Associating IAM roles with clusters - Amazon Redshift
Permissions required to associate an IAM role with a clusterManaging IAM role association with a cluster

Associating IAM roles with clusters

After you have created an IAM role that authorizes Amazon Redshift to access other AWS services for you, you must associate that role with an Amazon Redshift cluster. You must do this before you can use the role to load or unload data.

Permissions required to associate an IAM role with a cluster

To associate an IAM role with a cluster, a user must have iam:PassRole permission for that IAM role. This permission allows an administrator to restrict which IAM roles a user can associate with Amazon Redshift clusters. As a best practice, we recommend attaching permissions policies to an IAM role and then assigning it to users and groups as needed. For more information, see Identity and access management in Amazon Redshift.

The following example shows an IAM policy that can be attached to a user that allows the user to take these actions:

  • Get the details for all Amazon Redshift clusters owned by that user's account.

  • Associate any of three IAM roles with either of two Amazon Redshift clusters.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "redshift:DescribeClusters",
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                 "redshift:ModifyClusterIamRoles",
                 "redshift:CreateCluster"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                 "arn:aws:redshift:us-east-1:123456789012:cluster:my-redshift-cluster",
                 "arn:aws:redshift:us-east-1:123456789012:cluster:my-second-redshift-cluster"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "iam:PassRole",
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/MyRedshiftRole",
                "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/SecondRedshiftRole",
                "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/ThirdRedshiftRole"
             ]
        }
    ]
}

After a user has the appropriate permissions, that user can associate an IAM role with an Amazon Redshift cluster. The IAM role is then ready to use with the COPY or UNLOAD command or other Amazon Redshift commands.

For more information on IAM policies, see Overview of IAM policies in the IAM User Guide.

Managing IAM role association with a cluster

You can associate an IAM role with an Amazon Redshift cluster when you create the cluster. Or you can modify an existing cluster and add or remove one or more IAM role associations.

Be aware of the following:

  • The maximum number of IAM roles that you can associate is subject to a quota.

  • An IAM role can be associated with multiple Amazon Redshift clusters.

  • An IAM role can be associated with an Amazon Redshift cluster only if both the IAM role and the cluster are owned by the same AWS account.

You can manage IAM role associations for a cluster with the console by using the following procedure.

To manage IAM role associations

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon Redshift console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/redshiftv2/.

  2. On the navigation menu, choose Clusters, then choose the cluster that you want to update.

  3. For Actions, choose Manage IAM roles to display the current list IAM roles associated with the cluster.

  4. On the Manage IAM roles page, choose the available IAM roles to add, and then choose Add IAM role.

  5. Choose Done to save your changes.

You can manage IAM role associations for a cluster with the AWS CLI by using the following approaches.

To associate an IAM role with a cluster when the cluster is created, specify the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the IAM role for the --iam-role-arns parameter of the create-cluster command. The maximum number of IAM roles that you can add when calling the create-cluster command is subject to a quota.

Associating and disassociating IAM roles with Amazon Redshift clusters is an asynchronous process. You can get the status of all IAM role cluster associations by calling the describe-clusters command.

The following example associates two IAM roles with the newly created cluster named my-redshift-cluster.

aws redshift create-cluster \
    --cluster-identifier "my-redshift-cluster" \
    --node-type "ra3.4xlarge" \
    --number-of-nodes 16 \
    --iam-role-arns "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/RedshiftCopyUnload" \
                    "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/SecondRedshiftRole"

To associate an IAM role with an existing Amazon Redshift cluster, specify the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the IAM role for the --add-iam-roles parameter of the modify-cluster-iam-roles command. The maximum number of IAM roles that you can add when calling the modify-cluster-iam-roles command is subject to a quota.

The following example associates an IAM role with an existing cluster named my-redshift-cluster.

aws redshift modify-cluster-iam-roles \
    --cluster-identifier "my-redshift-cluster" \
    --add-iam-roles "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/RedshiftCopyUnload"

To disassociate an IAM role from a cluster, specify the ARN of the IAM role for the --remove-iam-roles parameter of the modify-cluster-iam-roles command. modify-cluster-iam-roles The maximum number of IAM roles that you can remove when calling the modify-cluster-iam-roles command is subject to a quota.

The following example removes the association for an IAM role for the 123456789012 AWS account from a cluster named my-redshift-cluster.

aws redshift modify-cluster-iam-roles \
    --cluster-identifier "my-redshift-cluster" \
    --remove-iam-roles "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/RedshiftCopyUnload"

Listing IAM role associations for a cluster using the AWS CLI

To list all of the IAM roles that are associated with an Amazon Redshift cluster, and the status of the IAM role association, call the describe-clusters command. The ARN for each IAM role associated with the cluster is returned in the IamRoles list as shown in the following example output.

Roles that have been associated with the cluster show a status of in-sync. Roles that are in the process of being associated with the cluster show a status of adding. Roles that are being disassociated from the cluster show a status of removing.


{
    "Clusters": [
        {
            "ClusterIdentifier": "my-redshift-cluster",
            "NodeType": "ra3.4xlarge",
            "NumberOfNodes": 16,
            "IamRoles": [
                {
                    "IamRoleArn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/MyRedshiftRole",
                    "IamRoleApplyStatus": "in-sync"
                },
                {
                    "IamRoleArn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/SecondRedshiftRole",
                    "IamRoleApplyStatus": "in-sync"
                }
            ],
            ...
        },
        {
            "ClusterIdentifier": "my-second-redshift-cluster",
            "NodeType": "ra3.4xlarge",
            "NumberOfNodes": 10,
            "IamRoles": [
                {
                    "IamRoleArn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/MyRedshiftRole",
                    "IamRoleApplyStatus": "in-sync"
                },
                {
                    "IamRoleArn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/SecondRedshiftRole",
                    "IamRoleApplyStatus": "in-sync"
                },
                {
                    "IamRoleArn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/ThirdRedshiftRole",
                    "IamRoleApplyStatus": "in-sync"
                }
            ],
            ...
        }
    ]
}

For more information on using the AWS CLI, see AWS CLI User Guide.