This guide is part of the Amazon Web Services Essentials tutorial and will help you through the process for creating an access/secret key pair that you will need in order to access AWS from the CLI or Terraform.
Version Notes: Created on February 10, 2024.
Getting Started
To begin, search for IAM in the search field at the top of the page and click on the IAM Service. Note that if you click the star beside IAM, it will add it to the top of your console as a favorite. This will be helpful as you use certain services repeatedly.
My Security Credentials
Look on the right-hand side of the page for the Quick Links box.
Click My Security Credentials.
Create Access Key
Scroll down until you see the Access Keys box. In this image, I already have a key created. You can only have a maximum of 2 access keys at any one time.
Click Create access key
Access Key Options
You will be presented with several different alternatives for connecting to your AWS services. Some of these may be useful to you at a later date, but for now we just need to create an access key.
Select the CLI option, check the Confirmation box, and Click Next
Set Tag
This is not required, but is recommended. Enter in a text value to describe this key.
Click Create access key
Copy Key Details
**YOU GET ONE SHOT AT THIS**
This page will display the access key and the secret key. Before you leave this page, make sure that you copy the key and save is somewhere secure. There is a button to copy the key. You can also click show to display the key and you can click on download .csv to save it to a file.
Once you leave this page, there is no way to see the secret key again.
If you lose it, your only option is to create a new key.
Click Done
