Connecting a cloud account

Grant Porter access to your AWS, GCP, or Azure account using IAM roles, Workload Identity Federation, or service principals to provision infrastructure

Before Porter can create a cluster, you need to grant it access to your cloud account. Porter uses secure credential methods that don’t require storing static API keys.

AWS

Porter uses AWS IAM role assumption via the AssumeRole operation to access your account. You create a role in your AWS account and declare that you trust Porter to assume it. This eliminates static credentials and makes access easy to revoke.

Create the IAM Role

1. Enter your AWS Account ID

   After selecting AWS as your cloud provider, log into your AWS Console and find your 12-digit Account ID in the top-right corner.

   Enter this ID in Porter and click Grant Permissions.

2. Create the CloudFormation stack

   Porter opens the AWS CloudFormation console in a new tab to create a stack that provisions the porter-manager IAM role.

   If the popup is blocked, check your browser settings and allow popups from Porter.

   Scroll to the bottom of the CloudFormation page, check the I acknowledge that AWS CloudFormation might create IAM resources box, and click Create Stack.

   Wait for the stack creation to complete (this takes a few minutes).

The IAM role must remain in your AWS account for Porter to manage your infrastructure. Deleting it will prevent Porter from making changes.

Permissions Granted

The CloudFormation stack creates an IAM role with permissions to:

• Create and manage EKS clusters
• Create and manage VPCs, subnets, and security groups
• Create and manage ECR repositories
• Create and manage IAM roles for cluster operations
• Request service quota increases

If you need Porter to operate with more restricted permissions, contact us through the support widget to inquire about Porter Enterprise.

Revoking Access

Disconnecting an AWS account from Porter is a two-step process: disconnect the account in Porter, then delete the IAM role in AWS.

1. Disconnect the account in Porter

   In Porter, navigate to Integrations → Cloud accounts, open the AWS account, scroll to the Danger zone, and click Disconnect cloud account.

   Porter blocks the disconnect until the account has no clusters, object storage buckets, or environment groups referencing it. The modal lists every blocker so you can clean them up first.

   Type the account name to confirm and click Disconnect. Porter immediately stops using the account and removes it from the project.

2. Delete the IAM role in AWS

   Porter cannot delete the IAM role it asked you to create — it lives in your account and only you can remove it. After disconnecting:

   1. Navigate to CloudFormation Stacks in your AWS console.
   2. Select the stack named PorterRole and click Delete.

   This removes the porter-access-manager IAM role and revokes Porter’s ability to assume into your account.

GCP

Porter connects to GCP using Workload Identity Federation. Workload Identity Federation offers a mechanism for Porter to connect with your GCP project without requiring any static keys. Setup runs in Google Cloud Shell with a single command Porter generates for your project.

Prerequisites

Your GCP project needs an active billing account attached. Porter cannot provision infrastructure without one.

The Google account running the setup must have these project-level roles (or roles/owner, which covers all of them):

• roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin
• roles/iam.serviceAccountAdmin
• roles/resourcemanager.projectIamAdmin
• roles/iam.workloadIdentityPoolAdmin
• roles/storage.admin

Connect Your GCP Project

1. Enter your GCP Project ID

   In Porter, select GCP. Enter your GCP project ID (visible at the top of any page in the GCP Console) and click Connect. Porter generates a one-time setup command scoped to this integration.

2. Run the setup in Cloud Shell

   In the Porter dashboard:

   1. Copy the command shown in the Run Setup in Cloud Shell panel.
   2. Click Open Cloud Shell to launch a new tab with the porter-dev/gcp-onboarding repository pre-loaded.
   3. Cloud Shell will warn that the repository is from an untrusted source. Click Trust to continue. The repository is open source so you can review the Terraform before approving.
   4. Paste the command into the shell and press Enter.

   The script runs Terraform in your project and performs the initial setup:

   • Enables five Google APIs: Cloud Resource Manager, IAM, IAM Credentials, STS, and Service Usage
   • Creates a porter-manager-* service account that Porter impersonates
   • Creates a porter-pool-* Workload Identity Pool with a trust policy scoped to your project
   • Grants three bootstrap IAM roles to the service account so Porter can finish the rest of the configuration itself: roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin, roles/resourcemanager.projectIamAdmin, and roles/iam.serviceAccountAdmin

   Setup takes about 30 seconds.

