Help Center/ Ubiquitous Cloud Native Service/ Best Practices/ Permissions/ Granting UCS Permissions to IAM Users
Updated on 2025-08-05 GMT+08:00

Granting UCS Permissions to IAM Users

Application Scenarios

UCS permissions management offers fine-grained control over permissions using IAM and Kubernetes RBAC. It also supports IAM-based fine-grained permissions control and IAM token-based authentication. With cluster-, fleet-, cluster namespace-, and fleet namespace-level permissions control, users' access to specific resources can be effectively restricted, and permissions of different departments or projects of an enterprise can be isolated, ensuring resource isolation and security.

Assume that you have two project teams, each involving multiple members. Figure 1 shows how their permissions are granted.

  • During the development, project team A needs the Admin permission on fleets 1 and 2 and the Viewer permission on fleet 3.
  • During the development, project team B needs the Admin permission on fleets 1 and 3 and the Viewer permission on fleet 2.
Figure 1 Permission design
Table 1 IAM authorization and RBAC authorization

Authorization Model

Description

Permissions Management Object

IAM authorization

IAM authorization for user groups is primarily concerned with managing access to cloud platform resources. Policies are used to control the permissions of each user group on specific resources.

IAM emphasizes precise control over cloud resources.

Clusters, Fleets, Add-ons, Policy Center, Configuration Management, Traffic Distribution, Service Meshes, and Container Intelligent Analysis

RBAC authorization

RBAC authorization for user groups is role-based. Permissions are associated with roles, which are then assigned to user groups. RBAC authorization is typically employed for internal access control within applications.

RBAC places greater emphasis on aligning roles with tasks.

Resource objects such as Deployment and Service in a cluster

Authorization Scheme

For permission isolation, use both IAM system-defined policies and UCS permissions management. IAM system-defined policies control users' access to UCS console functions. UCS permissions management controls users' access to fleet and cluster resources.

As shown in Figure 2, authorization consists of the following steps:

  • Step 1: Authorization on the IAM console. The IAM administrator with the Tenant Administrator permissions needs to create three user groups. One is the administrator user group, and the other two are user groups (group 1 and group 2) of two project teams (team A and team B). The UCS FullAccess and UCS CommonOperations permissions are granted to the user groups, respectively.
  • Step 2: Authorization on the UCS console. The UCS administrator with the UCS FullAccess permissions adds the administrator and viewer permissions for user groups 1 and 2.

    The administrator permissions of user group 1 are added to fleet 1 and fleet 2, and the viewer permissions of user group 1 are added to fleet 3. The administrator permissions of user group 2 are added to fleet 1 and fleet 3, and the viewer permissions of user group 2 are added to fleet 2.

Figure 2 Authorization scheme

Prerequisites

  • The account has subscribed to UCS and fleet and cluster resources have been available according to Figure 1.
  • The permission data has been prepared according to Figure 2.
    Table 2 Data preparation on the IAM console

    User Group

    User

    Permissions

    Administrator user group: UCS_Group_admin

    UCS_Group_admin_User1

    UCS FullAccess

    User group 1: UCS_Group_1

    UCS_Group_1_User1, UCS_Group_1_User2, ...

    UCS CommonOperations

    User group 2: UCS_Group_2

    UCS_Group_2_User1, UCS_Group_2_User2, ...

    UCS CommonOperations

    Table 3 Data preparation on the UCS console

    User Group

    User

    Permission Type

    Permission Name

    User group 1

    UCS_Group_1_User1, UCS_Group_1_User2, ...

    Administrator

    ucs-group-1-admin

    Viewer

    ucs-group-1-readonly

    User group 2

    UCS_Group_2_User1, UCS_Group_2_User2, ...

    Administrator

    ucs-group-2-admin

    Viewer

    ucs-group-2-readonly

Step 1: Create a User Group and Grant Permissions to the IAM Administrator

  1. Log in to the IAM console as the IAM administrator.
  2. In the navigation pane, choose User Groups. In the upper right corner, click Create User Group.
  3. In the displayed dialog box, enter the administrator user group name and description, and click OK.

    Figure 3 Creating a user group

  4. In the user group list, click Authorize in the row that contains the target user group.

    Figure 4 Granting permissions to the user group

  5. Search for and select the permission policy UCS FullAccess.

    Figure 5 Selecting the permission policy

  6. Click Next and select the authorization scope.

    The default option All resources is selected, indicating that the IAM user will be able to use all resources, including those in enterprise projects, region-specific projects, and global services under your account based on granted permissions.

    Table 4 Authorization scopes

    Authorization Scope

    Description

    All resources

    IAM users will be able to use all resources, including those in enterprise projects, region-specific projects, and global services under your account based on granted permissions.

    Enterprise projects

    IAM users will be able to use resources in the selected enterprise projects based on granted permissions.

    For example, an enterprise project may contain resources that are deployed in different regions. After you associate the enterprise project with the IAM users, they can access the resources in this enterprise project based on granted permissions.

    Region-specific projects

    IAM users will be able to use resources in the selected region-specific projects based on granted permissions.

  7. Click OK.
  8. In the navigation pane, choose Users. In the upper right corner, click Create User.

    Enter the username and initial password. For details about other parameters, see Creating an IAM User.

  9. Click Next and select the user group authorized in 4.

    Figure 6 Adding the user to the user group

  10. Click Create.
  11. Repeat the preceding steps to create and authorize other user groups and users in Table 2.

Step 2: Perform RBAC Authorization for the User Groups

  1. Log in to the UCS console as the UCS administrator. In the navigation pane, choose Permissions.
  2. Select a cluster or fleet for which you want to add permissions from the drop-down list on the right.
  3. Click Add Permission in the upper right corner.
  4. In the window that slides from the right, confirm the cluster or fleet name, set Namespace (for example, select All namespaces), select the target user or user group, and set Permission Type.

    If you do not have IAM permissions, you cannot select users or user groups when configuring permissions for other users or user groups. In this case, you can enter a user ID or user group ID.

  5. Click OK.

  6. Repeat the preceding steps to add different types of permissions for other users or user groups in Table 3.