AWS - Allowing user to start and stop an EC2 instance

Question

I'm in trouble creating an IAM policy to an specific user to grant privileges to start and stop EC2 instance.

I had tried several ways but I cant find the errors.

This is my policy:

{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
    {
        "Sid": "Stmt1468227127000",
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Action": [
            "ec2:DescribeInstances"
        ],
        "Resource": [
            "*"
        ]
    },
    {
        "Sid": "Stmt1468227157000",
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Action": [
            "ec2:StartInstances",
            "ec2:StopInstances"
        ],
        "Resource": [
            "arn:aws:ec2:region:user:instance/instance-ID"
        ]
    }
]

}

As I have read, I am unabled to describe only one instance, in the first part I describe all my ec2 instances and it works, but in the second part I allow the user to start and stop one instance, but I can't start it.

Answer 1

This one works well for me. Pls note I added some quite useful (from my standpoint) actions, of course feel free to remove them if not needed:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "ec2:DescribeInstances",
                "ec2:DescribeInstanceStatus",
                "ec2:DescribeTags"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "ec2:StartInstances",
                "ec2:StopInstances",
                "ec2:RebootInstances"
            ],
            "Resource": "arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:361111111111:instance/i-0e411111111111111"
        }
    ]
}

Here 361111111111 is the Account ID as you see in the account Settings, i-0e411111111111111 is exactly the instance ID, should start with i-, can be found at the left topmost row at the description tab of the instance.

Please note the region is without availability zone.

For curious people: I tried to limit ec2:Describe* actions to arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:361111111111:instance/*, but this does not work. I removed the rightmost parts until it works, and turns out that "*" works only.

Answer 2

Trying Putnik's suggestion did not work for me, nor did something like this.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [ "ec2:*" ],
            "Resource": "*"
        ]
}

I could not start nor stop EC2 instances, with Stopped instances transitioning briefly into Pending status before ending back into Stopped with a rather unhelpful Client.InternalError message.

However, adding PassRole into my policy worked.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/granting-permission-to-launch-ec2-instances-with-iam-roles-passrole-permission/

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Action": [ "ec2:Describe*" ],
            "Resource": [ "*" ],
            "Effect": "Allow"
        },
        {
            "Action": [
                "ec2:StartInstances",
                "ec2:StopInstances",
                "ec2:RebootInstances"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:361111111111:instance/i-0e411111111111111"
            ],
            "Effect": "Allow"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "iam:PassRole",
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

Answer 3

Check your ARN. It should be in the format shown on this page http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws-arns-and-namespaces.html#arn-syntax-ec2

When it says account is. This is the numerical AWS account to ID