How AWS Well-Architected Tool works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to AWS WA Tool, you should understand what IAM features are available to use with AWS WA Tool. To get a high-level view of how AWS WA Tool and other AWS services work with IAM, see AWS Services That Work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

AWS WA Tool identity-based policies

With IAM identity-based policies, you can specify allowed or denied actions and resources as well as the conditions under which actions are allowed or denied. AWS WA Tool supports specific actions, resources, and condition keys. To learn about all of the elements that you use in a JSON policy, see IAM JSON Policy Elements Reference in the IAM User Guide.

Actions

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Action element of a JSON policy describes the actions that you can use to allow or deny access in a policy. Policy actions usually have the same name as the associated AWS API operation. There are some exceptions, such as permission-only actions that don't have a matching API operation. There are also some operations that require multiple actions in a policy. These additional actions are called dependent actions.

Include actions in a policy to grant permissions to perform the associated operation.

Policy actions in AWS WA Tool use the following prefix before the action: wellarchitected:. For example, to allow an entity to define a workload, an administrator must attach a policy that allows wellarchitected:CreateWorkload actions. Similarly, to prevent an entity from deleting workloads, an administrator can attach a policy that denies wellarchitected:DeleteWorkload actions. Policy statements must include either an Action or NotAction element. AWS WA Tool defines its own set of actions that describe tasks that you can perform with this service.

To see a list of AWS WA Tool actions, see Actions Defined by AWS Well-Architected Tool in the Service Authorization Reference.

Resources

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Resource JSON policy element specifies the object or objects to which the action applies. Statements must include either a Resource or a NotResource element. As a best practice, specify a resource using its Amazon Resource Name (ARN). You can do this for actions that support a specific resource type, known as resource-level permissions.

For actions that don't support resource-level permissions, such as listing operations, use a wildcard (*) to indicate that the statement applies to all resources.

"Resource": "*"

The AWS WA Tool workload resource has the following ARN:

arn:${Partition}:wellarchitected:${Region}:${Account}:workload/${ResourceId} 

For more information about the format of ARNs, see Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) and AWS Service Namespaces.

The ARN can be found on the Workload properties page for a workload. For example, to specify a specific workload:

"Resource": "arn:aws:wellarchitected:us-east-1:123456789012:workload/11112222333344445555666677778888" 

To specify all workloads that belong to a specific account, use the wildcard (*):

"Resource": "arn:aws:wellarchitected:us-east-1:123456789012:workload/*" 

Some AWS WA Tool actions, such as those for creating and listing workloads, cannot be performed on a specific resource. In those cases, you must use the wildcard (*).

"Resource": "*"

To see a list of AWS WA Tool resource types and their ARNs, see Resources Defined by AWS Well-Architected Tool in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn with which actions you can specify the ARN of each resource, see Actions Defined by AWS Well-Architected Tool.

Condition Keys

AWS WA Tool does not provide any service-specific condition keys, but it does support using some global condition keys. To see all AWS global condition keys, see AWS Global Condition Context Keys in the Service Authorization Reference.

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Condition element (or Condition block) lets you specify conditions in which a statement is in effect. The Condition element is optional. You can create conditional expressions that use condition operators, such as equals or less than, to match the condition in the policy with values in the request.

If you specify multiple Condition elements in a statement, or multiple keys in a single Condition element, AWS evaluates them using a logical AND operation. If you specify multiple values for a single condition key, AWS evaluates the condition using a logical OR operation. All of the conditions must be met before the statement's permissions are granted.

You can also use placeholder variables when you specify conditions. For example, you can grant an IAM user permission to access a resource only if it is tagged with their IAM user name. For more information, see IAM policy elements: variables and tags in the IAM User Guide.

AWS supports global condition keys and service-specific condition keys. To see all AWS global condition keys, see AWS global condition context keys in the IAM User Guide.

Examples

To view examples of AWS WA Tool identity-based policies, see AWS Well-Architected Tool identity-based policy examples.

AWS WA Tool resource-based policies

AWS WA Tool does not support resource-based policies.

Authorization based on AWS WA Tool tags

You can attach tags to AWS WA Tool resources or pass tags in a request to AWS WA Tool. To control access based on tags, you provide tag information in the condition element of a policy using the wellarchitected:ResourceTag/key-name, aws:RequestTag/key-name, or aws:TagKeys condition keys. For more information about tagging AWS WA Tool resources, see Tagging your AWS WA Tool resources.

AWS WA Tool IAM roles

An IAM role is an entity within your AWS account that has specific permissions.

Using temporary credentials with AWS WA Tool

AWS WA Tool does not support using temporary credentials.

Service-linked roles

AWS WA Tool does not support service-linked roles.

Service roles

AWS WA Tool does not support service roles.