Implementing IAM roles for EC2 instances with AWS CDK

Introduction

In this lesson, we will explore how to implement IAM roles for EC2 instances using AWS CDK. IAM roles are used to define permissions for entities within AWS, such as EC2 instances. By assigning IAM roles to EC2 instances, you can control what actions they can perform and what resources they can access. We will use AWS CDK, a software development framework for defining cloud infrastructure in code, to create and manage IAM roles for EC2 instances.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have the following prerequisites:

An AWS account
AWS CDK installed on your local machine
Basic knowledge of TypeScript

Creating an IAM role for EC2 instances

To create an IAM role for EC2 instances using AWS CDK, we will define a new IAM role in our CDK stack. Here’s an example of how you can define an IAM role in TypeScript:

import * as iam from '@aws-cdk/aws-iam';

const role = new iam.Role(this, 'MyEC2Role', {
  assumedBy: new iam.ServicePrincipal('ec2.amazonaws.com'),
  managedPolicies: [
    iam.ManagedPolicy.fromAwsManagedPolicyName('AmazonS3ReadOnlyAccess')
  ]
});

In this code snippet, we are creating a new IAM role named ‘MyEC2Role’ that can be assumed by the EC2 service principal. We are also attaching the ‘AmazonS3ReadOnlyAccess’ managed policy to the role, which grants read-only access to Amazon S3.

Attaching the IAM role to an EC2 instance

Once we have created the IAM role, we can attach it to an EC2 instance in our CDK stack. Here’s an example of how you can create an EC2 instance and attach the IAM role to it:

import * as ec2 from '@aws-cdk/aws-ec2';

const instance = new ec2.Instance(this, 'MyEC2Instance', {
  instanceType: ec2.InstanceType.of(ec2.InstanceClass.T2, ec2.InstanceSize.MICRO),
  machineImage: ec2.MachineImage.latestAmazonLinux(),
  role: role
});

In this code snippet, we are creating a new EC2 instance named ‘MyEC2Instance’ with the specified instance type and Amazon Linux machine image. We are also assigning the previously created IAM role ‘MyEC2Role’ to the instance.

Deploying the stack

After defining the IAM role and attaching it to the EC2 instance in our CDK stack, we can deploy the stack to AWS. Run the following command in your terminal to deploy the stack:

cdk deploy

AWS CDK will create the IAM role and EC2 instance with the specified configurations in your AWS account.

Conclusion

In this lesson, we learned how to implement IAM roles for EC2 instances using AWS CDK. We defined an IAM role with the necessary permissions and attached it to an EC2 instance in our CDK stack. By following these steps, you can effectively manage permissions for your EC2 instances and ensure secure access to AWS resources.

Key learnings

IAM roles are used to define permissions for entities within AWS, such as EC2 instances.
AWS CDK allows you to create and manage IAM roles for EC2 instances using code.
By assigning IAM roles to EC2 instances, you can control what actions they can perform and what resources they can access.

Lessons