How Amazon Lightsail works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to Lightsail, you should understand what IAM features are available to use with Lightsail. To get a high-level view of how Lightsail and other AWS services work with IAM, see AWS Services That Work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Lightsail Identity-Based Policies

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. Lightsail supports specific actions, resources, and condition keys. To learn about all of the elements that you use in a JSON policy, see IAM JSON Policy Elements Reference in the IAM User Guide.

Actions

Administrators can use AWS 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. Policy actions usually have the same name as the associated AWS API operation. There are some exceptions, such as permission-only actions that don't have a matching API operation. There are also some operations that require multiple actions in a policy. These additional actions are called dependent actions.

Include actions in a policy to grant permissions to perform the associated operation.

Policy actions in Lightsail use the following prefix before the action: lightsail:. For example, to grant someone permission to run a Lightsail instance with the Lightsail CreateInstances API operation, you include the lightsail:CreateInstances action in their policy. Policy statements must include either an Action or NotAction element. Lightsail defines its own set of actions that describe tasks that you can perform with this service.

To specify multiple actions in a single statement, separate them with commas as follows:

"Action": [
      "lightsail:action1",
      "lightsail:action2"

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

"Action": "lightsail:Create*"

To see a list of Lightsail actions, see Actions Defined by Amazon Lightsail in the IAM User Guide.

Resources

Administrators can use AWS 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. Statements must include either a Resource or a NotResource element. As a best practice, specify a resource using its Amazon Resource Name (ARN). You can do this for actions that support a specific resource type, known as resource-level permissions.

For actions that don't support resource-level permissions, such as listing operations, use a wildcard (*) to indicate that the statement applies to all resources.

"Resource": "*"

The Lightsail instance resource has the following ARN:

arn:${Partition}:lightsail:${Region}:${Account}:Instance/${InstanceId}

For more information about the format of ARNs, see Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) and AWS Service Namespaces.

For example, to specify the ea123456-e6b9-4f1d-b518-3ad1234567e6 instance in your statement, use the following ARN:

"Resource": "arn:aws:lightsail:us-east-1:123456789012:Instance/ea123456-e6b9-4f1d-b518-3ad1234567e6"

To specify all instances that belong to a specific account, use the wildcard (*):

"Resource": "arn:aws:lightsail:us-east-1:123456789012:Instance/*"

Some Lightsail actions, such as those for creating resources, cannot be performed on a specific resource. In those cases, you must use the wildcard (*).

"Resource": "*"

Many Lightsail API actions involve multiple resources. For example, AttachDisk attaches a Lightsail block storage disk to an instance, so an IAM user must have permissions to use the disk and the instance. To specify multiple resources in a single statement, separate the ARNs with commas.

"Resource": [
      "resource1",
      "resource2"

To see a list of Lightsail resource types and their ARNs, see Resources Defined by Amazon Lightsail in the IAM User Guide. To learn with which actions you can specify the ARN of each resource, see Actions Defined by Amazon Lightsail.

Condition Keys

Administrators can use AWS 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 (or Condition block) lets you specify conditions in which a statement is in effect. The Condition element is optional. 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.

If you specify multiple Condition elements in a statement, or multiple keys in a single Condition element, AWS evaluates them using a logical AND operation. If you specify multiple values for a single condition key, AWS evaluates the condition using a logical OR operation. All of the conditions must be met before the statement's permissions are granted.

You can also use placeholder variables when you specify conditions. For example, you can grant an IAM user permission to access a resource only if it is tagged with their IAM user name. For more information, see IAM policy elements: variables and tags in the IAM User Guide.

AWS supports global condition keys and service-specific condition keys. To see all AWS global condition keys, see AWS global condition context keys in the IAM User Guide.

Lightsail does not provide any service-specific condition keys, but it does support using some global condition keys. To see all AWS global condition keys, see AWS Global Condition Context Keys in the IAM User Guide.

To see a list of Lightsail condition keys, see Condition Keys for Amazon Lightsail in the IAM User Guide. To learn with which actions and resources you can use a condition key, see Actions Defined by Amazon Lightsail.

Examples

To view examples of Lightsail identity-based policies, see Amazon Lightsail Identity-Based Policy Examples.

Lightsail Resource-Based Policies

Lightsail does not support resource-based policies.

Access Control Lists (ACLs)

Lightsail does not support Access Control Lists (ACLs).

Authorization Based on Lightsail Tags

You can attach tags to Lightsail resources or pass tags in a request to Lightsail. To control access based on tags, you provide tag information in the condition element of a policy using the lightsail:ResourceTag/key-name, aws:RequestTag/key-name, or aws:TagKeys condition keys.

For more information about tagging Lightsail resources, see Tags.

To view an example identity-based policy for limiting access to a resource based on the tags on that resource, see Allowing Creation and Deletion of Lightsail Resources Based on Tags.

Lightsail IAM Roles

An IAM role is an entity within your AWS account that has specific permissions.

Using Temporary Credentials with Lightsail

You can use temporary credentials to sign in with federation, assume an IAM role, or to assume a cross-account role. You obtain temporary security credentials by calling AWS STS API operations such as AssumeRole or GetFederationToken.

Lightsail supports using temporary credentials.

Service-Linked Roles

Service-linked roles allow AWS services to access resources in other services to complete an action on your behalf. Service-linked roles appear in your IAM account and are owned by the service. An IAM administrator can view but not edit the permissions for service-linked roles.

Lightsail supports service-linked roles. For details about creating or managing Lightsail service-linked roles, see Service-linked roles.

Service Roles

Lightsail does not support service roles.