Amazon CLF-C01 Exam: Granting EC2 Instance Access to Simple Storage Service (S3) - Best Practices

Granting EC2 Instance Access to Simple Storage Service (S3)

Question

You have an EC2 Instance in development that interacts with the Simple Storage Service.

The EC2 Instance is going to be promoted to the production environment.

Which of the following features should be used to grant the EC2 instance suitable permissions to access the Simple Storage Service?

Answers

Explanations

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A. B. C. D.

Answer - B.

The AWS Documentation mentions the following.

An IAM role is similar to a user, in that it is an AWS identity with permission policies that determine what the identity can and cannot do in AWS.

However, instead of being uniquely associated with one person, a role is intended to be assumable by anyone who needs it.

Also, a role does not have standard long-term credentials (password or access keys) associated with it.

Instead, if a user assumes a role, temporary security credentials are created dynamically and provided to the user.

For more information on IAM Roles, please refer to the below URL:

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_roles.html

When you have an EC2 instance that needs to access other AWS services, such as the Simple Storage Service (S3), it's important to ensure that it has the appropriate permissions to do so. This is where Identity and Access Management (IAM) comes into play.

IAM is a service that allows you to manage access to AWS services and resources. It provides various features such as users, groups, roles, and policies, which can be used to control who can access which resources and how.

In this scenario, since the EC2 instance is going to be promoted to the production environment, you want to make sure that it has the appropriate permissions to access S3. Here are the different options to consider:

A. IAM Users: IAM users are entities that are associated with a unique set of security credentials (i.e. access key and secret access key) and are used to interact with AWS services programmatically. However, using IAM users for EC2 instances is not recommended as they require the use of long-term credentials that need to be managed, rotated, and secured manually.

B. IAM Roles: IAM roles are similar to users, but they don't have permanent credentials associated with them. Instead, they are assumed by trusted entities, such as EC2 instances, to grant temporary access to AWS services and resources. This is the recommended approach in this scenario, as it provides a more secure and scalable way to manage permissions for EC2 instances.

C. IAM Groups: IAM groups are collections of IAM users that share the same permissions. While they can be used to manage permissions for EC2 instances, they are not the best option as they require additional setup and management overhead.

D. IAM Policies: IAM policies are JSON documents that define permissions for IAM users, groups, and roles. While they are essential in granting permissions, they are not sufficient on their own, as they need to be attached to a user, group, or role to be effective.

Therefore, the correct answer in this scenario is B. IAM Roles, as they provide a more secure and scalable way to manage permissions for EC2 instances that need to interact with other AWS services, such as S3.