Use service-linked roles for AWS Fault Injection Simulator

AWS Fault Injection Simulator uses AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) service-linked roles. A service-linked role is a unique type of IAM role that is linked directly to AWS FIS. Service-linked roles are predefined by AWS FIS and include all of the permissions that the service requires to call other AWS services on your behalf.

A service-linked role makes setting up AWS FIS easier because you don’t have to manually add the necessary permissions to manage monitoring and resource selection for experiments. AWS FIS defines the permissions of its service-linked roles, and unless defined otherwise, only AWS FIS can assume its roles. The defined permissions include the trust policy and the permissions policy, and that permissions policy cannot be attached to any other IAM entity.

In addition to the service-linked role, you must also specify an IAM role that grants permission to modify the resources that you specify as targets in an experiment template. For more information, see Create an IAM role for AWS FIS experiments.

You can delete a service-linked role only after first deleting the related resources. This protects your AWS FIS resources because you can't inadvertently remove permission to access the resources.

For information about other services that support service-linked roles, see AWS services that work with IAM, and look for the services that have Yes in the Service-linked role column. Choose a Yes with a link to view the service-linked role documentation for that service.

Service-linked role permissions for AWS FIS

AWS FIS uses the service-linked role named AWSServiceRoleForFIS to enable it to manage monitoring and resource selection for experiments.

The AWSServiceRoleForFIS service-linked role trusts the following services to assume the role:

• fis.amazonaws.com

The AWSServiceRoleForFIS service-linked role uses the managed policy AmazonFISServiceRolePolicy. This policy allows AWS FIS to complete the following actions on the following resources:

• Actions events:PutRule, events:PutTargets, events:RemoveTargets, and events:DeleteRule, on all resources that match the following condition:

  {"StringEquals": {"events:ManagedBy": "fis.amazonaws.com"}}

• Action events:DescribeRule on all resources

• Action tag:GetResources on all resources

• Actions cloudwatch:DescribeAlarms and cloudwatch:DescribeAlarmHistory on all resources

• Actions iam:GetUser, iam:GetRole, iam:ListUsers, and iam:ListRoles on all resources

• Action ec2:DescribeInstances on all resources

• Action ecs:DescribeClusters, ecs:ListTasks, and ecs:DescribeTasks on all resources

• Action eks:DescribeNodegroup on all resources

• Actions rds:DescribeDBClusters and rds:DescribeDBInstances on all resources

You must configure permissions to allow an IAM entity (such as a user, group, or role) to create, edit, or delete a service-linked role. For the AWSServiceRoleForFIS service-linked role to be successfully created, the IAM identity that you use AWS FIS with must have the required permissions. To grant the required permissions, attach the following policy to the IAM identity.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "iam:CreateServiceLinkedRole",
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringLike": {
                    "iam:AWSServiceName": "fis.amazonaws.com"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

For more information, see Service-linked role permissions in the IAM User Guide.

Create a service-linked role for AWS FIS

You don't need to manually create a service-linked role. When you start an AWS FIS experiment in the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the AWS API, AWS FIS creates the service-linked role for you.

If you delete this service-linked role, and then need to create it again, you can use the same process to recreate the role in your account. When you start an AWS FIS experiment, AWS FIS creates the service-linked role for you again.

Edit a service-linked role for AWS FIS

AWS FIS does not allow you to edit the AWSServiceRoleForFIS service-linked role. After you create a service-linked role, you cannot change the name of the role because various entities might reference the role. However, you can edit the description of the role using IAM. For more information, see Editing a service-linked role in the IAM User Guide.

Delete a service-linked role for AWS FIS

If you no longer need to use a feature or service that requires a service-linked role, we recommend that you delete that role. That way you don’t have an unused entity that is not actively monitored or maintained. However, you must clean up the resources for your service-linked role before you can manually delete it.

Note

If the AWS FIS service is using the role when you try to clean up the resources, then the cleanup might fail. If that happens, wait for a few minutes and try the operation again.

To clean up AWS FIS resources used by the AWSServiceRoleForFIS

Make sure that none of your experiments are currently running. If necessary, stop your experiments. For more information, see Stop an experiment.

To manually delete the service-linked role using IAM

Use the IAM console, the AWS CLI, or the AWS API to delete the AWSServiceRoleForFIS service-linked role. For more information, see Deleting a service-linked role in the IAM User Guide.

Supported Regions for AWS FIS service-linked roles

AWS FIS supports using service-linked roles in all of the Regions where the service is available. For more information, see AWS Fault Injection Simulator endpoints and quotas.