Using service-linked roles for Amazon SES

Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) 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 Amazon SES. Service-linked roles are predefined by SES and include all the permissions that the service requires to call other AWS services on your behalf.

A service-linked role makes setting up SES easier because you don’t have to manually add the necessary permissions. SES defines the permissions of its service-linked roles, and unless defined otherwise, only SES 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.

You can delete a service-linked role only after first deleting their related resources. This protects your SES 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 roles column. Choose a Yes with a link to view the service-linked role documentation for that service.

Service-linked role permissions for Amazon SES

SES uses the service-linked role named AWSServiceRoleForAmazonSES – Allows SES to publish Amazon CloudWatch basic monitoring metrics on behalf of your SES resources.

The AWSServiceRoleForAmazonSES service-linked role trusts the following service to assume the role:

• ses.amazonaws.com

The role permissions policy named AmazonSESServiceRolePolicy is an AWS managed policy that allows SES to complete the following actions on the specified resources:

• Action: cloudwatch:PutMetricData in the AWS/SES CloudWatch namespace. This action grants permission for SES to put metric data into the CloudWatch AWS/SES namespace. For more information about SES metrics available in CloudWatch, see Logging and monitoring in Amazon SES.

• Action: cloudwatch:PutMetricData in the AWS/SES/MailManager CloudWatch namespace. This action grants permission for SES to put metric data into the CloudWatch AWS/SES/MailManager namespace. For more information about SES metrics available in CloudWatch, see Logging and monitoring in Amazon SES.

• Action: cloudwatch:PutMetricData in the AWS/SES/Addons CloudWatch namespace. This action grants permission for SES to put metric data into the CloudWatch AWS/SES/Addons namespace. For more information about SES metrics available in CloudWatch, see Logging and monitoring in Amazon SES.

You must configure permissions to allow your users, groups, or roles to create, edit, or delete a service-linked role. For more information, see Service-linked role permissions in the IAM User Guide.

Creating a service-linked role for Amazon SES

You don't need to manually create a service-linked role. When you create SES resources in the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the AWS API, SES 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 create SES resources, SES creates the service-linked role for you again.

Editing a service-linked role for Amazon SES

SES does not allow you to edit the AWSServiceRoleForAmazonSES 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.

Deleting a service-linked role for SES

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 your service-linked role before you can manually delete it.

Cleaning Up a service-linked role

Before you can use IAM to delete a service-linked role, you must first delete all SES resources.

Note

If the SES service is using the role when you try to delete the resources, then the deletion might fail. If that happens, wait for a few minutes and try the operation again.

Manually delete the service-linked role

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

Supported Regions for Amazon SES service-linked roles

SES does not support using service-linked roles in every Region where the service is available. You can use the AWSServiceRoleForAmazonSES role in the following Regions.

Region name	Region identity	Support in SES
US East (N. Virginia)	us-east-1	Yes
US East (Ohio)	us-east-2	Yes
Asia Pacific (Sydney)	ap-southeast-2	Yes
Asia Pacific (Tokyo)	ap-northeast-1	Yes
Europe (Frankfurt)	eu-central-1	Yes
Europe (Ireland)	eu-west-1	Yes