Compute Engine IAM Roles

This page describes Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles and the permissions granted to each Compute Engine IAM role. When you add a new project member to your project, you can assign IAM roles to the new member using IAM policies. To learn how to set policies, read Managing Policies in the IAM documentation. To learn how to assign roles to a Compute Engine service account, read the Creating and Enabling Service Accounts for Instances documentation.

You might also be interested in a full list of IAM permissions for individual API methods.

Before you begin

• Read the Google Cloud IAM documentation.

What is IAM?

Google Cloud Platform offers Identity and Access Management (IAM), which lets you give more granular access to specific Google Cloud Platform resources and prevents unwanted access to other resources. IAM lets you adopt the security principle of least privilege, so you grant only the necessary access to your resources.

IAM lets you control who (identity) has what (roles) permission to which resources by setting IAM policies. IAM policies grant specific role(s) to a project member, giving the identity certain permissions. For example, you can assign the compute.networkAdmin role to a Google account and the account can control network-related resources in the project, but cannot manage other resources, like instances and disks. You can also use IAM to apply the GCP Console legacy roles granted to project team members.

Compute Engine IAM roles

Beta

This is a Beta release of the following IAM roles: roles/compute.instanceAdmin and roles/compute.storageAdmin. This API is not covered by any SLA or deprecation policy and may be subject to backward-incompatible changes.

With IAM, every API method in Compute Engine requires that the identity making the API request has the appropriate permissions to use the resource. Permissions are granted by setting policies that grant roles to a user, group, or service account as a member of your project. In addition to the legacy roles, owner, editor, and viewer, you can assign the following Compute Engine roles to the members of your project.

The following table lists the IAM roles available to Compute Engine users. The table is divided into different roles. For example, the first two roles in the table grant permissions to manage instances, followed by roles that grant permissions to manage network-related resources. Lastly, the security roles grant permissions to manage security-related resources, like firewalls and SSL certificates.

Instance Admin role

Role Name	Description	Permissions
roles/compute.instanceAdmin.v1	Permissions to create, modify, and delete virtual machine instances. This includes permissions to create, modify, and delete disks. If the user will be managing virtual machine instances that are configured to run as a service account, you must also grant the iam.serviceAccountUser role. For example, if your company has someone who manages groups of virtual machine instances but does not manage network or security settings and does not manage instances that run as service accounts, grant this role.	compute.acceleratorTypes.get compute.acceleratorTypes.list compute.addresses.get compute.addresses.list compute.addresses.use compute.autoscalers.* compute.backendBuckets.get compute.backendBuckets.list compute.backendServices.get compute.backendServices.list compute.clientSslPolicies.get compute.clientSslPolicies.list compute.disks.* compute.diskTypes.get compute.diskTypes.list compute.firewalls.get compute.firewalls.list compute.forwardingRules.get compute.forwardingRules.list compute.globalAddresses.get compute.globalAddresses.list compute.globalAddresses.use compute.globalForwardingRules.get compute.globalForwardingRules.list compute.globalOperations.get compute.globalOperations.list compute.healthChecks.get compute.healthChecks.list compute.httpHealthChecks.get compute.httpHealthChecks.list compute.httpsHealthChecks.get compute.httpsHealthChecks.list compute.images.* compute.instanceGroupManagers.* compute.instanceGroups.* compute.instances.* compute.instanceTemplates.* compute.interconnectAttachments.get compute.interconnectAttachments.list compute.interconnectLocations.get compute.interconnectLocations.list compute.interconnects.get compute.interconnects.list compute.licenses.* compute.licenseCodes.* compute.machineTypes.get compute.machineTypes.list compute.networkEndpointGroups.* compute.networks.get compute.networks.list compute.networks.use compute.networks.useExternalIp compute.regionOperations.get compute.regionOperations.list compute.regions.get compute.regions.list compute.routers.get compute.routers.list compute.routes.get compute.routes.list compute.snapshots.* compute.sslCertificates.get compute.sslCertificates.list compute.sslPolicies.get compute.sslPolicies.list compute.subnetworks.get compute.subnetworks.list compute.subnetworks.use compute.subnetworks.useExternalIp compute.targetHttpProxies.get compute.targetHttpProxies.list compute.targetHttpsProxies.get compute.targetHttpsProxies.list compute.targetInstances.get compute.targetInstances.list compute.targetPools.get compute.targetPools.list compute.targetSslProxies.get compute.targetSslProxies.list compute.targetTcpProxies.get compute.targetTcpProxies.list compute.targetVpnGateways.get compute.targetVpnGateways.list compute.urlMaps.get compute.urlMaps.list compute.vpnTunnels.get compute.vpnTunnels.list compute.zoneOperations.get compute.zoneOperations.list compute.zones.get compute.zones.list compute.projects.get compute.projects.setCommonInstanceMetadata resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list servicemanagement.projectSettings.get serviceusage.services.get serviceusage.quotas.get

