Creating an IAM role to allow your Amazon Redshift cluster to access AWS services Restricting access to IAM roles Restricting an IAM role to an AWS Region Chaining IAM roles Additional information

Authorizing Amazon Redshift to access other AWS services on your behalf

Some Amazon Redshift features require Amazon Redshift to access other AWS services on your behalf. For example, the COPY and UNLOAD commands can load or unload data into your Amazon Redshift cluster using an Amazon S3 bucket. The CREATE EXTERNAL FUNCTION command can invoke an AWS Lambda function using a scalar Lambda user-defined function (UDF). Amazon Redshift Spectrum can use a data catalog in Amazon Athena or AWS Glue. For your Amazon Redshift clusters to act on your behalf, you supply security credentials to your clusters. The preferred method to supply security credentials is to specify an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role. For COPY and UNLOAD, you can provide temporary credentials.

Users need programmatic access if they want to interact with AWS outside of the AWS Management Console. The way to grant programmatic access depends on the type of user that's accessing AWS.

To grant users programmatic access, choose one of the following options.

Which user needs programmatic access?	To	By
Workforce identity (Users managed in IAM Identity Center)	Use temporary credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs.	Following the instructions for the interface that you want to use. For the AWS CLI, see Configuring the AWS CLI to use AWS IAM Identity Center (successor to AWS Single Sign-On) in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide. For AWS SDKs, tools, and AWS APIs, see IAM Identity Center authentication in the AWS SDKs and Tools Reference Guide.
IAM	Use temporary credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs.	Following the instructions in Using temporary credentials with AWS resources in the IAM User Guide.
IAM	(Not recommended) Use long-term credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs.	Following the instructions for the interface that you want to use. For the AWS CLI, see Authenticating using IAM user credentials in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide. For AWS SDKs and tools, see Authenticate using long-term credentials in the AWS SDKs and Tools Reference Guide. For AWS APIs, see Managing access keys for IAM users in the IAM User Guide.

Which user needs programmatic access?

Workforce identity

(Users managed in IAM Identity Center)

Use temporary credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs.

Following the instructions for the interface that you want to use.

For the AWS CLI, see Configuring the AWS CLI to use AWS IAM Identity Center (successor to AWS Single Sign-On) in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.
For AWS SDKs, tools, and AWS APIs, see IAM Identity Center authentication in the AWS SDKs and Tools Reference Guide.

IAM

Use temporary credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs.

Following the instructions in Using temporary credentials with AWS resources in the IAM User Guide.

IAM

(Not recommended)

Use long-term credentials to sign programmatic requests to the AWS CLI, AWS SDKs, or AWS APIs.

Following the instructions for the interface that you want to use.

For the AWS CLI, see Authenticating using IAM user credentials in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.
For AWS SDKs and tools, see Authenticate using long-term credentials in the AWS SDKs and Tools Reference Guide.
For AWS APIs, see Managing access keys for IAM users in the IAM User Guide.

Following, find out how to create an IAM role with the appropriate permissions to access other AWS services. You also need to associate the role with your cluster and specify the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the role when you run the Amazon Redshift command. For more information, see Authorizing COPY, UNLOAD, CREATE EXTERNAL FUNCTION, and CREATE EXTERNAL SCHEMA operations using IAM roles.

In addition, a superuser can grant the ASSUMEROLE privilege to specific users and groups to provide access to a role for COPY and UNLOAD operations. For information, see GRANT in the Amazon Redshift Database Developer Guide.

Creating an IAM role to allow your Amazon Redshift cluster to access AWS services

To create an IAM role to permit your Amazon Redshift cluster to communicate with other AWS services on your behalf, take the following steps. The values used in this section are examples, you can choose values based on your needs.

To create an IAM role to allow Amazon Redshift to access AWS services

Open the IAM console.
In the navigation pane, choose Roles.
Choose Create role.
Choose AWS service, and then choose Redshift.
Under Select your use case, choose Redshift - Customizable and then choose Next: Permissions. The Attach permissions policy page appears.
For access to Amazon S3 using COPY, as an example, you can use AmazonS3ReadOnlyAccess and append. For access to Amazon S3 using COPY or UNLOAD, we suggest that you can create managed policies that restrict access to the desired bucket and prefix accordingly. For both read and write operations, we recommend enforcing the least privileges and restricting to only the Amazon S3 buckets and key prefixes that Amazon Redshift requires.

