# Create an IAM user for workloads that can't use IAM roles
Create an IAM user for workloads

**Important**  
As a [best practice](best-practices.md#lock-away-credentials), we recommend you require your human users to use [temporary credentials](id_credentials_temp.md) when accessing AWS.  
Alternatively, you can manage your user identities, including your administrative user, with [AWS IAM Identity Center](https://docs.aws.amazon.com//singlesignon/latest/userguide/getting-started.html). We recommend you use IAM Identity Center to manage access to your accounts and permissions within those accounts. If you are using an external identity provider, you can also configure the access permissions for user identities in IAM Identity Center.

If your use case requires IAM users with programmatic access and long-term credentials, we recommend that you establish procedures to update access keys when needed. For more information, see [Update access keys](id-credentials-access-keys-update.md).

To perform some account and service management tasks, you must sign in using root user credentials. To view the tasks that require you to sign in as the root user, see [Tasks that require root user credentials](id_root-user.md#root-user-tasks).

## To create an IAM user for workloads that can't use IAM roles


**Minimum permissions**  
To perform the following steps, you must have at least the following IAM permissions:  
`iam:AddUserToGroup`
`iam:AttachGroupPolicy`
`iam:CreateAccessKey`
`iam:CreateGroup`
`iam:CreateServiceSpecificCredential`
`iam:CreateUser`
`iam:GetAccessKeyLastUsed`
`iam:GetAccountPasswordPolicy`
`iam:GetAccountSummary`
`iam:GetGroup`
`iam:GetLoginProfile`
`iam:GetPolicy`
`iam:GetRole`
`iam:GetUser`
`iam:ListAccessKeys`
`iam:ListAttachedGroupPolicies`
`iam:ListAttachedUserPolicies`
`iam:ListGroupPolicies`
`iam:ListGroups`
`iam:ListGroupsForUser`
`iam:ListInstanceProfilesForRole`
`iam:ListMFADevices`
`iam:ListPolicies`
`iam:ListRoles`
`iam:ListRoleTags`
`iam:ListSSHPublicKeys`
`iam:ListServiceSpecificCredentials`
`iam:ListSigningCertificates`
`iam:ListUserPolicies`
`iam:ListUserTags`
`iam:ListUsers`
`iam:UploadSSHPublicKey`
`iam:UploadSigningCertificate`

------
#### [ Console ]

1. Follow the sign-in procedure appropriate to your user type as described in the topic [How to sign in to AWS](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/signin/latest/userguide/how-to-sign-in.html) in the *AWS Sign-In User Guide*.

1. On the **IAM Console Home** page, in the left navigation pane, enter your query in the **Search IAM** text box.

1. In the navigation pane, choose **Users** and then choose **Create users**.

1. On the **Specify user details** page, do the following:

   1. For **User name**, type ***WorkloadName***. Replace ***WorkloadName*** with the name of the workload that will be using the account.

   1. Choose **Next**.

1. (Optional) On the **Set Permissions** page, do the following:

   1. Choose **Add user to group**.

   1. Choose **Create group**.

   1. In the **Create user group** dialog box, for **User group name** type a name that represents the use of the workloads in the group. For this example, use the name **Automation**.

   1. Under **Permissions policies** select the checkbox for the **PowerUserAccess** managed policy.
**Tip**  
Enter *Power* into the **Permissions policies** search box to quickly find the managed policy.

   1. Choose **Create user group**.

   1. Back on the page with the list of IAM groups, select the checkbox for your new user group. Choose **Refresh** if you don't see the new user group in the list.

   1. Choose **Next**.

1. (Optional) In the **Tags** section, add metadata to the user by attaching tags as key-value pairs. For more information, see [Tags for AWS Identity and Access Management resources](id_tags.md).

1. Verify the user group memberships for the new user. When you are ready to proceed, choose **Create user**.

1. A status notification appears informing you that the user was created successfully. Select **View user** to go to the user details page

1. Select the **Security credentials** tab. Then create the credentials needed for the workload.
   + **Access keys**–Select **Create access key** to generate and download access keys for the user.
**Important**  
This is your only opportunity to view or download the secret access keys, and you must provide this information to your users before they can use the AWS API. Save the user's new access key ID and secret access key in a safe and secure place. **You will not have access to the secret keys again after this step.** 
   + **SSH public keys for AWS CodeCommit**–Select **Upload SSH public key** to upload an SSH public key so that the user can communicate with CodeCommit repositories over SSH.
   + **HTTPS Git credentials for AWS CodeCommit**–Select **Generate credentials** to generate a unique set of user credentials to use with Git repositories. Select **Download credentials** to save the user name and password to a .csv file. This is the only time that information is available. If you forget or lose the password you will need to reset it.
   + **Credentials for Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra)**–Select **Generate credentials** to generate a service-specific user credentials to use with Amazon Keyspaces. Select **Download credentials** to save the user name and password to a .csv file. This is the only time that information is available. If you forget or lose the password you will need to reset it.
**Important**  
Service-specific credentials are long-term credentials associated with a specific IAM user and can only be used for the service they were created for. To give IAM roles or federated identities permissions to access all your AWS resources using temporary credentials, use AWS authentication with the SigV4 authentication plugin for Amazon Keyspaces. For more information see, [Using temporary credentials to connect to Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra) using an IAM role and the SigV4 plugin](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/keyspaces/latest/devguide/access.credentials.html#temporary.credentials.IAM) in the *Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra) Developer Guide*. 
   + **X.509 Signing certificates**–Select **Create X.509 Certificate** if you need to make secure SOAP-protocol requests and are in a Region that's not supported by AWS Certificate Manager. ACM is the preferred tool to provision, manage, and deploy your server certificates. For more information about using ACM, see the [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/acm/latest/userguide/acm-overview.html](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/acm/latest/userguide/acm-overview.html).

