How to configure AWS credentials using an IAM access key

Radius authenticates to AWS with an IAM user’s access key to deploy and connect to AWS resources. This guide creates an access key and registers it as an AWS credential in the Radius control plane.

Step 1: Obtain the access key ID and key

Radius authenticates to AWS with an IAM user’s access key. If you don’t already have one, create an access key for the IAM user Radius will use:

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the IAM console.
2. Select Users, then select the IAM user.
3. On the Security credentials tab, under Access keys, select Create access key.
4. Select a use case (for example, Command Line Interface (CLI)), acknowledge the recommendations, and select Create access key.
5. Copy the Access key ID and Secret access key. The secret access key is shown only once, so store it securely.

Alternatively, create an access key with the AWS CLI:

aws iam create-access-key --user-name myIamUser

For more information, see Manage access keys for IAM users in the AWS documentation.

Step 2a: Interactively via rad initialize

If Radius has not been installed already, rad initialize --full can be used to interactively install Radius and configure an AWS access key at the same time.

rad initialize --full --preview

Follow the prompts:

1. When prompted with “Add cloud providers for cloud resources?”, select Yes.
2. Select AWS, then Access Key.
3. Enter the IAM access key ID and secret access key recorded in Step 1.
4. Enter the AWS account ID and region to use for the default Environment.

Step 2b: Manual configuration

Create the AWS credential in the Radius control plane with rad credential register aws access-key:

rad credential register aws access-key --access-key-id myAccessKeyId --secret-access-key mySecretAccessKey

Radius will use the provided access key for all interactions with AWS.

Step 3: Update existing Environments

If you have existing Environments, you must also update your Environments with your AWS region and AWS account ID:

rad environment update myEnvironment \
  --aws-region myAwsRegion \
  --aws-account-id myAwsAccountId \
  --preview

This command updates the configuration of an environment for properties that are able to be changed. For more information visit rad environment update.

Next steps

Once AWS or Azure credentials are configured, set up access to the Radius Dashboard.