For access to invoke Lambda functions for the CREATE EXTERNAL FUNCTION command, add AWSLambdaRole.

For Redshift Spectrum, in addition to Amazon S3 access, add AWSGlueConsoleFullAccess or AmazonAthenaFullAccess.

Choose Next: Tags.
The Add tags page appears. You can optionally add tags. Choose Next: Review.
For Role name, type a name for your role, for example RedshiftCopyUnload. Choose Create role.
The new role is available to all users on clusters that use the role. To restrict access to only specific users on specific clusters, or to clusters in specific regions, edit the trust relationship for the role. For more information, see Restricting access to IAM roles.
Associate the role with your cluster. You can associate an IAM role with a cluster when you create the cluster, or you add the role to an existing cluster. For more information, see Associating IAM roles with clusters.

Note
To restrict access to specific data, use an IAM role that grants the least privileges required.

Restricting access to IAM roles

By default, IAM roles that are available to an Amazon Redshift cluster are available to all users on that cluster. You can choose to restrict IAM roles to specific Amazon Redshift database users on specific clusters or to specific regions.

To permit only specific database users to use an IAM role, take the following steps.

To identify specific database users with access to an IAM role

Identify the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) for the database users in your Amazon Redshift cluster. The ARN for a database user is in the format: arn:aws:redshift:region:account-id:dbuser:cluster-name/user-name.
Open the IAM console at url="https://console.aws.amazon.com/.
In the navigation pane, choose Roles.
Choose the IAM role that you want to restrict to specific Amazon Redshift database users.

Choose the Trust Relationships tab, and then choose Edit Trust Relationship. A new IAM role that allows Amazon Redshift to access other AWS services on your behalf has a trust relationship as follows:


{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": "redshift.amazonaws.com"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }
  ]
}

Add a condition to the sts:AssumeRole action section of the trust relationship that limits the sts:ExternalId field to values that you specify. Include an ARN for each database user that you want to grant access to the role. The external ID can be any unique string.

For example, the following trust relationship specifies that only database users user1 and user2 on cluster my-cluster in region us-west-2 have permission to use this IAM role.
```
{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
  {
    "Effect": "Allow",
    "Principal": { 
      "Service": "redshift.amazonaws.com" 
    },
    "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
    "Condition": {
      "StringEquals": {
        "sts:ExternalId": [
          "arn:aws:redshift:us-west-2:123456789012:dbuser:my-cluster/user1",
          "arn:aws:redshift:us-west-2:123456789012:dbuser:my-cluster/user2"
        ]
      }
    }
  }]
}      
```
Choose Update Trust Policy.

Restricting an IAM role to an AWS Region

You can restrict an IAM role to only be accessible in a certain AWS Region. By default, IAM roles for Amazon Redshift are not restricted to any single region.

To restrict use of an IAM role by region, take the following steps.

To identify permitted regions for an IAM role

Open the IAM console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/.
In the navigation pane, choose Roles.
Choose the role that you want to modify with specific regions.

Choose the Trust Relationships tab and then choose Edit Trust Relationship. A new IAM role that allows Amazon Redshift to access other AWS services on your behalf has a trust relationship as follows:


{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": "redshift.amazonaws.com"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }
  ]
}

Modify the Service list for the Principal with the list of the specific regions that you want to permit use of the role for. Each region in the Service list must be in the following format: redshift.region.amazonaws.com.

For example, the following edited trust relationship permits the use of the IAM role in the us-east-1 and us-west-2 regions only.
```
{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Service": [
          "redshift.us-east-1.amazonaws.com",
          "redshift.us-west-2.amazonaws.com"
        ]
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }
  ]
}     
```
Choose Update Trust Policy

Chaining IAM roles in Amazon Redshift

When you attach a role to your cluster, your cluster can assume that role to access Amazon S3, Amazon Athena, AWS Glue, and AWS Lambda on your behalf. If a role attached to your cluster doesn't have access to the necessary resources, you can chain another role, possibly belonging to another account. Your cluster then temporarily assumes the chained role to access the data. You can also grant cross-account access by chaining roles. Each role in the chain assumes the next role in the chain, until the cluster assumes the role at the end of chain. The maximum number of IAM roles that you can associate is subject to a quota. For more information, see the quota "Cluster IAM roles for Amazon Redshift to access other AWS services" in Quotas for Amazon Redshift objects.

