Last week, I told you how you can use Amazon’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) offering to better secure the services and tools you use to manage your AWS environment with service accounts. Well on February 14th IAM got that much sweeter when they opened up the ability for IAM users to login to the AWS Console.

In the previous blog post we covered how to create users and get an AWS Access Key ID and AWS Secret Access Key to use with the AWS API. Well the IAM also offers the ability to allow those users to log into the AWS console.

This is significant because it allows you to give restricted access to users through the AWS console. So you could have a user who is only able to launch new EC2 instances, but can not stop or terminate them. You can have another user who can create EBS snapshots, but can not delete them or do anything with EC2 instances. You can officially delegate a lot of responsibilities to other users who do not have to know anything about the AWS API in order to manage objects in your AWS environment.

Naming your AWS account

The first step to allowing IAM users to login is setting an alias for your AWS account. Technically, this step is optional since you can use your account number to access the AWS console login for your account, but by providing a nickname for your account, you’ll make it much easier for your users to remember. It’s the difference between https://123456789012.signin.aws.amazon.com/console/ec2/ and https://nickname.signin.aws.amazon.com/console/ec2/. Best of all, it’s just a simple oneliner if you already have the IAM CLI tools installed.

[bash]
$ iam-accountaliascreate -a nickname
[/bash]

Enabling login for a user

Once you’ve created the account alias to make logging in much easier for your users, you’ll want to grant them login permissions. In this example, we’re making the assumption there is already a user named ryan.geyer.

[bash]
$ iam-useraddloginprofile -u ryan.geyer -p supersecretpassword
[/bash]

That’s it, now you can direct the user to https://nickname.signin.aws.amazon.com/console/ec2/ and they can login with their own username and password. Once they’re logged in, they will only be able to access the AWS objects defined by the IAM policies for the groups to which they are assigned.

You may (or may not) have noticed that there has not been much activity here over the past couple months. There are a number of reasons for that, but I’ll spare you the excuses. I’m here to tell you that things are about to change.

There are posts about parenthood and child rearing epiphanies from the lovely Marlena (my wife) scheduled for every Wednesday and Friday from now through just about the end of April.

I’m digging back into my drafts and fleshing out previous trains of through, and starting some new cloud computing projects which I’ll be excited to share. I’m also hope to be finding time to work on, and blog about my Cadillac restoration project.

So, if you were anxiously awaiting every new post here, sorry for the mini hiatus. But we’re getting things back in gear and should be producing some interesting new posts on the regular!

If you’re like me, every time you get an invitation for one of the RightScale webinars you’re super excited and sign up right away, anxious to see what they have prepared. Perhaps like me you also manage to forget, and the reminder from your calendar application of choice doesn’t pop up.

Fortunately, for the chronically late but still insatiably curious, RightScale has published all of their public webinars as well as talks from their most recent User Conference on a free iTunes podcast channel!

So to take advantage of the full wealth of information that’s regularly disseminated, point your browser or iTunes here. Then absorb the information at your own pace.

They just wrapped the webinar “Managing RightScale on RightScale” which I caught the last half of. It should be posted on the iTunes channel soon so I can catch the first half that I missed!

I LOVE the Gilmore Girls. I love the cheesy storyline, I love the silly romances, the silly friendships. I love all the dysfunctional relationships that somehow come to a nearly peaceful resting place within an hour. I loved the relation ship between Lorlei and Rori. I felt a kinship with their relationship as it was reminiscent of the relationship between my mother, my sister, and I. We have comical relationships, we play off each other and crack each other up daily, though we had more of a George Lopez, Chris Rock playful antics than what they had.

I looked forward to watching it Monday-Friday on a network I rarely admit watching.

I have even developed a soft spot in my heart for Scott Patterson (actor that plays Luke). In some ways that character has an air that is reminiscent of my husband, protective and hardworking and sweet. I even think he is cute, almost as cute as my husband. I totally blame my husband being one of those spectacular men that I compare all to and that is why I have a crush on him.

On many of my days suffering from my extreme morning sickness when pregnant with my second son, I would lay on the couch watching the Gilmore Girls twice a day. I would squeal when it would start and happily watch it or if I was too ill that day (i.e. running to the bathroom to kneel before the porcelain throne too often) I would record the shows to watch later. I have even been known to set up the DVR to record both episodes being shown that day even though I knew that the morning episode was a rerun played the evening before. I feel shame, I told you it was a torrid confession.