Using roles for Amazon Keyspaces Multi-Region Replication

Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra) 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 Keyspaces. Service-linked roles are predefined by Amazon Keyspaces and include all the permissions that the service requires to call other AWS services on your behalf.

A service-linked role makes setting up Amazon Keyspaces easier because you don’t have to manually add the necessary permissions. Amazon Keyspaces defines the permissions of its service-linked roles, and unless defined otherwise, only Amazon Keyspaces 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 its related resources. This protects your Amazon Keyspaces resources because you can't inadvertently remove permission to access the resources.

Service-linked role permissions for Amazon Keyspaces

Amazon Keyspaces uses the service-linked role named AWSServiceRoleForAmazonKeyspacesReplication to allow Amazon Keyspaces to add new AWS Regions to a keyspace on your behalf, and replicate tables and all their data and settings to the new Region. The role also allows Amazon Keyspaces to replicate writes to tables in all Regions on your behalf.

The AWSServiceRoleForAmazonKeyspacesReplication service-linked role trusts the following services to assume the role:

The role permissions policy named KeyspacesReplicationServiceRolePolicy allows Amazon Keyspaces to complete the following actions:

Although the Amazon Keyspaces service-linked role AWSServiceRoleForAmazonKeyspacesReplication provides the permissions: "Action:" for the specified Amazon Resource Name (ARN) "arn:*" in the policy, Amazon Keyspaces supplies the ARN of your account.

Permissions to create the service-linked role AWSServiceRoleForAmazonKeyspacesReplication are included in the AmazonKeyspacesFullAccess managed policy. For more information, see AWS managed policy: AmazonKeyspacesFullAccess.

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 Keyspaces

You can't manually create a service-linked role. When you create a multi-Region keyspace in the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the AWS API, Amazon Keyspaces 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 a multi-Region keyspace, Amazon Keyspaces creates the service-linked role for you again.

Editing a service-linked role for Amazon Keyspaces

Amazon Keyspaces does not allow you to edit the AWSServiceRoleForAmazonKeyspacesReplication 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. For more information, see Editing a service-linked role in the IAM User Guide.

Deleting a service-linked role for Amazon Keyspaces

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 first delete all multi-Region keyspaces in the account across all AWS Regions before you can delete the service-linked role manually.

Cleaning up a service-linked role

Before you can use IAM to delete a service-linked role, you must first delete any multi-Region keyspaces and tables used by the role.

You can also delete multi-Region keyspaces programmatically using any of the following methods.

Manually delete the service-linked role

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

Supported Regions for Amazon Keyspaces service-linked roles

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