AWS managed policies for SQL Server on EC2

To add permissions to users, groups, and roles, it is easier to use AWS managed policies than to write policies yourself. It takes time and expertise to create IAM customer managed policies that provide your team with only the permissions they need. To get started quickly, you can use our AWS managed policies. These policies cover common use cases and are available in your AWS account. For more information about AWS managed policies, see AWS managed policies in the IAM User Guide.

AWS services maintain and update AWS managed policies. You can't change the permissions in AWS managed policies. Services occasionally add additional permissions to an AWS managed policy to support new features. This type of update affects all identities (users, groups, and roles) where the policy is attached. Services are most likely to update an AWS managed policy when a new feature is launched or when new operations become available. Services do not remove permissions from an AWS managed policy, so policy updates won't break your existing permissions.

Additionally, AWS supports managed policies for job functions that span multiple services. For example, the ReadOnlyAccess AWS managed policy provides read-only access to all AWS services and resources. When a service launches a new feature, AWS adds read-only permissions for new operations and resources. For a list and descriptions of job function policies, see AWS managed policies for job functions in the IAM User Guide.

AWS managed policy: AWSEC2SqlHaInstancePolicy

You can attach this managed policy to the IAM role that's attached to your Amazon EC2 Windows and SQL Server instance. The policy grants permissions to execute AWS owned Systems Manager command document AWSEC2-DetectSqlHaState to the instance, to retrieve the EC2 SQL Server instance metadata and decide whether it's in active or standby state.

To view the permissions for this policy, see AWSEC2SqlHaInstancePolicy in the AWS Managed Policy Reference.

AWS managed policy: AWSEC2SqlHaServiceRolePolicy

This policy is attached to the service-linked role named AWSServiceRoleForEC2SqlHa to allow SQL Server on EC2 to detect whether an EC2 instance that's tagged with the EC2 SQL High Availability identifier (SqlHaMonitored set to true) is running in active or standby mode.

To view the permissions for this policy, see AWSEC2SqlHaServiceRolePolicy in the AWS Managed Policy Reference.

SQL Server on EC2 updates to AWS managed policies

View details about updates to AWS managed policies for SQL Server on EC2 since this service began tracking these changes.

Change	Description	Date
AWSEC2SqlHaInstancePolicy – New policy	Added the AWSEC2SqlHaInstancePolicy policy that can be attached to IAM role that's attached to the Windows and SQL Server instance to facilitate metadata collection for the purpose of keeping track of the current state of the database as it applies to active or passive mode.	November 17, 2025
AWSEC2SqlHaServiceRolePolicy – New policy	Added the policy that's attached to the AWSServiceRoleForEC2SqlHa service-linked role to detect whether an EC2 instance that's tagged with the EC2 SQL High Availability identifier is running in standby or passive mode.	November 17, 2025
SQL Server on EC2 started tracking changes	SQL Server on EC2 started tracking changes to its AWS managed policies	November 17, 2025