For example, suppose Company A wants to access data in an Amazon S3 bucket that belongs to Company B. Company A creates an AWS service role for Amazon Redshift named RoleA and attaches it to their cluster. Company B creates a role named RoleB that's authorized to access the data in the Company B bucket. To access the data in the Company B bucket, Company A runs a COPY command using an iam_role parameter that chains RoleA and RoleB. For the duration of the COPY operation, RoleA temporarily assumes RoleB to access the Amazon S3 bucket.

To chain roles, you establish a trust relationship between the roles. A role that assumes another role (for example, RoleA) must have a permissions policy that allows it to assume the next chained role (for example, RoleB). In turn, the role that passes permissions (RoleB) must have a trust policy that allows it to pass its permissions to the previous chained role (RoleA). For more information, see Using IAM roles in the IAM User Guide.

The first role in the chain must be a role attached to the cluster. The first role, and each subsequent role that assumes the next role in the chain, must have a policy that includes a specific statement. This statement has the Allow effect on the sts:AssumeRole action and the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the next role in a Resource element. In our example, RoleA has the following permission policy that allows it to assume RoleB, owned by AWS account 210987654321.


{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "Stmt1487639602000",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "sts:AssumeRole"
            ],
            "Resource": "arn:aws:iam::210987654321:role/RoleB"        
       }
    ]
}

A role that passes to another role must establish a trust relationship with the role that assumes the role or with the AWS account that owns the role. In our example, RoleB has the following trust policy to establish a trust relationship with RoleA.


{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
      "Principal": {
        "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::role/RoleA"
      }
    }
  ]
}

The following trust policy establishes a trust relationship with the owner of RoleA, AWS account 123456789012.


{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
      "Principal": {
        "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:root"
      }
    }      
  ]
}

Note

To restrict role chaining authorization to specific users, define a condition. For more information, see Restricting access to IAM roles.

When you run an UNLOAD, COPY, CREATE EXTERNAL FUNCTION, or CREATE EXTERNAL SCHEMA command, you chain roles by including a comma-separated list of role ARNs in the iam_role parameter. The following shows the syntax for chaining roles in the iam_role parameter.


unload ('select * from venue limit 10') 
to 's3://acmedata/redshift/venue_pipe_'
IAM_ROLE 'arn:aws:iam::<aws-account-id-1>:role/<role-name-1>[,arn:aws:iam::<aws-account-id-2>:role/<role-name-2>][,...]';

Note

The entire role chain is enclosed in single quotes and must not contain spaces.

In the following examples, RoleA is attached to the cluster belonging to AWS account 123456789012. RoleB, which belongs to account 210987654321, has permission to access the bucket named s3://companyb/redshift/. The following example chains RoleA and RoleB to UNLOAD data to the s3://companyb/redshift/ bucket.


unload ('select * from venue limit 10') 
to 's3://companyb/redshift/venue_pipe_'
iam_role 'arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/RoleA,arn:aws:iam::210987654321:role/RoleB';

The following example uses a COPY command to load the data that was unloaded in the previous example.


copy venue 
from 's3://companyb/redshift/venue_pipe_'
iam_role 'arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/RoleA,arn:aws:iam::210987654321:role/RoleB';

In the following example, CREATE EXTERNAL SCHEMA uses chained roles to assume the role RoleB.


create external schema spectrumexample from data catalog 
database 'exampledb' region 'us-west-2' 
iam_role 'arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/RoleA,arn:aws:iam::210987654321:role/RoleB';

In the following example, CREATE EXTERNAL FUNCTION uses chained roles to assume the role RoleB.


create external function lambda_example(varchar)
returns varchar
volatile
lambda 'exampleLambdaFunction'
iam_role 'arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/RoleA,arn:aws:iam::210987654321:role/RoleB';

For more information, see also Authorizing COPY, UNLOAD, CREATE EXTERNAL FUNCTION, and CREATE EXTERNAL SCHEMA operations using IAM roles.

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Document Conventions

Generating IAM database credentials using the Amazon Redshift CLI or API

Authorizing COPY, UNLOAD, CREATE EXTERNAL FUNCTION, and CREATE EXTERNAL SCHEMA operations using IAM roles