Accessing Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra)

You can access Amazon Keyspaces using the console, AWS CloudShell, programmatically by running a cqlsh client, the AWS SDK, or by using an Apache 2.0 licensed Cassandra driver. Amazon Keyspaces supports drivers and clients that are compatible with Apache Cassandra 3.11.2. Before accessing Amazon Keyspaces, you must complete setting up AWS Identity and Access Management and then grant an IAM identity access permissions to Amazon Keyspaces.

Setting up AWS Identity and Access Management

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 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

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 a user with administrative access

1. Enable IAM Identity Center.

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

2. 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

1. 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.

2. 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.

Setting up Amazon Keyspaces

Access to Amazon Keyspaces resources is managed using IAM. Using IAM, you can attach policies to IAM users, roles, and federated identities that grant read and write permissions to specific resources in Amazon Keyspaces.

To get started with granting permissions to an IAM identity, you can use one of the AWS managed policies for Amazon Keyspaces:

• AmazonKeyspacesFullAccess – this policy grants permissions to access all resources in Amazon Keyspaces with full access to all features.

• AmazonKeyspacesReadOnlyAccess_v2 – this policy grants read-only permissions to Amazon Keyspaces.

For a detailed explanation of the actions defined in the managed policies, see AWS managed policies for Amazon Keyspaces.

To limit the scope of actions that an IAM identity can perform or limit the resources that the identity can access, you can create a custom policy that uses the AmazonKeyspacesFullAccess managed policy as a template and remove all permissions that you don't need. You can also limit access to specific keyspaces or tables. For more information about how to restrict actions or limit access to specific resources in Amazon Keyspaces, see How Amazon Keyspaces works with IAM.

To access Amazon Keyspaces after you have created the AWS account and created a policy that grants an IAM identity access to Amazon Keyspaces, continue to one of the following sections:

• Using the console

• Using AWS CloudShell