Just-in-time provisioning - Amazon IoT Core
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Just-in-time provisioning

You can have your devices provisioned when they first attempt to connect to Amazon IoT with just-in-time provisioning (JITP). To provision the device, you must enable automatic registration and associate a provisioning template with the CA certificate used to sign the device certificate. Provisioning successes and errors are logged as Device provisioning metrics in Amazon CloudWatch.

You can make these settings when you register a CA certificate with the RegisterCACertificate API or the register-ca-certificate CLI command:

aws iot register-ca-certificate --ca-certificate file://your-ca-cert --verification-cert 
                file://your-verification-cert --set-as-active --allow-auto-registration --registration-config file://your-template

For more information, see Registering a CA Certificate.

You can also use the UpdateCACertificate API or the update-ca-certificate CLI command to update the settings for a CA certificate:

aws iot update-ca-certificate --certificate-id caCertificateId --new-auto-registration-status ENABLE --registration-config file://your-template
Note

Just-in-time provisioning JITP calls other Amazon IoT control plane APIs during the provisioning process. These calls might exceed the Amazon IoT Throttling Quotas set for your account and result in throttled calls. Contact Amazon Customer Support to raise your throttling quotas, if necessary.

When a device attempts to connect to Amazon IoT by using a certificate signed by a registered CA certificate, Amazon IoT loads the template from the CA certificate and uses it to call RegisterThing. The JITP workflow first registers a certificate with a status value of PENDING_ACTIVATION. When the device provisioning flow is complete, the status of the certificate is changed to ACTIVE.

Amazon IoT defines the following parameters that you can declare and reference in provisioning templates:

  • AWS::IoT::Certificate::Country

  • AWS::IoT::Certificate::Organization

  • AWS::IoT::Certificate::OrganizationalUnit

  • AWS::IoT::Certificate::DistinguishedNameQualifier

  • AWS::IoT::Certificate::StateName

  • AWS::IoT::Certificate::CommonName

  • AWS::IoT::Certificate::SerialNumber

  • AWS::IoT::Certificate::Id

The values for these provisioning template parameters are limited to what JITP can extract from the subject field of the certificate of the device being provisioned. The certificate must contain values for all of the parameters in the template body. The AWS::IoT::Certificate::Id parameter refers to an internally generated ID, not an ID that is contained in the certificate. You can get the value of this ID using the principal() function inside an Amazon IoT rule.

Note

You can provision devices using Amazon IoT Core just-in-time provisioning (JITP) feature without having to send the entire trust chain on devices' first connection to Amazon IoT Core. Presenting the CA certificate is optional but the device is required to send the Server Name Indication (SNI) extension when they connect.

The following JSON file is an example of a complete JITP template. The value of the templateBody field must be a JSON object specified as an escaped string and can use only the values in the preceding list. You can use a variety of tools to create the required JSON output, such as json.dumps (Python) or JSON.stringify (Node). The value of the roleARN field must be the ARN of a role that has the AWSIoTThingsRegistration attached to it. Also, your template can use an existing PolicyName instead of the inline PolicyDocument in the example. (The first example adds line breaks for readability, but you can copy and paste the template that appears directly below it.)


        { 
            "templateBody" : "{
                \r\n    \"Parameters\" : {\r\n        
                            \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::CommonName\": {\r\n    \"Type\": \"String\"\r\n        },\r\n        
                            \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::SerialNumber\": {\r\n  \"Type\": \"String\"\r\n        },\r\n        
                            \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::Country\": {\r\n   \"Type\": \"String\"\r\n        },\r\n        
                            \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::Id\": {\r\n    \"Type\": \"String\"\r\n        }\r\n    },\r\n    
                        \"Resources\": {\r\n        
                            \"thing\": {\r\n            
                                \"Type\": \"AWS::IoT::Thing\",\r\n            
                                \"Properties\": {\r\n                
                                    \"ThingName\": {\r\n    \"Ref\": \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::CommonName\"\r\n  },\r\n                
                                    \"AttributePayload\": {\r\n                    
                                        \"version\": \"v1\",\r\n                    
                                        \"serialNumber\": {\r\n                        
                                            \"Ref\": \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::SerialNumber\"\r\n    }\r\n   },\r\n                
                                    \"ThingTypeName\": \"lightBulb-versionA\",\r\n                
                                    \"ThingGroups\": [\r\n                    
                                        \"v1-lightbulbs\",\r\n  {\r\n                        
                                            \"Ref\": \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::Country\"\r\n }\r\n   ]\r\n   },\r\n            
                            \"OverrideSettings\": {\r\n                
                                \"AttributePayload\": \"MERGE\",\r\n                
                                \"ThingTypeName\": \"REPLACE\",\r\n                
                                \"ThingGroups\": \"DO_NOTHING\"\r\n }\r\n   },\r\n        
                        \"certificate\": {\r\n            
                            \"Type\": \"AWS::IoT::Certificate\",\r\n            
                            \"Properties\": {\r\n                
                                \"CertificateId\": {\r\n    \"Ref\": \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::Id\"\r\n  },\r\n                
                                \"Status\": \"ACTIVE\"\r\n  },\r\n            
                            \"OverrideSettings\": {\r\n                
                                \"Status\": \"DO_NOTHING\"\r\n  }\r\n   },\r\n        
                        \"policy\": {\r\n            
                            \"Type\": \"AWS::IoT::Policy\",\r\n            
                            \"Properties\": {\r\n                
                                \"PolicyDocument\": \"{ 
                                    \\\"Version\\\": \\\"2012-10-17\\\", 
                                    \\\"Statement\\\": [{ 
                                    \\\"Effect\\\": \\\"Allow\\\", 
                                    \\\"Action\\\":[\\\"iot:Publish\\\"], 
                                    \\\"Resource\\\": [\\\"arn:aws:iot:us-east-1:123456789012:topic\/sample\/topic\\\"] }] }\"\r\n   }\r\n   }\r\n    
                              }\r\n}",
            "roleArn" : "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/Provisioning-JITP"
        }

