Create an admin IAM user

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Goal

After this page you will have an IAM user named cli-admin with AdministratorAccess attached and a pair of access keys saved locally.

Prerequisites

• IAM in plain language
• Signed in to the AWS console as the root user.

Open IAM

In the console search bar, type IAM and open the IAM service. Make sure the top-right region selector is set to a region near you (for example ap-southeast-1 for Singapore). IAM itself is global, but the region you set here affects every other service in this tier.

Create the user

1. Left sidebar → Users → Create user.
2. User name: cli-admin.
3. Leave Provide user access to the AWS Management Console unchecked. This user is for the CLI only.
4. Click Next.

Attach the admin policy

1. Permissions options: pick Attach policies directly.
2. In the policy search box, type AdministratorAccess.
3. Tick the checkbox next to the AdministratorAccess policy.
4. Click Next, then Create user.

Create the access key

A user without credentials can't sign anything. Create an access key pair:

1. From the user list, click cli-admin.
2. Top tabs → Security credentials.
3. Scroll to Access keys → Create access key.
4. Pick Command Line Interface (CLI) as the use case. Tick the acknowledgement.
5. Skip the description tag → Create access key.
6. On the success screen, click Download .csv file. This file is shown once. If you lose it, you'll create a new key.

The CSV contains two strings:

Access key ID: AKIA...                  (20 chars, public-ish)
Secret access key: wJalrXUtnFEMI...     (40 chars, secret)

Keep the CSV in a password manager. The next page wires these into the AWS CLI.

Next → Configure the AWS CLI