3. Wait for verification

   Porter’s dashboard polls the connection automatically. Once the bootstrap completes, Porter takes over the heavier configuration on your behalf. It enables the remaining APIs needed for cluster provisioning (Compute, Kubernetes Engine, Artifact Registry, Secret Manager, and others) and grants the matching per-service roles to the porter-manager-* service account (Compute Admin, Kubernetes Engine Admin, Artifact Registry Admin, Secret Manager Admin, and others). Once everything is provisioned, the cloud account is marked connected and the status banner turns green.

   The full Terraform module is open source if you want to inspect every resource Porter creates: porter-dev/gcp-onboarding.

Migrating from a Service Account JSON

If you previously connected GCP using a service account JSON key, you can switch to Workload Identity Federation with no downtime:

1. In Porter, navigate to Integrations → Cloud accounts and select your GCP account.
2. Click Migrate to Workload Identity Federation in the banner at the top of the page.
3. Follow the same Cloud Shell flow above.

Your existing clusters keep authenticating with the JSON key while the new federation is being verified. Once verified, Porter swaps the credential atomically. There is no service interruption.

After Migration

Workload Identity Federation is now the active connection between Porter and your GCP project, but your previous service account and its JSON key are still present in your project until you remove them. To finish the migration:

1. In the GCP Console, open IAM & Admin → Service Accounts.
2. Find your legacy service account (the one whose key you previously uploaded to Porter — typically named porter-manager, separate from the new porter-manager-* account created during federation).
3. Delete its JSON key, or delete the entire service account.

Porter no longer needs the legacy account once federation is active. Leaving it in place means an unrotated long-lived key continues to exist in your project.

Revoking Access

Disconnecting a GCP project from Porter is a two-step process: disconnect the account in Porter, then delete the federation resources in GCP.

1. Disconnect the account in Porter

   In Porter, navigate to Integrations → Cloud accounts, open the GCP account, scroll to the Danger zone, and click Disconnect cloud account.

   Porter blocks the disconnect until the account has no clusters, object storage buckets, or environment groups referencing it. The modal lists every blocker so you can clean them up first.

   Type the account name to confirm and click Disconnect. Porter immediately stops using the account and removes it from the project.

2. Delete the federation resources in GCP

   Porter cannot delete the Workload Identity Pool or service account it asked you to create — they live in your project and only you can remove them. After disconnecting:

   1. In the GCP Console, navigate to IAM & Admin → Workload Identity Federation and delete the porter-pool-* Workload Identity Pool. This immediately invalidates all federated tokens.
   2. Optionally, delete the porter-manager-* service account under IAM & Admin → Service Accounts for full cleanup.

Azure

Porter connects to Azure using a service principal with permissions to manage your infrastructure.

Create the Service Principal

You can create the service principal using our automated script (recommended) or manually.

Option 1: Automated setup (recommended)

If you have the Azure CLI installed and authenticated (az login), run our setup script:

# Download the setup script
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/porter-dev/docs/main/scripts/setup-azure-porter.sh

# Make it executable
chmod +x setup-azure-porter.sh

# Run the script (optionally provide subscription ID)
./setup-azure-porter.sh [your-subscription-id]

The script:

• Enables all required Azure resource providers
• Creates the custom porter-aks-restricted role
• Creates the service principal with proper permissions
• Adds Microsoft Graph API permissions
• Grants admin consent (if you have permissions)
• Displays the credentials needed for Porter

If the script fails to grant admin consent automatically, grant it manually in the Azure Portal: App registrations > azure-porter-restricted-sp > API permissions > Grant admin consent for Default Directory.

