AWS EC2: IAM policy for ec2:RequestSpotInstances - amazon-web-services

Question

I need to create policy that would allow user to create spot requests, but with specific subnet and security group only. This is what I did:
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": "ec2:RequestSpotInstances",
"Resource": [
"arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:123456789012:image/ami-*",
"arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:123456789012:subnet/subnet-af016c92",
"arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:123456789012:subnet/subnet-12a34d3c",
"arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:123456789012:subnet/subnet-f0e844cd",
"arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:123456789012:subnet/subnet-026ae728",
"arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:123456789012:key-pair/*",
"arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:123456789012:security-group/sg-b5dd94cd",
"arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:123456789012:security-group/sg-3bda8c42"
]
}
]
}
But my spot request creation still fails:
botocore.exceptions.ClientError: An error occurred (UnauthorizedOperation) when calling the RequestSpotInstances operation: You are not authorized to perform this operation.
What is the minimum subset of permissions for RequestSpotInstances action?
Is there some possibility to debug this?

Answer 1

I know this is an old issue, but I just ran across the same issue in my environment. The solution for me was adding an IAM permission for "PassRole"
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Sid": "Stmt1479335761363",
"Action": [
"ec2:DescribeInstances",
"ec2:RequestSpotInstances",
"ec2:RunInstances",
"iam:PassRole"
],
"Effect": "Allow",
"Resource": "*"
}]
}

Answer 2

According to the EC2 docs (here), ec2:RequestSpotInstances is an action which falls into the category of "Unsupported Resource-Level Permissions." Unfortunately, you will have to set the resource tag to all resources, like this:
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": "ec2:RequestSpotInstances",
"Resource": [ "*" ]
}
]
}
As far as debugging goes, don't forget about the IAM policy simulator, which can be accessed from the AWS Console => IAM => User page.