Assigning Permissions to O&M Personnel Using IAM

Overview

Assume that a company has purchased different resources on Huawei Cloud, and has multiple functional teams that need to use one or more types of resources. The company can use IAM to assign permissions to different personnel based on their job responsibilities for refined permissions control.

Resource Planning

Based on the different responsibilities of employees in the company, employees are grouped into the following seven teams.

Figure 1 Permissions management model

• Resource O&M team: manages all resources of the company.
• Accounting management team: manages accounting affairs of the company.
• Resource monitoring team: views and monitors the resource usage.
• Computing O&M team: is responsible for the computing domain O&M.
• Network O&M team: is responsible for the network domain O&M.
• Database O&M team: is responsible for the database domain O&M.
• Security O&M team: is responsible for the security domain O&M.

Assign required permissions to different functional teams in the company according to Table 1. For details about permissions of all Huawei Cloud services, see System-defined Permissions.

Based on the division of the functional teams, resources are planned as follows.

IAM is a free service, so the best practice does not involve any expenditures.

Process

IAM allows you to assign permissions to users in the user groups. Figure 2 shows how to configure an employee as the network O&M owner in the CN-Hong Kong region. If you want to configure employees as other O&M owners, assign the required permissions to them based on Table 1.

Figure 2 Process flow

Step 1: Create a User Group and Assign Permissions

1. Log in to the Huawei Cloud management console as the administrator.
2. On the management console, hover the mouse pointer over the username in the upper right corner and then choose Identity and Access Management.
3. On the IAM console, choose User Groups in the navigation pane. Then click Create User Group.
   Figure 3 Creating a user group
   

4. Enter the user group name Network_OM, and click OK.
   Only letters (case-sensitive), digits, spaces, hyphens (-), and underscores (_) are allowed.

   Figure 4 Entering a group name
   

5. In the row containing the user group, click Authorize.
   Figure 5 Authorizing a user group
   

6. Search for and select VPC FullAccess and ELB FullAccess, and click Next.
   Figure 6 Selecting permissions
   

7. Specify the permission scope as Region-specific projects and select CN-Hong Kong.
   Figure 7 Specifying the permission scope
   
   

   • If users in the group need to view resource usage, attach the BSS Administrator role to the group for the same project.
   • When specifying an employee as the security O&M owner according to Table 1, you must grant the employee other related permissions because the security services interwork with other cloud services. For more information, see Assigning Dependency Roles.

8. Click OK. The created user group will be displayed in the user group list.

   You can click the name of the network O&M user group and view the assigned permissions on the Permissions tab.

Step 2: Create an IAM User and Add It to the Group

1. Log in to the IAM console as the administrator and choose Users from the left navigation pane.
2. On the Users page, click Create User in the upper right corner.
   Figure 8 Creating a user
   

3. Specify the user details and access type. To create more users, click Add User. A maximum of 10 users can be created at a time.
   Figure 9 Configuring user information
   
   

   • Users can log in to Huawei Cloud using the username, email address, or mobile number.
   • If users forget their password, they can reset it through email address or mobile number verification. If no email addresses or mobile numbers have been bound to users, users need to contact the administrator to reset their passwords.

   Table 3 User information

   Parameter	Description	Example Value
   Username	(Mandatory) Username used by an IAM user to log in to Huawei Cloud.	James Alice
   Email Address	Email address of the IAM user that can be used as a login credential. IAM users can bind an email address after they are created. This field is required if you have selected Set by user for Credential Type.	Skip it.
   Mobile Number	Mobile phone number of the IAM user that can be used as a login credential. IAM users can bind a mobile number after they are created. This field is optional.	Skip it.
   Description	Additional information about the IAM user. This field is optional.	Skip it.

   Figure 10 Setting the access type
   

   Table 4 Access types

   Access Type	Description	Example Value
   Programmatic access	An access key or password is generated for the IAM user. This type allows access to cloud services using development tools, such as APIs, CLI, and SDKs.	Select it.
   Management console access	A password is generated for the IAM user. This type allows access to cloud services using the management console. If you select this parameter, Password must be selected for Credential Type.	Select it.

   

   • If the user accesses cloud services only by using the management console, select Management console access for Access Type and Password for Credential Type.
   • If the user accesses cloud services only through programmatic calls, select Programmatic access for Access Type and Access key for Credential Type.
   • If the user needs to use a password as the credential for programmatic access to certain APIs, select Programmatic access for Access Type and Password for Credential Type.
   • If the user needs to perform access key verification when using certain services in the console, select Programmatic access and Management console access for Access Type and Access key and Password for Credential Type. For example, the user needs to perform access key verification when creating a data migration job in the Cloud Data Migration (CDM) console.

   Table 5 Setting the credential type and login protection

   Credential Type and Login Protection		Description	Example Value
   Access key		An access key comprises an access key ID (AK) and secret access key (SK), and is used as a long-term identity credential to sign your requests for Huawei Cloud APIs. After creating the user, you can download the access key (AK/SK) generated for the user.	Deselect it.
   Password	Set now	Set a password for the user and determine whether to require the user to reset the password at first login. If you are the user, select this option and set a password for login. You do not need to select Require password reset at first login.	Select it.
   	Automatically generated	The system automatically generates a login password for the user. After the user is created, download the EXCEL password file and provide the password to the user. The user can then use this password for login. This option is available only when you create a single user.	-
   	Set by user	A one-time login URL will be emailed to the user. The user can click the link to log in to the console and set a password. If you do not use the IAM user, select this option and enter the email address and mobile number of the IAM user. The user can then set a password by clicking the one-time login URL sent over email. The login URL is valid for seven days.	-
   Login Protection	Enabled	After login protection is enabled, IAM users need to enter verification codes in addition to their usernames and passwords during console login. It is a security practice to enable login protection. You can verify your identity by SMS, email, or virtual MFA device during login.	-
   	Disabled	If login protection is disabled, you can enable it later by following the instructions provided in Viewing or Modifying IAM User Information.	Select it.

4. Click Next and add the IAM users James and Alice to the created network O&M user group.
   

   • If a user will be an administrator, add the user to the default group admin.
   • Each user can be added to multiple user groups.

5. Click Next. The created IAM users James and Alice are displayed in the user list. If you have selected Access key for Credential Type in step 3, you can download the access key on the displayed page.
   Figure 11 Users created successfully
   

Step 3: Log In as an IAM User and Verify Permissions

An IAM user can log in using different methods. The following describes how to log in through the login page. For more login methods, see Logging In to Huawei Cloud.

1. On the Huawei Cloud login page, click IAM User.
2. On the IAM User Login page, enter the company's account name, IAM username, and password.
   • Account name: Name of the account used to create the IAM user
   • Username and password: The username and password specified for the IAM user
   Figure 12 Logging in as an IAM user
   

3. On the management console, switch to the CN-Hong Kong region.
4. Choose Service List > Virtual Private Cloud, Elastic Load Balance, and Domain Name Service, and perform operations on each service console to verify that the permissions have been successfully assigned.
5. Choose a service other than the preceding services from Service List to ensure that the service cannot be accessed.
6. On the management console, switch to a region other than CN-Hong Kong and ensure that the VPC, ELB, and DNS consoles cannot be accessed.