Compute Admin role

Role Name	Description	Permissions
roles/compute.admin	Full control of all Compute Engine resources. If the user will be managing virtual machine instances that are configured to run as a service account, you must also grant the roles/iam.serviceAccountUser role.	compute.* resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list servicemanagement.projectSettings.get serviceusage.services.get serviceusage.quotas.get

Service Account User role

Note: The serviceAccountUser role is recommended over the deprecated serviceAccountActor role because it provides fewer permissions than the serviceAccountActor role, limiting unnecessary access. While you can continue to use the serviceAccountActor role, consider transitioning to the serviceAccountUser role when possible.

Role Name	Description	Permissions
roles/iam.serviceAccountUser	When granted alongside instanceAdmin.v1, grants access to create VMs, attach disks to, and update metadata on VM instances that can run as a service account.	iam.serviceAccounts.actAs iam.serviceAccounts.get iam.serviceAccounts.list resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list

Image User Role

Role Name	Description	Permissions
roles/compute.imageUser	Permission to list and read images without having other permissions to resources in the project. Granting the compute.imageUser role gives members the ability to list all images in the project and create resources, such as instances and persistent disks, based on images in the project.	compute.images.get compute.images.getFromFamily compute.images.list compute.images.useReadOnly resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list servicemanagement.projectSettings.get serviceusage.services.get serviceusage.quotas.get

Network Viewer role

Role Name	Description	Permissions
roles/compute.networkViewer	Read-only access to all networking resources For example, if you have software that inspects your network configuration, you could grant that software's service account the networkViewer role.	compute.addresses.get compute.addresses.list compute.globalAddresses.get compute.globalAddresses.list compute.backendBuckets.get compute.backendBuckets.list compute.backendServices.get compute.backendServices.list compute.firewalls.get compute.firewalls.list compute.forwardingRules.get compute.forwardingRules.list compute.globalForwardingRules.get compute.globalForwardingRules.list compute.healthChecks.get compute.healthChecks.list compute.httpHealthChecks.get compute.httpHealthChecks.list compute.httpsHealthChecks.get compute.httpsHealthChecks.list compute.instanceGroups.get compute.instanceGroups.list compute.instances.get compute.instances.getGuestAttributes compute.instances.getSerialPortOutput compute.instances.list compute.networks.get compute.networks.list compute.packetMirroringConfigs.get compute.packetMirroringConfigs.list compute.routes.get compute.routes.list compute.routers.get compute.routers.list compute.sslCertificates.get compute.sslCertificates.list compute.subnetworks.get compute.subnetworks.list compute.targetHttpProxies.get compute.targetHttpProxies.list compute.targetHttpsProxies.get compute.targetHttpsProxies.list compute.targetInstances.get compute.targetInstances.list compute.targetPools.get compute.targetPools.list compute.targetSslProxies.get compute.targetSslProxies.list compute.targetVpnGateways.get compute.targetVpnGateways.list compute.urlMaps.get compute.urlMaps.list compute.vpns.get compute.vpns.list compute.vpnTunnels.get compute.vpnTunnels.list compute.scopes.get compute.scopes.list compute.regions.get compute.regions.list compute.zones.get compute.zones.list compute.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.get servicemanagement.projectSettings.get

