Resolve IAM User Permissions Issue in AWS CodePipeline
Question
Your team starts to build a CI/CD pipeline in AWS CodePipeline.
Before the application is deployed in production, you have added an approval action in a stage to stop the CodePipeline pipeline.
Your project manager needs to manually approve the action for the pipeline to proceed.
However, the project manager informs you that he does not have enough permissions to approve it with his IAM user.
How would you resolve this problem?
Answers
Explanations
Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer
A. B. C. D.Correct Answer - D.
Option A is incorrect because in the CodePipeline manual approval stage, you cannot configure an approver.
The IAM user should be configured with proper permissions in order to approve the manual action.
Option B is incorrect because the AWSCodePipelineFullAccess policy allows all the actions related to CodePipeline.
However, the IAM user only needs to have the permission to approve the manual stage.
Option C is incorrect because the project manager needs to use his IAM user to approve the manual action.
SNS notification and subscription cannot resolve the permission issue.
Option D is CORRECT because with the AWSCodePipelineApproverAccess IAM policy, the IAM user is granted permissions to approve the manual action.
Reference:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codepipeline/latest/userguide/approvals-action-add.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codepipeline/latest/userguide/approvals-iam-permissions.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codepipeline/latest/userguide/approvals-approve-or-reject.htmlThe correct answer is B. In the AWS IAM console, attach the AWS managed IAM policy AWSCodePipelineFullAccess to the project manager's IAM user.
Explanation:
In AWS CodePipeline, manual approval actions are used to pause the pipeline and wait for approval before continuing to the next stage. This is a common practice to ensure that only approved changes are promoted to production.
In this scenario, the project manager is not able to approve the manual approval action. This indicates that the project manager's IAM user does not have sufficient permissions to perform this action.
To resolve this problem, we need to provide the project manager's IAM user with the required permissions. The most appropriate solution is to attach the AWS managed IAM policy AWSCodePipelineFullAccess to the project manager's IAM user.
The AWSCodePipelineFullAccess policy grants full access to AWS CodePipeline resources and actions, including the ability to create, modify, and delete pipelines and pipeline resources. Attaching this policy to the project manager's IAM user would give them sufficient permissions to approve the manual approval action in the CodePipeline pipeline.
Option A, adding the project manager's IAM user as an approver in the CodePipeline manual approval stage and rerunning the pipeline, does not address the underlying issue of insufficient permissions.
Option C, configuring an SNS topic in the manual approval stage and subscribing the project manager's work email to the SNS topic, is not the best solution for this problem. While this solution would allow the project manager to receive notifications about the manual approval action, it does not grant them the necessary permissions to approve the action.
Option D, attaching the AWSCodePipelineApproverAccess managed policy to the project manager's IAM user, is also not the best solution for this problem. This policy only grants the IAM user the ability to approve or reject manual approval actions in AWS CodePipeline. However, it does not grant any other CodePipeline permissions, which may be required for the project manager to manage the pipeline.
