Permissions

If you need to assign different permissions to personnel in your enterprise to access your RDS resources, Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a good choice for fine-grained permissions management. IAM provides identity authentication, permissions management, and access control, helping you to securely access your Huawei Cloud resources. If your Huawei Cloud account does not require IAM for permissions management, you can skip this section.

IAM is a free service. You only pay for the resources in your account.

With IAM, you can control access to specific Huawei Cloud resources. For example, if you want some software developers in your enterprise to use RDS resources but do not want them to delete RDS instances or perform any other high-risk operations, you can grant permission to use RDS instances but not permission to delete them.

IAM supports role/policy-based authorization and identity policy-based authorization.

The following table describes the differences between these two authorization models.

**Table 1** Differences
Authorization Model	Authorization Using	Permissions	Authorization Method	Scenarios
Role/Policy	User-permission-authorization scope	System-defined role System-defined policies Custom policies	Assigning roles or policies to principals	To authorize a user, you need to add it to a user group first and then specify the scope of authorization. It provides a limited number of condition keys and cannot meet the requirements of fine-grained permissions control. This method is suitable for small- and medium-sized enterprises.
Identity policy	User-policy	System-defined policy Custom identity policies	Assigning identity policies to principals Attaching identity policies to principals	You can authorize a user by attaching an identity policy to it. User-specific authorization and a variety of key conditions allow for more fine-grained permissions control. However, this model can be hard to set up. It requires a certain amount of expertise and is suitable for medium- and large-sized enterprises.

Assume that you want to grant IAM users the permissions needed to create RDS instances in CN North-Beijing4 and OBS buckets in CN South-Guangzhou. With RBAC, the administrator needs to create two custom policies and attach both to the IAM users. With ABAC, the administrator only needs to create one custom policy, configure the condition key g:RequestedRegion for the policy, and then attach the policy to the users or grant the users the access permissions to the specified regions. ABAC is more flexible than RBAC.

Policies/identity policies and actions in the two authorization models are not interoperable. You are advised to use the identity policy-based authorization model. For details about system-defined permissions, see Role/Policy-based Permissions Management and Identity Policy-based Permissions Management.

For more information about IAM, see IAM Service Overview.

Role/Policy-based Permissions Management

RDS supports role/policy-based permissions management. New IAM users do not have any permissions assigned by default. You need to first add them to one or more groups and attach policies or roles to these groups. The users then inherit permissions from the groups and can perform specified operations on cloud services based on the permissions they have been assigned.

RDS is a project-level service deployed for specific regions. When you set Scope to Region-specific projects and select the specified projects (for example, ap-southeast-2) in the specified regions(for example, AP-Bangkok), the users only have permissions for RDS instances in the selected projects. If you set Scope to All resources, the users have permissions for RDS instances in all region-specific projects. When accessing RDS instances, the users need to switch to the authorized region.

Table 2 lists all the system-defined permissions for RDS. System-defined policies in role/policy-based authorization are not interoperable with those in identity policy-based authorization.

**Table 2** System-defined permissions for RDS
Role/Policy Name	Description	Type	Dependencies
RDS FullAccess	Full permissions for Relational Database Service.	System-defined policy	None
RDS ReadOnlyAccess	Read-only permissions for Relational Database Service.	System-defined policy	None
RDS ManageAccess	Database administrator permissions for all operations except deleting RDS resources.	System-defined policy	None
RDS Administrator	Administrator permissions for Relational Database Service.	System-defined role	Tenant Guest and Server Administrator roles, which must be attached in the same project as the RDS Administrator role

Table 3 lists the common operations supported by system-defined permissions for RDS.

**Table 3** Common operations supported by system-defined permissions
Operation	RDS FullAccess	RDS ReadOnlyAccess	RDS ManageAccess	RDS Administrator
Creating an RDS instance	√	x	√	√
Deleting an RDS instance	√	x	x	√
Querying RDS instances	√	√	√	√