Network Admin role

Role Name	Description	Permissions
roles/compute.networkAdmin	Permissions to create, modify, and delete networking resources, except for firewall rules and SSL certificates. The networkAdmin role allows read-only access to firewall rules, SSL certificates, and instances (to view their ephemeral IP addresses). The role does not allow a user to create, start, stop, or delete instances. For example, if your company has a security team that manages firewalls and SSL certificates and a networking team that manages the rest of the networking resources, then grant the networking teams group the networkAdmin role.	compute.addresses.* compute.globalAddresses.* compute.backendBuckets.* compute.securityPolicies.get compute.securityPolicies.list compute.securityPolicies.use compute.backendServices.* compute.firewalls.get compute.firewalls.list compute.forwardingRules.* compute.globalForwardingRules.* compute.healthChecks.* compute.httpHealthChecks.* compute.httpsHealthChecks.* compute.interconnectAttachments.* compute.interconnectLocations.* compute.interconnects.* compute.networks.* compute.packetMirrorings.get compute.packetMirrorings.list compute.packetMirrorings.use compute.routes.* compute.routers.* compute.sslCertificates.get compute.sslCertificates.list compute.clientSslPolicies.* compute.sslPolicies.* compute.subnetworks.* compute.targetHttpProxies.* compute.targetHttpsProxies.* compute.targetInstances.* compute.targetPools.* compute.targetSslProxies.* compute.targetTcpProxies.* compute.targetVpnGateways.* compute.urlMaps.* compute.instances.get compute.instances.getGuestAttributes compute.instances.getSerialPortOutput compute.instances.list compute.instances.listReferrers compute.instances.use compute.instanceGroups.get compute.instanceGroups.list compute.instanceGroups.use compute.instanceGroups.update compute.instanceGroupManagers.get compute.instanceGroupManagers.list compute.instanceGroupManagers.use compute.instanceGroupManagers.update compute.vpns.* compute.vpnTunnels.* compute.scopes.get compute.scopes.list compute.regions.get compute.regions.list compute.zones.get compute.zones.list compute.globalOperations.get compute.globalOperations.list compute.regionOperations.get compute.regionOperations.list compute.zoneOperations.get compute.zoneOperations.list compute.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list servicemanagement.projectSettings.get serviceusage.services.get serviceusage.quotas.get

Security Admin role

Role Name	Description	Permissions
roles/compute.securityAdmin	Permissions to create, modify, and delete firewall rules and SSL certificates. For example, if your company has a security team that manages firewalls and SSL certificates and a networking team that manages the rest of the networking resources, then grant the security teams group the securityAdmin role.	compute.firewalls.* compute.packetMirrorings.* compute.sslCertificates.* compute.clientSslPolicies.* compute.securityPolicies.* compute.sslPolicies.* compute.instances.updateSecurity compute.networks.get compute.networks.list compute.networks.updatePolicy compute.routes.get compute.routes.list compute.subnetworks.get compute.subnetworks.list compute.subnetworks.updatePolicy compute.scopes.get compute.scopes.list compute.regions.get compute.regions.list compute.zones.get compute.zones.list compute.globalOperations.get compute.globalOperations.list compute.regionOperations.get compute.regionOperations.list compute.zoneOperations.get compute.zoneOperations.list compute.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list servicemanagement.projectSettings.get serviceusage.services.get serviceusage.quotas.get

Compute Viewer role

Role Name	Description	Permissions
roles/compute.viewer	Read-only access to get and list Compute Engine resources, without being able to read the data stored on them. For example, an account with this role could inventory all of the disks in a project, but it could not read any of the data on those disks.	compute.*.get compute.*.getIamPolicy compute.*.list compute.forwardingRules.externalGet compute.images.getFromFamily compute.instances.getGuestAttributes compute.instances.getSerialPortOutput compute.instances.listReferrers compute.networks.listIpOwners compute.networks.listUsableSubnets compute.sslPolicies.listAvailableFeatures compute.subnetworks.listIpOwners compute.urlMaps.validate resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list servicemanagement.projectSettings.get serviceusage.services.get serviceusage.quotas.get

Storage Admin role (Beta)

Role Name	Description	Permissions
roles/compute.storageAdmin (Beta)	Permissions to create, modify, and delete disks, images, and snapshots. For example, if your company has someone who manages images and you do not want them to have the editor role on the project, then grant their account the storageAdmin role.	compute.disks.* compute.diskTypes.get compute.diskTypes.list compute.images.* compute.licenses.* compute.licenseCodes.* compute.snapshots.* compute.scopes.get compute.scopes.list compute.regions.get compute.regions.list compute.zones.get compute.zones.list compute.globalOperations.get compute.globalOperations.list compute.regionOperations.get compute.regionOperations.list compute.zoneOperations.get compute.zoneOperations.list compute.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list servicemanagement.projectSettings.get serviceusage.services.get serviceusage.quotas.get

Shared VPC Admin role

Role Name	Description	Permissions
roles/compute.xpnAdmin	Permissions to administer shared VPC: specifying the shared VPC host projects and associating the shared VPC service projects to the host project network. Google Cloud Platform recommends that the Shared VPC Admin be the owner of the shared VPC host project. The Shared VPC Admin is responsible for granting compute.networkUser role to service owners, and the shared VPC host project owner controls the project itself. Managing the project is easier if a single principal (individual or group) can fulfill both roles.	compute.globalOperations.get compute.globalOperations.list compute.organizations.administerXpn compute.organizations.enableXpnHost compute.organizations.disableXpnHost compute.organizations.enableXpnResource compute.organizations.disableXpnResource compute.projects.get compute.subnetworks.getIamPolicy resourcemanager.organizations.get resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list resourcemanager.projects.getIamPolicy

