How MemoryDB works with IAM - Amazon MemoryDB
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How MemoryDB works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to MemoryDB, learn what IAM features are available to use with MemoryDB.

To get a high-level view of how MemoryDB and other Amazon services work with most IAM features, see Amazon services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Identity-based policies for MemoryDB

Supports identity-based policies: Yes

Identity-based policies are JSON permissions policy documents that you can attach to an identity, such as an IAM user, group of users, or role. These policies control what actions users and roles can perform, on which resources, and under what conditions. To learn how to create an identity-based policy, see Define custom IAM permissions with customer managed policies in the IAM User Guide.

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. To learn about all of the elements that you can use in a JSON policy, see IAM JSON policy elements reference in the IAM User Guide.

Identity-based policy examples for MemoryDB

To view examples of MemoryDB identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for MemoryDB.

Resource-based policies within MemoryDB

Supports resource-based policies: No

Resource-based policies are JSON policy documents that you attach to a resource. Examples of resource-based policies are IAM role trust policies and Amazon S3 bucket policies. In services that support resource-based policies, service administrators can use them to control access to a specific resource. For the resource where the policy is attached, the policy defines what actions a specified principal can perform on that resource and under what conditions. You must specify a principal in a resource-based policy. Principals can include accounts, users, roles, federated users, or Amazon Web Services services.

To enable cross-account access, you can specify an entire account or IAM entities in another account as the principal in a resource-based policy. For more information, see Cross account resource access in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Policy actions for MemoryDB

Supports policy actions: Yes

Administrators can use Amazon 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. Include actions in a policy to grant permissions to perform the associated operation.

To see a list of MemoryDB actions, see Actions Defined by MemoryDB in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy actions in MemoryDB use the following prefix before the action:

MemoryDB

To specify multiple actions in a single statement, separate them with commas.

"Action": [ "MemoryDB:action1", "MemoryDB:action2" ]

You can specify multiple actions using wildcards (*). For example, to specify all actions that begin with the word Describe, include the following action:

"Action": "MemoryDB:Describe*"

To view examples of MemoryDB identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for MemoryDB.

Policy resources for MemoryDB

Supports policy resources: Yes

Administrators can use Amazon 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. As a best practice, specify a resource using its Amazon Resource Name (ARN). For actions that don't support resource-level permissions, use a wildcard (*) to indicate that the statement applies to all resources.

"Resource": "*"

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

To view examples of MemoryDB identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for MemoryDB.

Policy condition keys for MemoryDB

Supports service-specific policy condition keys: Yes

Administrators can use Amazon 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 specifies when statements execute based on defined criteria. 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. To see all Amazon global condition keys, see Amazon global condition context keys in the IAM User Guide.

To view examples of MemoryDB identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for MemoryDB.

Using condition keys

You can specify conditions that determine how an IAM policy takes effect. In MemoryDB, you can use the Condition element of a JSON policy to compare keys in the request context with key values that you specify in your policy. For more information, see IAM JSON policy elements: Condition.

To see a list of MemoryDB condition keys, see Condition Keys for MemoryDB in the Service Authorization Reference.

For a list of global condition keys, see Amazon global condition context keys.

Specifying Conditions: Using Condition Keys

To implement fine-grained control, you can write an IAM permissions policy that specifies conditions to control a set of individual parameters on certain requests. You can then apply the policy to IAM users, groups, or roles that you create using the IAM console.

To apply a condition, you add the condition information to the IAM policy statement. For example, to disallow the creation of any MemoryDB cluster with TLS disabled, you can specify the following condition in your policy statement.

JSON
{ "Version":"2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Deny", "Action": [ "memorydb:CreateCluster" ], "Resource": [ "*" ], "Condition": { "Bool": { "memorydb:TLSEnabled": "false" } } } ] }

For more information on tagging, see Tagging your MemoryDB resources.

For more information on using policy condition operators, see MemoryDB API permissions: Actions, resources, and conditions reference.