Here is a version you can copy and paste:


    { 
      "templateBody" : "{\r\n    \"Parameters\" : {\r\n        \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::CommonName\": {\r\n            \"Type\": \"String\"\r\n        },\r\n        \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::SerialNumber\": {\r\n            \"Type\": \"String\"\r\n        },\r\n        \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::Country\": {\r\n            \"Type\": \"String\"\r\n        },\r\n        \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::Id\": {\r\n            \"Type\": \"String\"\r\n        }\r\n    },\r\n    \"Resources\": {\r\n        \"thing\": {\r\n            \"Type\": \"AWS::IoT::Thing\",\r\n            \"Properties\": {\r\n                \"ThingName\": {\r\n                    \"Ref\": \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::CommonName\"\r\n                },\r\n                \"AttributePayload\": {\r\n                    \"version\": \"v1\",\r\n                    \"serialNumber\": {\r\n                        \"Ref\": \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::SerialNumber\"\r\n                    }\r\n                },\r\n                \"ThingTypeName\": \"lightBulb-versionA\",\r\n                \"ThingGroups\": [\r\n                    \"v1-lightbulbs\",\r\n                    {\r\n                        \"Ref\": \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::Country\"\r\n                    }\r\n                ]\r\n            },\r\n            \"OverrideSettings\": {\r\n                \"AttributePayload\": \"MERGE\",\r\n                \"ThingTypeName\": \"REPLACE\",\r\n                \"ThingGroups\": \"DO_NOTHING\"\r\n            }\r\n        },\r\n        \"certificate\": {\r\n            \"Type\": \"AWS::IoT::Certificate\",\r\n            \"Properties\": {\r\n                \"CertificateId\": {\r\n                    \"Ref\": \"AWS::IoT::Certificate::Id\"\r\n                },\r\n                \"Status\": \"ACTIVE\"\r\n            },\r\n            \"OverrideSettings\": {\r\n                \"Status\": \"DO_NOTHING\"\r\n            }\r\n        },\r\n        \"policy\": {\r\n            \"Type\": \"AWS::IoT::Policy\",\r\n            \"Properties\": {\r\n                \"PolicyDocument\": \"{ \\\"Version\\\": \\\"2012-10-17\\\", \\\"Statement\\\": [{ \\\"Effect\\\": \\\"Allow\\\", \\\"Action\\\":[\\\"iot:Publish\\\"], \\\"Resource\\\": [\\\"arn:aws:iot:us-east-1:123456789012:topic\/foo\/bar\\\"] }] }\"\r\n            }\r\n        }\r\n    }\r\n}",
      "roleArn" : "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/JITPRole"
    }

This sample template declares values for the AWS::IoT::Certificate::CommonName, AWS::IoT::Certificate::SerialNumber, AWS::IoT::Certificate::Country, and AWS::IoT::Certificate::Id provisioning parameters that are extracted from the certificate and used in the Resources section. The JITP workflow then uses this template to perform the following actions:

  • Register a certificate and set its status to PENDING_ACTIVE.

  • Create one thing resource.

  • Create one policy resource.

  • Attach the policy to the certificate.

  • Attach the certificate to the thing.

  • Update the certificate status to ACTIVE.

Note that the device provisioning fails if the certificate doesn't have all of the properties mentioned in the Parameters section of the templateBody. For example, if AWS::IoT::Certificate::Country is included in the template, but the certificate doesn't have a Country property, the device provisioning fails.

You can also use CloudTrail to troubleshoot issues with your JITP template. For information about the metrics that are logged in Amazon CloudWatch, see Device provisioning metrics.