Network User role

Role Name	Description	Permissions
roles/compute.networkUser	Permissions to use a shared VPC network. Specifically, grant this role to Service owners that need to create resources in the shared VPC host project network.	compute.addresses.get compute.addresses.list compute.firewalls.get compute.firewalls.list compute.interconnectAttachments.get compute.interconnectAttachments.list compute.interconnectLocations.get compute.interconnectLocations.list compute.interconnects.get compute.interconnects.list compute.interconnects.use compute.networks.get compute.networks.list compute.networks.listIpOwners compute.networks.listUsableSubnets compute.networks.use compute.networks.useExternalIp compute.routes.get compute.routes.list compute.routers.get compute.routers.list compute.subnetworks.list compute.subnetworks.listIpOwners compute.subnetworks.get compute.subnetworks.use compute.subnetworks.useExternalIp compute.targetVpnGateways.get compute.targetVpnGateways.list compute.vpns.get compute.vpns.list compute.vpnTunnels.get compute.vpnTunnels.list compute.scopes.get compute.scopes.list compute.regions.get compute.regions.list compute.zones.get compute.zones.list compute.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.get resourcemanager.projects.list servicemanagement.projectSettings.get serviceusage.services.get serviceusage.quotas.get

You can grant multiple roles to a project member on the same project. For example, if your networking team manages firewall rules instead of leaving those to a separate security team, you can grant the compute.networkAdmin and compute.securityAdmin roles to the networking team’s Google group.

The serviceAccountUser role

When granted together with the compute.instanceAdmin.v1 role, the iam.serviceAccountUser role gives members the ability to create and manage instances that use a service account. Specifically, granting the iam.serviceAccountUser and the compute.instanceAdmin.v1 roles together gives members permission to:

• Create an instance that runs as a service account.
• Attach a persistent disk to an instance that runs as a service account.
• Set instance metadata on an instance that runs as a service account.
• Use SSH to connect to an instance that runs as a service account.
• Reconfigure an instance to run as a service account.

You can grant the iam.serviceAccountUser role one of two ways:

• [Recommended] Grant the role to a member on a specific service account. This gives a member access to the service account for which they are an iam.serviceAccountUser but prevents access to other service accounts for which the member is not an iam.serviceAccountUser.

• Grant the role to a member on the project level. The member has access to all service accounts in the project, including service accounts that are created in the future.

If you aren't familiar with service accounts, learn more about service accounts.

Connecting to an instance as an instanceAdmin

After you grant a project member the roles/compute.instanceAdmin.v1 role, they can connect to virtual machine instances using the standard Google Cloud Platform tools, like the gcloud tool or SSH from the Browser.

When a member uses the gcloud command-line tool or SSH from the browser, the tools will automatically generate a public/private keypair and add the public key to the project metadata. If the member does not have permissions to edit project metadata, the tool will add the member's public key to the instance metadata instead.

If the member has an existing keypair they want to use, they can manually add their public key to the instance's metadata. Learn more about adding and removing SSH keys from an instance.

IAM with service accounts

Create new custom service accounts and grant IAM roles to service accounts to limit the access of your instances. Use IAM roles with custom service accounts to:

• Limit the access your instances have to Cloud Platform APIs using granular IAM roles.
• Give each instance, or set of instances, a unique identity.
• Limit the access of your default service account.

Learn more about service accounts.

Managed Instance Groups and IAM

Managed instance groups, especially when configured to be autoscaled, are resources that perform actions on your behalf without direct user interaction. Managed instance groups use a service account identity to create, delete, and manage instances in the instance group. For more information, read the managed instance groups and IAM documentation.

Unsupported operations

You cannot grant access to perform rolling updates on instance groups using IAM roles.

To grant permission to perform these operations, use the broader owner, editor, or viewer roles.

Known issues

• Some IAM roles are still in Beta so IAM might not be supported by all available clients. We recommend using the gcloud command-line tool or the Google Cloud Platform APIs directly to use IAM.

What's next

• Learn more about IAM.
• See a full list of Compute Engine IAM Permissions.
• Grant IAM roles to users.
• Grant IAM roles to service accounts.