Role/Policy Dependencies of the RDS Console

**Table 4** Role/Policy dependencies of the RDS console
Console Function	Dependency	Role/Policy Required
Creating an RDS instance	Identity and Access Management (IAM) Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Data Encryption Workshop (DEW)	Creating a yearly/monthly DB instance requires the following actions: bss:order:update bss:order:pay To use storage autoscaling, an IAM user must be granted the following actions: iam:agencies:listAgencies iam:agencies:createAgency iam:permissions:listRolesForAgencyOnProject iam:permissions:grantRoleToGroupOnProject iam:permissions:grantRoleToAgencyOnProject iam:roles:listRoles iam:roles:createRole Selecting a VPC, subnet, and security group during instance creation requires the following actions: vpc:vpcs:list vpc:vpcs:get vpc:subnets:get vpc:securityGroups:get vpc:securityGroupRules:get Creating an encrypted instance requires the KMS Administrator permission for the project. To create a yearly/monthly instance using a RAM-based shared KMS key, an IAM user must be granted the following actions: iam:agencies:listAgencies iam:roles:listRoles iam:agencies:pass iam:agencies:createAgency iam:permissions:grantRoleToAgency RDS FullAccess already contains the iam:agencies:listAgencies, iam:roles:listRoles, and iam:agencies:pass actions. RDS is a region-level service, and IAM is a global service. If you grant a user the RDS FullAccess policy for a specific project, grant BSS ServiceAgencyCreatePolicy (global service) for the project as well. Granting RDS FullAccess for all projects eliminates the need for additional configuration when using IAM actions. BSS ServiceAgencyCreatePolicy contains the following actions: iam:agencies:createAgency and iam:permissions:grantRoleToAgency.
Changing a DB instance type from single-node to primary/standby	Data Encryption Workshop (DEW)	If the original single-node instance is encrypted, configure the KMS Administrator permission for the project.
Querying DB instance details	Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)	Displaying VPCs, subnets, and security groups on the instance details page requires *vpc::get and vpc::list*.
Changing a floating IP address	Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)	Querying unused IP addresses requires the following actions: vpc:subnets:get vpc:ports:get
Binding or unbinding an EIP	Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)	Querying EIPs requires the following actions: vpc:publicIps:get vpc:publicIps:list
Migrating a standby DB instance to another AZ	Data Encryption Workshop (DEW)	Standby DB instance migration involves operations on the IP address in the subnet. For encrypted DB instances, configure the KMS Administrator permission for the project.
Configuring Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)	Identity and Access Management (IAM)	To use Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), an IAM user must be granted the following actions: Creating a custom policy iam:agencies:listAgencies iam:agencies:createAgency iam:permissions:listRolesForAgencyOnProject iam:permissions:grantRoleToGroupOnProject iam:roles:listRoles iam:roles:createRole Adding the system role Security Administrator Select a user group to which the user belongs. Click Authorize in the Operation column. Add the system role Security Administrator.
Restoring data to a new DB instance	Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)	Selecting a VPC, subnet, and security group requires the following actions: vpc:vpcs:list vpc:vpcs:get vpc:subnets:get vpc:securityGroups:get vpc:securityGroupRules:get
Managing a tag	Tag Management Service (TMS)	Performing tag-related operations requires the tms:resourceTags:* permission.
Configuring storage autoscaling	Identity and Access Management (IAM)	To use storage autoscaling, an IAM user must be granted the following actions: iam:agencies:listAgencies iam:agencies:createAgency iam:permissions:listRolesForAgencyOnProject iam:permissions:grantRoleToGroupOnProject iam:permissions:grantRoleToAgencyOnProject iam:roles:listRoles iam:roles:createRole
Configuring auto scaling of vCPUs and memory	Identity and Access Management (IAM)	To enable this function, an IAM user (not your Huawei account) must be granted the following actions: Creating a custom policy iam:agencies:listAgencies iam:agencies:createAgency iam:permissions:listRolesForAgencyOnProject iam:permissions:grantRoleToGroupOnProject iam:roles:listRoles iam:roles:createRole Adding the system role Security Administrator Select a user group to which the user belongs. Click Authorize in the Operation column. Add the system role Security Administrator.
DBA Assistant	Data Admin Service (DAS) Cloud Eye	IAM users must have the RDS FullAccess, DAS FullAccess, DAS Administrator, and CES FullAccess permissions.
Transferring backups to OBS	Object Storage Service (OBS) Data Encryption Workshop (DEW)	To transfer backups to specified OBS buckets, submit a service ticket. To use this function, an IAM user must have the following roles and actions: Manually transferring backups to OBS: obs:object:GetObject, obs:bucket:ListAllMyBuckets, and obs:object:PutObject. If backup encryption has been enabled, the KMS Administrator system role is also required. To add this role to an IAM user, perform the following steps: Select a user group to which the user belongs. Click Authorize in the Operation column. Add the system role KMS Administrator.
Upgrading a major version	Identity and Access Management (IAM)	To upgrade a major version, an IAM user must be associated with a DRS agency (agency name: DRS_AGENTCY) and granted the following actions: iam:agencies:listAgencies iam:permissions:listRolesForAgencyOnProject iam:permissions:listRolesForAgencyOnDomain

Identity Policy-based Permissions Management

RDS supports identity policy-based authorization. Table 5 lists all the system-defined identity policies for RDS. System-defined policies in identity policy-based authorization are not interoperable with those in role/policy-based authorization.

**Table 5** System-defined identity policies for RDS
Identity Policy Name	Description	Type
RDSReadOnlyPolicy	Read-only permissions for RDS.	System-defined identity policies
RDSFullAccessPolicy	Full permissions for RDS	System-defined identity policies

Table 6 lists the common operations supported by system-defined identity policies for RDS.

**Table 6** Common operations supported by system-defined identity policies
Operation	RDSReadOnlyPolicy	RDSFullAccessPolicy
Creating an RDS instance	x	√
Deleting an RDS instance	x	√
Querying RDS instances	√	√

Identity Policy Dependencies of the RDS Console

**Table 7** Identity policy dependencies of the RDS console
Console Function	Role/Policy Required
Creating an RDS instance	For a yearly/monthly DB instance: BILLINGFullAccessPolicy
Changing a DB instance type from single-node to primary/standby	For a yearly/monthly DB instance: BILLINGFullAccessPolicy
Restoring data to a new DB instance	For a yearly/monthly DB instance: BILLINGFullAccessPolicy