Using AWS CloudShell to access Amazon Keyspaces

AWS CloudShell is a browser-based, pre-authenticated shell that you can launch directly from the AWS Management Console. You can run AWS CLI commands against AWS services using your preferred shell (Bash, PowerShell or Z shell). To work with Amazon Keyspaces using cqlsh, you must install the cqlsh-expansion. For cqlsh-expansion installation instructions, see Using the cqlsh-expansion to connect to Amazon Keyspaces.

You launch AWS CloudShell from the AWS Management Console, and the AWS credentials you used to sign in to the console are automatically available in a new shell session. This pre-authentication of AWS CloudShell users allows you to skip configuring credentials when interacting with AWS services such as Amazon Keyspaces using cqlsh or AWS CLI version 2 (pre-installed on the shell's compute environment).

Obtaining IAM permissions for AWS CloudShell

Using the access management resources provided by AWS Identity and Access Management, administrators can grant permissions to IAM users so they can access AWS CloudShell and use the environment's features.

The quickest way for an administrator to grant access to users is through an AWS managed policy. An AWS managed policy is a standalone policy that's created and administered by AWS. The following AWS managed policy for CloudShell can be attached to IAM identities:

• AWSCloudShellFullAccess: Grants permission to use AWS CloudShell with full access to all features.

If you want to limit the scope of actions that an IAM user can perform with AWS CloudShell, you can create a custom policy that uses the AWSCloudShellFullAccess managed policy as a template. For more information about limiting the actions that are available to users in CloudShell, see Managing AWS CloudShell access and usage with IAM policies in the AWS CloudShell User Guide.

Note

Your IAM identity also requires a policy that grants permission to make calls to Amazon Keyspaces.

You can use an AWS managed policy to give your IAM identity access you Amazon Keyspaces, or start with the managed policy as a template and remove the permissions that you don't need. You can also limit access to specific keyspaces and tables to create a custom policy. The following managed policy for Amazon Keyspaces can be attached to IAM identities:

• AmazonKeyspacesFullAccess – This policy grants permission to use Amazon Keyspaces with full access to all features.

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

For more information about how to restrict actions or limit access to specific resources in Amazon Keyspaces, see How Amazon Keyspaces works with IAM.

Interacting with Amazon Keyspaces using AWS CloudShell

After you launch AWS CloudShell from the AWS Management Console, you can immediately start to interact with Amazon Keyspaces using cqlsh or the command line interface. If you haven't already installed the cqlsh-expansion, see Using the cqlsh-expansion to connect to Amazon Keyspaces for detailed steps.

Note

When using the cqlsh-expansion in AWS CloudShell, you don't need to configure credentials before making calls, because you're already authenticated within the shell.

Connect to Amazon Keyspaces and create a new keyspace. Then read from a system table to confirm that the keyspace was created using AWS CloudShell

1. From the AWS Management Console, you can launch CloudShell by choosing the following options available on the navigation bar:

   • Choose the CloudShell icon.

   • Start typing "cloudshell" in Search box and then choose the CloudShell option.

2. You can establish a connection to Amazon Keyspaces using the following command. Make sure to replace cassandra.us-east-1.amazonaws.com with the correct endpoint for your Region.

   cqlsh-expansion cassandra.us-east-1.amazonaws.com 9142 --ssl

   If the connection is successful, you should see output similar to the following example.

   Connected to Amazon Keyspaces at cassandra.us-east-1.amazonaws.com:9142
   [cqlsh 6.1.0 | Cassandra 3.11.2 | CQL spec 3.4.4 | Native protocol v4]
   Use HELP for help.
   cqlsh current consistency level is ONE.
   cqlsh>

3. Create a new keyspace with the name mykeyspace. You can use the following command to do that.

   CREATE KEYSPACE mykeyspace WITH REPLICATION = {'class': 'SingleRegionStrategy'};

4. To confirm that the keyspace was created, you can read from a system table using the following command.

   SELECT * FROM system_schema_mcs.keyspaces WHERE keyspace_name = 'mykeyspace';

   If the call is successful, the command line displays a response from the service similar to the following output:

    keyspace_name  | durable_writes | replication
   ----------------+----------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    mykeyspace     |           True | {'class': 'org.apache.cassandra.locator.SimpleStrategy', 'replication_factor': '3'}
   
   (1 rows)