Configure AWS Credentials

This article guides you through configuring your AWS credentials for programmatic access. At the end of the tutorial, you will have your API keys and region configured to successfully deploy Webiny to your AWS cloud.

If you prefer the video version, check out our YouTube video below:

Step 1: Create Your AWS Account

To create your AWS account and set up your IAM credentials we should first navigate to the AWS Console page :

aws-sign-in

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Next click on Create a new AWS account:

aws-login

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Now input your credentials and create your account:

aws-register

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Step 2: Create a User for Programmatic Access

Once you’re registered, login and head to the AWS Management Console and select IAM under Security, Identity & Compliance:

aws-iam-selection

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Click on IAM and select Users under Access Management:

aws-iam-users

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Click on Add user to create the account with the IAM credentials:

aws-create-user

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Here you enter a 5-step process, and the first step is to create a User name for the credentials.

aws-user-details

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In the next step you define the access level for the new user. Select Attach existing Policies from the three options that are available. Then select the AdministratorAccess policy by marking the checkbox next to it. When ready, click the Next:Tags button:

aws-user-permissions

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In case you don’t want to add any tags to your new user, you can just skip this step and click the Next:Review button.

aws-user-tags

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After all the steps are complete, you’ll see a Review page. It should look something similar to this. If everything is correct, click the Create user button.

aws-user-review

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Lastly, you will receive a success message with your Access key ID and Secret access key. You need to copy these strings and keep them safe as you need them for the next step.

aws-user-created

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Attaching a Fine-Grained Policy

Alternatively, you can also define a fine-grained policy using our CloudFormation template that will create a user group with all the necessary policies, for your Webiny project and assign a given user to it. You can do this by clicking create stack :

aws-cloudformation-create-stack

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The resource creation will take a few minutes. After completion, you will see the completion logs:

aws-cloudformation-step-5

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Afterwards, you can check out the newly created resources in the IAM service panel . Also, if you head over to the previously created user (webiny-cli in our case), you will see the attached policy and group:

aws-cloudformation-step-6

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Step 3: Configure the Programmatic Access

Now that you have the Access key ID and Secret access key it’s time to store them on your development machine.

Unix Setup

If you’re on UNIX, create a folder named .aws inside your user folder, that’s ~/.aws. Inside that folder place a file called credentials. So the full path is ~/.aws/credentials.

Windows Setup

On Windows machines, navigate to your user folder. That’s C:\Users\USERNAME\ (replace USERNAME with your actual username). Inside create a new folder named .aws, and inside the .aws folder create a file named credentials. The full path should be like this: C:\Users\USERNAME\.aws\credentials.

Now that we have our credentials file, edit the file and populate it like so:

[default]
aws_access_key_id = PASTE_ACCESS_KEY_ID_HERE
aws_secret_access_key = PASTE_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY_HERE

The word default inside the square brackets is your profile name. If you don’t explicitly configure a profile name, the default profile is used by AWS CLI and SDK.

And that’s it! You now have your AWS credentials, your default region, and you’re ready to deploy Webiny.

FAQ

Is There a Way to Check if My Profile Was Set Properly?

If you have the AWS CLI installed on your system, you can run the following command:

aws sts get-caller-identity

This should give an output similar to the following:

{
    "Account": "x",
    "UserId": "y",
    "Arn": "arn:aws:iam::x:user/z"
}