Example Policies: Using Conditions for Fine-Grained Parameter Control

This section shows example policies for implementing fine-grained access control on the previously listed MemoryDB parameters.

  1. memorydb:TLSEnabled — Specify that clusters will be created only with TLS enabled.

    JSON
    { "Version":"2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "memorydb:CreateCluster" ], "Resource": [ "arn:aws:memorydb:*:*:parametergroup/*", "arn:aws:memorydb:*:*:subnetgroup/*", "arn:aws:memorydb:*:*:acl/*" ] }, { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "memorydb:CreateCluster" ], "Resource": [ "*" ], "Condition": { "Bool": { "memorydb:TLSEnabled": "true" } } } ] }
  2. memorydb:UserAuthenticationMode: — Specify that the users can be created with a specific type authentication mode (IAM for example).

    JSON
    { "Version":"2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "memorydb:Createuser" ], "Resource": [ "arn:aws:memorydb:*:*:user/*" ], "Condition": { "StringEquals": { "memorydb:UserAuthenticationMode": "iam" } } } ] }

    In cases where you are setting ‘Deny’ based policies, it is recommended to use the StringEqualsIgnoreCase operator to avoid all calls with a specific user authentication mode type irrespective of the case.

    JSON
    { "Version":"2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Deny", "Action": [ "memorydb:CreateUser" ], "Resource": "*", "Condition": { "StringEqualsIgnoreCase": { "memorydb:UserAuthenticationMode": "password" } } } ] }

Access control lists (ACLs) in MemoryDB

Supports ACLs: Yes

Access control lists (ACLs) control which principals (account members, users, or roles) have permissions to access a resource. ACLs are similar to resource-based policies, although they do not use the JSON policy document format.

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) with MemoryDB

Supports ABAC (tags in policies): Yes

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) is an authorization strategy that defines permissions based on attributes called tags. You can attach tags to IAM entities and Amazon resources, then design ABAC policies to allow operations when the principal's tag matches the tag on the resource.

To control access based on tags, you provide tag information in the condition element of a policy using the aws:ResourceTag/key-name, aws:RequestTag/key-name, or aws:TagKeys condition keys.

If a service supports all three condition keys for every resource type, then the value is Yes for the service. If a service supports all three condition keys for only some resource types, then the value is Partial.

For more information about ABAC, see Define permissions with ABAC authorization in the IAM User Guide. To view a tutorial with steps for setting up ABAC, see Use attribute-based access control (ABAC) in the IAM User Guide.

Using Temporary credentials with MemoryDB

Supports temporary credentials: Yes

Temporary credentials provide short-term access to Amazon resources and are automatically created when you use federation or switch roles. Amazon recommends that you dynamically generate temporary credentials instead of using long-term access keys. For more information, see Temporary security credentials in IAM and Amazon Web Services services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Cross-service principal permissions for MemoryDB

Supports forward access sessions (FAS): Yes

Forward access sessions (FAS) use the permissions of the principal calling an Amazon Web Services service, combined with the requesting Amazon Web Services service to make requests to downstream services. For policy details when making FAS requests, see Forward access sessions.

Service roles for MemoryDB

Supports service roles: Yes

A service role is an IAM role that a service assumes to perform actions on your behalf. An IAM administrator can create, modify, and delete a service role from within IAM. For more information, see Create a role to delegate permissions to an Amazon Web Services service in the IAM User Guide.

Warning

Changing the permissions for a service role might break MemoryDB functionality. Edit service roles only when MemoryDB provides guidance to do so.

Service-linked roles for MemoryDB

Supports service-linked roles: Yes

A service-linked role is a type of service role that is linked to an Amazon Web Services service. The service can assume the role to perform an action on your behalf. Service-linked roles appear in your Amazon Web Services account and are owned by the service. An IAM administrator can view, but not edit the permissions for service-linked roles.

For details about creating or managing service-linked roles, see Amazon services that work with IAM. Find a service in the table that includes a Yes in the Service-linked role column. Choose the Yes link to view the service-linked role documentation for that service.