the procedures in this topic.

Note

The following procedures cover attaching and detaching policies for AWS Cloud9 users only. These procedures assume you already have a separate AWS Cloud9 users group and AWS Cloud9 administrators group and that you have only a limited number of users in the AWS Cloud9 administrators group. This AWS security best practice can help you better control, track, and troubleshoot issues with AWS resource access.

Step 1: Create a Customer-Managed Policy

You can create a customer-managed policy using the AWS Management Console or the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI).

Note

This step covers creating a customer-managed policy for IAM groups only. To create a custom permission set for groups in AWS Single Sign-On (SSO), skip this step and follow the instructions in Create Permission Set in the AWS Single Sign-On User Guide instead. In this topic, follow the instructions to create a custom permission set. For related custom permissions policies, see Customer-Managed Policy Examples for Teams Using AWS Cloud9 later in this topic.

Create a Customer-Managed Policy Using the Console

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console, if you are not already signed in.

    We recommend you sign in using credentials for an IAM administrator user in your AWS account. If you cannot do this, check with your AWS account administrator.

  2. Open the IAM console. To do this, in the console's navigation bar, choose Services. Then choose IAM.

  3. In the service's navigation pane, choose Policies.

  4. Choose Create policy.

  5. In the JSON tab, paste one of our suggested Customer-Managed Policy Examples.

    Note

    You can also create your own customer-managed policies. For more information, see the IAM JSON Policy Reference in the IAM User Guide and the AWS services' documentation.

  6. Choose Review policy.

  7. On the Review policy page, type a Name and an optional Description for the policy, and then choose Create policy.

Repeat this step for each additional customer-managed policy that you want to create, then skip ahead to Add Customer-Managed Policies to a Group Using the Console.

Create a Customer-Managed Policy Using the AWS CLI

  1. On the computer where you run the AWS CLI, create a file to describe the policy (for example, policy.json).

    If you create the file with a different file name, substitute it throughout this procedure.

  2. Paste one of our suggested Customer-Managed Policy Examples into the policy.json file.

    Note

    You can also create your own customer-managed policies. For more information, see the IAM JSON Policy Reference in the IAM User Guide and the AWS services' documentation.

  3. From the terminal or command prompt, switch to the directory that contains the policy.json file.

  4. Run the IAM create-policy command, specifying a name for the policy and the policy.json file. 

    aws iam create-policy --policy-document file://policy.json --policy-name MyPolicy

    In the preceding command, replace MyPolicy with a name for the policy.

Skip ahead to Add Customer-Managed Policies to a Group Using the AWS CLI.

Step 2: Add Customer-Managed Policies to a Group

You can add customer-managed policies to a group using the AWS Management Console or the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI).

Note

This step covers adding customer-managed policies to IAM groups only. To add custom permission sets to groups in AWS Single Sign-On (SSO), skip this step and follow the instructions in Assign User Access in the AWS Single Sign-On User Guide instead.

Add Customer-Managed Policies to a Group Using the Console

  1. With the IAM console open from the previous procedure, in the service's navigation pane, choose Groups.

  2. Choose the group's name.

  3. On the Permissions tab, for Managed Policies, choose Attach Policy.

  4. In the list of policy names, choose the box next to each customer-managed policy you want to attach to the group. (If you don't see a specific policy name in the list, type the policy name in the Filter box to display it.)

  5. Choose Attach Policy.

Add Customer-Managed Policies to a Group Using the AWS CLI

Note

If you're using AWS managed temporary credentials, you can't use a terminal session in the AWS Cloud9 IDE to run some or all of the commands in this section. To address AWS security best practices, AWS managed temporary credentials don’t allow some commands to be run. Instead, you can run those commands from a separate installation of the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI).

Run the IAM attach-group-policy command, specifying the group's name and the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the policy. 

aws iam attach-group-policy --group-name MyGroup --policy-arn arn:aws:iam::123456789012:policy/MyPolicy

In the preceding command, replace MyGroup with the name of the group. Replace 123456789012 with the AWS account ID, and replace MyPolicy with the name of the customer-managed policy.

Customer-Managed Policy Examples for Teams Using AWS Cloud9

Following are some examples of policies you can use to restrict the kinds of environments that users in a group can create in an AWS account.

Prevent Users in a Group from Creating Environments

The following customer-managed policy, when attached to an AWS Cloud9 users group, prevents those users from creating environments in an AWS account. This is useful if you want an IAM administrator user in your AWS account to manage creating environments instead of users in an AWS Cloud9 users group. 

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Deny",
      "Action": [
        "cloud9:CreateEnvironmentEC2",
        "cloud9:CreateEnvironmentSSH"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Note that the preceding customer-managed policy explicitly overrides "Effect": "Allow" for "Action": "cloud9:CreateEnvironmentEC2" and "cloud9:CreateEnvironmentSSH" on "Resource": "*" in the AWSCloud9User managed policy that is already attached to the AWS Cloud9 users group.