Option 2: Manual setup

Enable Resource Providers

Before creating the service principal, enable the required resource providers:

1. In the Azure portal, search for Subscriptions
2. Select your subscription and click Resource providers
3. Enable the following providers by selecting them and clicking Register:
   • Microsoft.Capacity
   • Microsoft.Compute
   • Microsoft.ContainerRegistry
   • Microsoft.ContainerService
   • Microsoft.KeyVault
   • Microsoft.ManagedIdentity
   • Microsoft.Network
   • Microsoft.OperationalInsights
   • Microsoft.OperationsManagement
   • Microsoft.ResourceGraph
   • Microsoft.Resources
   • Microsoft.Storage

Registration may take a few minutes per provider. Confirm all providers are enabled before proceeding.

Create the Custom Role

Run the following commands in the Azure Cloud Shell (Bash) or your local terminal with the Azure CLI:

# Set your subscription ID
PORTER_AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

# Create the role
envsubst << EOF | az role definition create --role-definition @-
{
    "assignableScopes": ["/subscriptions/${PORTER_AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID}"],
    "description": "Grants Porter access to manage resources for an AKS cluster.",
    "id": "/subscriptions/${PORTER_AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID}/providers/Microsoft.Authorization/roleDefinitions/porter-aks-restricted",
    "isCustom": true,
    "name": "porter-aks-restricted",
    "permissions": [
        {
            "actions": ["*"],
            "dataActions": [],
            "notActions": [
                "Microsoft.Authorization/elevateAccess/Action",
                "Microsoft.Blueprint/blueprintAssignments/write",
                "Microsoft.Blueprint/blueprintAssignments/delete",
                "Microsoft.Compute/galleries/share/action"
            ],
            "notDataActions": []
        }
    ],
    "roleName": "Contributor",
    "roleType": "BuiltInRole",
    "type": "Microsoft.Authorization/roleDefinitions"
}
EOF

Create the Service Principal

az ad sp create-for-rbac \
  --name="azure-porter-restricted-sp" \
  --role="porter-aks-restricted" \
  --scopes="/subscriptions/${PORTER_AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID}"

Save the output—you’ll need these values:

{
  "appId": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
  "displayName": "azure-porter-restricted-sp",
  "password": "0000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
  "tenant": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
}

Grant API Permissions

1. In the Azure portal, search for App registrations
2. Under All applications, select your new service principal
3. Navigate to API Permissions
4. Click Add a permission → Microsoft Graph → Application permissions
5. Select these permissions:
   • Application.ReadWrite.All
   • Directory.ReadWrite.All
   • Domain.Read.All
   • Group.Create
   • Group.ReadWrite.All
   • RoleManagement.ReadWrite.Directory
   • User.ReadWrite.All
6. Click Add permissions
7. Click Grant admin consent for Default Directory

Enter Credentials in Porter

In Porter, enter the following values from your service principal:

Field	Value
Subscription ID	Your Azure subscription ID
Application (Client) ID	The appId from your service principal
Client Secret	The password from your service principal
Tenant ID	The tenant from your service principal

Rotating Credentials

Azure requires client secrets to expire every 365 days. When a secret expires, Porter can’t manage infrastructure or deploy updates (existing workloads continue running).

To refresh your client secret:

1. Visit https://aka.ms/NewClientSecret
2. Select the app ID for your Porter service principal
3. Generate a new client secret and copy the value
4. In Porter, navigate to Integrations → Azure
5. Update the Password field with the new value

Revoking Access

Disconnecting an Azure subscription from Porter is a two-step process: disconnect the account in Porter, then delete the app registration in Azure.

1. Disconnect the account in Porter

   In Porter, navigate to Integrations → Cloud accounts, open the Azure account, scroll to the Danger zone, and click Disconnect cloud account.

   Porter blocks the disconnect until the account has no clusters, object storage buckets, or environment groups referencing it. The modal lists every blocker so you can clean them up first.

   Type the account name to confirm and click Disconnect. Porter immediately stops using the account and removes it from the project.

2. Delete the app registration in Azure

   Porter cannot delete the service principal it asked you to create — it lives in your tenant and only you can remove it. After disconnecting:

   1. In the Azure portal, search for App registrations.
   2. Find and delete the azure-porter-restricted-sp service principal.
   3. Optionally, delete the porter-aks-restricted custom role definition.