Amazon ECS task execution IAM role
The task execution role grants the Amazon ECS container and Fargate agents permission to make Amazon API calls on your behalf. The task execution IAM role is required depending on the requirements of your task. You can have multiple task execution roles for different purposes and services associated with your account. For the IAM permissions that your application needs to run, see Amazon ECS task IAM role.
The following are common use cases for a task execution IAM role:
-
Your task is hosted on Amazon Fargate and:
-
pulls a container image from an Amazon ECR private repository.
-
pulls a container image from an Amazon ECR private repository in a different account from the account that runs the task.
-
sends container logs to CloudWatch Logs using the
awslogs
log driver. For more information, see Send Amazon ECS logs to CloudWatch .
-
-
Your tasks are hosted on either Amazon Fargate or Amazon EC2 instances and:
-
uses private registry authentication. For more information, see Private registry authentication permissions.
-
uses Runtime Monitoring.
-
the task definition references sensitive data using Secrets Manager secrets or Amazon Systems Manager Parameter Store parameters. For more information, see Secrets Manager or Systems Manager permissions.
-
Note
The task execution role is supported by Amazon ECS container agent version 1.16.0 and later.
Amazon ECS provides the managed policy named AmazonECSTaskExecutionRolePolicy which contains the permissions the common use cases described above require. For more information, see AmazonECSTaskExecutionRolePolicy in the Amazon Managed Policy Reference Guide. It might be necessary to add inline policies to your task execution role for special use cases
The Amazon ECS console creates a task execution role. You can manually attach the managed IAM
policy for tasks to allow Amazon ECS to add permissions for future features and enhancements as
they are introduced. You can use IAM console search to search for
ecsTaskExecutionRole
and see if your account already has the task execution
role. For more information, see IAM console search in the
IAM user guide.
If you pull images as an authenticated user, you're less likely to be
impacted by the changes that occurred to Docker
Hub's pull rate limits
By using Amazon ECR and Amazon ECR Public, you can avoid the limits imposed by Docker. If you pull images from Amazon ECR, this also helps shorten network pull times and reduces data transfer changes when traffic leaves your VPC.
When you use Fargate, you must authenticate to a private image registry
using repositoryCredentials
. It's not possible to set the Amazon ECS
container agent environment variables ECS_ENGINE_AUTH_TYPE
or
ECS_ENGINE_AUTH_DATA
or modify the ecs.config
file
for tasks hosted on Fargate. For more information, see Private registry authentication for tasks.
Creating the task execution role
If your account doesn't already have a task execution role, use the following steps to create the role.
After you create the role, add additional permissions to the role for the following features.
Feature | Additional permissions |
---|---|
Use Secrets Manager credentials to access your container image private repository |
|
Pass sensitive data with Systems Manager or Secrets Manager | |
Have Fargate tasks pull Amazon ECR images over interface endpoints | Fargate tasks pulling Amazon ECR images over interface endpoints permissions |
Host configuration files in an Amazon S3 bucket | |
Configure Container Insights to view Amazon ECS lifecycle events |
Permissions required to configure Container Insights to view Amazon ECS lifecycle events |
View Amazon ECS lifecycle events in Container Insights |
Permissions required to view Amazon ECS lifecycle events in Container Insights |
Private registry authentication permissions
To provide access to the secrets that you create, add the following permissions as an inline policy to the task execution role. For more information, see Adding and Removing IAM Policies.
-
secretsmanager:GetSecretValue
-
kms:Decrypt
—Required only if your key uses a custom KMS key and not the default key. The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) for your custom key must be added as a resource.
The following is an example inline policy that adds the permissions.
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "kms:Decrypt", "secretsmanager:GetSecretValue" ], "Resource": [ "arn:aws:secretsmanager:<region>:<aws_account_id>:secret:secret_name", "arn:aws:kms:<region>:<aws_account_id>:key/key_id" ] } ] }
Secrets Manager or Systems Manager permissions
The permission to allow the container agent to pull the necessary Amazon Systems Manager or Secrets Manager resources. For more information, see Pass sensitive data to an Amazon ECS container.
Using Secrets Manager
To provide access to the Secrets Manager secrets that you create, manually add the following permission to the task execution role. For information about how to manage permissions, see Adding and Removing IAM identity permissions in the IAM User Guide.
-
secretsmanager:GetSecretValue
– Required if you are referencing a Secrets Manager secret. Adds the permission to retrieve the secret from Secrets Manager.
The following example policy adds the required permissions.