You have created a user with programmatic access and configured it with the **PowerUserAccess** job function. This user's permissions policy grants full access to every service except for IAM and AWS Organizations.

You can use this same process to give additional workloads programmatic access to your AWS account resources, if the workloads are unable to assume IAM roles. This procedure used the **PowerUserAccess** managed policy to assign permissions. To follow the best practice of least privilege, consider using a more restrictive policy or creating a custom policy that restricts access to only resources required by the program. To learn about using policies that restrict user permissions to specific AWS resources, see [Access management for AWS resources](access.md) and [Example IAM identity-based policies](access_policies_examples.md). To add additional users to the user group after it's created, see [Edit users in IAM groups](id_groups_manage_add-remove-users.md).

------
#### [ AWS CLI ]

1. Create a user named **Automation**.
   + [aws iam create-user](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/iam/create-user.html)

   ```
                 aws iam create-user \
                     --user-name Automation
   ```

1. Create an IAM user group named **AutomationGroup**, attach the AWS managed policy `PowerUserAccess` to the group, and then add the **Automation** user to the group. 
**Note**  
An *AWS managed policy* is a standalone policy that is created and administered by AWS. Each policy has its own Amazon Resource Name (ARN) that includes the policy name. For example, `arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/IAMReadOnlyAccess` is an AWS managed policy. For more information about ARNs, see [IAM ARNs](reference_identifiers.md#identifiers-arns). For a list of AWS managed policies for AWS services, see [AWS managed policies](https://docs.aws.amazon.com//aws-managed-policy/latest/reference/policy-list.html).
   + [aws iam create-group](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/iam/create-group.html) 

     ```
                       aws iam create-group \
                           --group-name AutomationGroup
     ```
   + [aws iam attach-group-policy](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/iam/attach-group-policy.html)

     ```
                       aws iam attach-group-policy \
                           --policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/PowerUserAccess \
                           --group-name AutomationGroup
     ```
   + [aws iam add-user-to-group](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/iam/add-user-to-group.html) 

     ```
                      aws iam add-user-to-group \
                          --user-name Automation \
                          --group-name AutomationGroup
     ```
   + Run the [aws iam get-group](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/iam/get-group.html) command to list the **AutomationGroup** and its members.

     ```
                     aws iam get-group \
                          --group-name AutomationGroup
     ```

1. Create the security credentials needed for the workload.
   + **Create access keys for testing**–[aws iam create-access-key](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/iam/create-access-key.html)

     ```
                            aws iam create-access-key \
                                --user-name Automation
     ```

     The output of this command displays the secret access key and the access key ID. Record and store this information in a secure location. If these credentials are lost, they can't be recovered, and you must create a new access key.
**Important**  
These IAM user access keys are long-term credentials that present a security-risk to your account. After you have completed testing, we recommend that you delete these access keys. If you have scenarios in which you are considering access keys, investigate whether you can enable MFA for your workload IAM user and use [aws sts get-session-token](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/sts/get-session-token.html) to obtain temporary credentials for the session instead of using IAM access keys.
   + **Upload SSH public keys for AWS CodeCommit**–[aws iam upload-ssh-public-key](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/iam/upload-ssh-public-key.html)

     The following example assumes that you have your SSH public keys stored in the file `sshkey.pub`.

     ```
                            aws upload-ssh-public-key \
                                --user-name Automation \
                                --ssh-public-key-body file://sshkey.pub
     ```
   + **Upload an X.509 signing certificate**–[aws iam upload-signing-certificate](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/iam/upload-signing-certificate.html)

     Upload an X.509 certificate if you need to make secure SOAP-protocol requests and are in a Region that's not supported by AWS Certificate Manager. ACM is the preferred tool to provision, manage, and deploy your server certificates. For more information about using ACM, see the [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/acm/latest/userguide/acm-overview.html](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/acm/latest/userguide/acm-overview.html).

     The following example assumes that you have your X.509 signing certificate stored in the file `certificate.pem`.

     ```
                           aws iam upload-signing-certificate \
                           --user-name Automation \
                           --certificate-body file://certificate.pem
     ```

You can use this same process to give additional workloads programmatic access to your AWS account resources, if the workloads are unable to assume IAM roles. This procedure used the **PowerUserAccess** managed policy to assign permissions. To follow the best practice of least privilege, consider using a more restrictive policy or creating a custom policy that restricts access to only resources required by the program. To learn about using policies that restrict user permissions to specific AWS resources, see [Access management for AWS resources](access.md) and [Example IAM identity-based policies](access_policies_examples.md). To add additional users to the user group after it's created, see [Edit users in IAM groups](id_groups_manage_add-remove-users.md).

------