Prevent Users in a Group from Creating EC2 Environments

The following customer-managed policy, when attached to an AWS Cloud9 users group, prevents those users from creating EC2 environments in an AWS account. This is useful if you want an IAM administrator user in your AWS account to manage creating EC2 environments instead of users in an AWS Cloud9 users group. This assumes you haven't also attached a policy that prevents users in that group from creating SSH environments. Otherwise, those users won't be able to create environments at all. 

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Deny",
      "Action": "cloud9:CreateEnvironmentEC2",
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Note that the preceding customer-managed policy explicitly overrides "Effect": "Allow" for "Action": "cloud9:CreateEnvironmentEC2" on "Resource": "*" in the AWSCloud9User managed policy that is already attached to the AWS Cloud9 users group.

Allow Users in a Group to Create EC2 Environments Only with Specific Amazon EC2 Instance Types

The following customer-managed policy, when attached to an AWS Cloud9 users group, allows those users to create EC2 environments that only use instance types starting with t2 in an AWS account. This policy assumes you haven't also attached a policy that prevents users in that group from creating EC2 environments. Otherwise, those users won't be able to create EC2 environments at all.

You can replace "t2.*" in the following policy with a different instance class (for example, "m4.*"). Or you can restrict it to multiple instance classes or instance types (for example, [ "t2.*", "m4.*" ] or [ "t2.micro", "m4.large" ]).

For an AWS Cloud9 users group, detach the AWSCloud9User managed policy from the group, and then add the following customer-managed policy in its place. (If you do not detach the AWSCloud9User managed policy, the following customer-managed policy will have no effect.) 

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "cloud9:CreateEnvironmentSSH",
        "cloud9:ValidateEnvironmentName",
        "cloud9:GetUserPublicKey",
        "cloud9:UpdateUserSettings",
        "cloud9:GetUserSettings",
        "iam:GetUser",
        "iam:ListUsers",
        "ec2:DescribeVpcs",
        "ec2:DescribeSubnets"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "cloud9:CreateEnvironmentEC2",
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
        "StringLike": {
          "cloud9:InstanceType": "t2.*"
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "cloud9:DescribeEnvironmentMemberships"
      ],
      "Resource": [
        "*"
      ],
      "Condition": {
        "Null": {
          "cloud9:UserArn": "true",
          "cloud9:EnvironmentId": "true"
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "iam:CreateServiceLinkedRole"
      ],
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
        "StringLike": {
          "iam:AWSServiceName": "cloud9.amazonaws.com"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Note that the preceding customer-managed policy also allows those users to create SSH environments. To prevent those users from creating SSH environments altogether, remove "cloud9:CreateEnvironmentSSH", from the preceding customer-managed policy.

Allow Users in a Group to Create Only a Single EC2 Environment Per AWS Region

The following customer-managed policy, when attached to an AWS Cloud9 users group, allows each of those users to create a maximum of one EC2 environment per AWS Region that AWS Cloud9 is available in. This is done by restricting the name of the environment to one specific name in that AWS Region (in this example, my-demo-environment).

Note

AWS Cloud9 doesn't enable restricting the creation of environments to specific AWS Regions. Nor does it enable restricting the overall number of environments that can be created (other than the published service limits).

For an AWS Cloud9 users group, detach the AWSCloud9User managed policy from the group, and then add the following customer-managed policy in its place. (If you do not detach the AWSCloud9User managed policy, the following customer-managed policy will have no effect.) 

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "cloud9:CreateEnvironmentSSH",
        "cloud9:ValidateEnvironmentName",
        "cloud9:GetUserPublicKey",
        "cloud9:UpdateUserSettings",
        "cloud9:GetUserSettings",
        "iam:GetUser",
        "iam:ListUsers",
        "ec2:DescribeVpcs",
        "ec2:DescribeSubnets"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "cloud9:CreateEnvironmentEC2"
      ],
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
        "StringEquals": {
          "cloud9:EnvironmentName": "my-demo-environment"
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "cloud9:DescribeEnvironmentMemberships"
      ],
      "Resource": [
        "*"
      ],
      "Condition": {
        "Null": {
          "cloud9:UserArn": "true",
          "cloud9:EnvironmentId": "true"
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "iam:CreateServiceLinkedRole"
      ],
      "Resource": "*",
      "Condition": {
        "StringLike": {
          "iam:AWSServiceName": "cloud9.amazonaws.com"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Note that the preceding customer-managed policy allows those users to create SSH environments. To prevent those users from creating SSH environments altogether, remove "cloud9:CreateEnvironmentSSH", from the preceding customer-managed policy.

For additional examples, see the Customer-Managed Policy Examples in Authentication and Access Control.

Next Steps

Task See this topic

Create an AWS Cloud9 development environment, and then use the AWS Cloud9 IDE to work with code in your new environment.

Creating an Environment

Learn how to use the AWS Cloud9 IDE.

Getting Started: Basic Tutorials and Working with the IDE

Invite others to use your new environment along with you, in real time and with text chat support.

Working with Shared Environments