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "secretsmanager:GetSecretValue" ], "Resource": [ "arn:aws:secretsmanager:
region
:aws_account_id
:secret:secret_name
" ] } ] }
Using Systems Manager
Important
For tasks that use the EC2 launch type, you must use
the ECS agent configuration variable
ECS_ENABLE_AWSLOGS_EXECUTIONROLE_OVERRIDE=true
to
use this feature. You can add it to the
./etc/ecs/ecs.config
file during container instance
creation or you can add it to an existing instance and then restart
the ECS agent. For more information, see Amazon ECS container agent configuration.
To provide access to the Systems Manager Parameter Store parameters that you create, manually add the following permissions as a policy to the task execution role. For information about how to manage permissions, see Adding and Removing IAM identity permissions in the IAM User Guide.
-
ssm:GetParameters
— Required if you are referencing a Systems Manager Parameter Store parameter in a task definition. Adds the permission to retrieve Systems Manager parameters. -
secretsmanager:GetSecretValue
— Required if you are referencing a Secrets Manager secret either directly or if your Systems Manager Parameter Store parameter is referencing a Secrets Manager secret in a task definition. Adds the permission to retrieve the secret from Secrets Manager. -
kms:Decrypt
— Required only if your secret uses a customer managed key and not the default key. The ARN for your custom key should be added as a resource. Adds the permission to decrypt the customer managed key .
The following example policy adds the required permissions:
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "ssm:GetParameters", "secretsmanager:GetSecretValue", "kms:Decrypt" ], "Resource": [ "arn:aws:ssm:
region
:aws_account_id
:parameter/parameter_name
", "arn:aws:secretsmanager:region
:aws_account_id
:secret:secret_name
", "arn:aws:kms:region
:aws_account_id
:key/key_id
" ] } ] }
Fargate tasks pulling Amazon ECR images over interface endpoints permissions
When launching tasks that use the Fargate launch type that pull images from Amazon ECR when Amazon ECR is configured to use an interface VPC endpoint, you can restrict the tasks access to a specific VPC or VPC endpoint. Do this by creating a task execution role for the tasks to use that use IAM condition keys.
Use the following IAM global condition keys to restrict access to a specific VPC or VPC endpoint. For more information, see Amazon Global Condition Context Keys.
-
aws:SourceVpc
—Restricts access to a specific VPC. You can restrict the VPC to the VPC that hosts the task and endpoint. -
aws:SourceVpce
—Restricts access to a specific VPC endpoint.
The following task execution role policy provides an example for adding condition keys:
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "ecr:GetAuthorizationToken", "logs:CreateLogStream", "logs:PutLogEvents" ], "Resource": "*" }, { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "ecr:BatchCheckLayerAvailability", "ecr:GetDownloadUrlForLayer", "ecr:BatchGetImage" ], "Resource": "*", "Condition": { "StringEquals": { "aws:sourceVpce": "
vpce-xxxxxx
", "aws:sourceVpc": "vpc-xxxxx
" } } } ] }
Amazon S3 file storage permissions
When you specify a configuration file that's hosted in Amazon S3, the task execution role
must include the s3:GetObject
permission for the configuration file and the
s3:GetBucketLocation
permission on the Amazon S3 bucket that the file is in.
For more information, see Policy actions for Amazon S3 in the Amazon Simple Storage Service User Guide.
The following example policy adds the required permissions for retrieving a file from Amazon S3. Specify the name of your Amazon S3 bucket and configuration file name.
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "
s3:GetObject
" ], "Resource": [ "arn:aws:s3:::amzn-s3-demo-bucket
/folder_name
/config_file_name
" ] }, { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "s3:GetBucketLocation" ], "Resource": [ "arn:aws:s3:::amzn-s3-demo-bucket
" ] } ] }
Permissions required to configure Container Insights to view Amazon ECS lifecycle events
The following permissions are required in the task role to configure the lifecycle events:
-
events:PutRule
-
events:PutTargets
-
logs:CreateLogGroup
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "events:PutRule", "events:PutTargets", "logs:CreateLogGroup" ], "Resource": "*" } ] }
Permissions required to view Amazon ECS lifecycle events in Container Insights
The following permissions are required to view the lifecycle events. Add the following permissions as an inline policy to the task execution role. For more information, see Adding and Removing IAM Policies.
-
events:DescribeRule
-
events:ListTargetsByRule
-
logs:DescribeLogGroups
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "events:DescribeRule", "events:ListTargetsByRule", "logs:DescribeLogGroups" ], "Resource": "*" } ] }