Prerequisites for Setting up the AWS Tools for PowerShell

To use the AWS Tools for PowerShell, you must first complete the following steps.

1. Sign up for an AWS account.

If you don't have an AWS account, see the following topic for complete instructions on how to sign up:

https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/create-and-activate-aws-account/

2. Create an IAM user.

After you sign up for your account, you must create users in the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) service. Each user has its own credentials and permissions. The credentials are used to authenticate the user making a request. The permissions determine which AWS resources and operations are authorized for that user.

Creating a user is outside the scope of this topic. But if you're new to AWS, we recommend that you read the following:

• To understand user credentials and best practices for managing them, see AWS Security Credentials in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.

• For a step-by-step tutorial on creating a user with "administrator" permissions that you can use to run AWS Tools for PowerShell commands, see Creating Your First IAM Admin User and Group in the IAM User Guide.

3. Create an access key for your IAM user.

The AWS Tools for PowerShell require that each cmdlet is sent using appropriate security credentials. To do this, you typically must create an access key for each user that needs to use the AWS Tools for PowerShell cmdlets. An access key consists of an access key ID and secret access key. These are used to sign (encrypt for the purpose of authentication) programmatic requests that you make to AWS services. If you don't have an access key, you can create it by using the IAM console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/. As described in AWS Security Credentials, we recommend that you use access keys for IAM users instead of AWS root account access keys. IAM lets you securely control access to AWS services and resources in your AWS account.

As with any AWS operation, creating access keys requires that you have permissions to perform the related IAM actions. For more information, see Permissions for Administering IAM Identities in the IAM User Guide.

After you create the access key for your first user in the AWS console, you can use that user and its access key to run AWS Tools for PowerShell cmdlets to create access keys for your other users. The following example shows how to use the New-IAMAccessKey cmdlet to create an access key and secret key for an IAM user.

PS > New-IAMAccessKey -UserName alice

AccessKeyId     : AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
CreateDate      : 9/4/19 12:46:18 PM
SecretAccessKey : wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY
Status          : Active
UserName        : alice

Save these credentials in a safe place. You need them to configure the AWS Tools for PowerShell credentials file later. For more information, see Using AWS Credentials.

Important

The only time you can see the secret access key (the equivalent of a password) is when you create the access key. You cannot retrieve it later. If you lose the secret key, you must delete the access key/secret key pair and recreate them.

An IAM user can have only two access keys at any one time. If you attempt to create a third set, the New-IAMAccessKey cmdlet returns an error. To create another, you must first delete one of the existing two.

You can use the Remove-IAMAccessKey cmdlet to delete a set of credentials for an IAM user. You must specify both the UserName and the AccessKeyId.

PS > Remove-IAMAccessKey -UserName alice -AccessKeyId AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE

Confirm
Are you sure you want to perform this action?
Performing the operation "Remove-IAMAccessKey (DeleteAccessKey)" on target "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE".
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [N] No  [L] No to All  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "Y"): y