Permissions and roles

Storage Transfer Service uses Identity and Access Management (IAM) permissions and roles to control who can access Storage Transfer Service resources. The main types of resources available in Storage Transfer Service are jobs, operations, and agent pools. In the IAM policy hierarchy, jobs are child resources of projects, and operations are child resources of jobs.

To grant access to a resource, you assign one or more permissions or roles to a user, group, or a service account.

Permissions

You can grant the following Storage Transfer Service permissions:

Transfer project permission

Permission Description
storagetransfer.projects.getServiceAccount Can read the GoogleServiceAccount used by the Storage Transfer Service to access Cloud Storage buckets.

Transfer job permissions

The following table describes permissions for Storage Transfer Service jobs:

Permission Description
storagetransfer.jobs.create Can create new transfer jobs.
storagetransfer.jobs.delete Can delete existing transfer jobs.

Transfer jobs are deleted by calling the patch function. However, users must have this permission when deleting transfer jobs to avoid permission errors.
storagetransfer.jobs.get Can retrieve specific jobs.
storagetransfer.jobs.list Can list all transfer jobs.
storagetransfer.jobs.run Can run all transfer jobs.
storagetransfer.jobs.update Can update transfer job configurations without deleting them.

Transfer operations permissions

The following table describes permissions for Storage Transfer Service operations:

Permission Description
storagetransfer.operations.assign Used by transfer agents to assign operations.
storagetransfer.operations.cancel Can cancel transfer operations.
storagetransfer.operations.get Can get details of transfer operations.
storagetransfer.operations.list Can list all transfer job operations.
storagetransfer.operations.pause Can pause transfer operations.
storagetransfer.operations.report Used by transfer agents to report operation status.
storagetransfer.operations.resume Can resume paused transfer operations.

Transfer agent pool permissions

The following table describes permissions for file system transfer agent pools:

Permission Description
storagetransfer.agentpools.create Can create agent pools.
storagetransfer.agentpools.update Can update agent pools.
storagetransfer.agentpools.delete Can delete agent pools.
storagetransfer.agentpools.get Can get information on specific agent pools.
storagetransfer.agentpools.list Can list information for all agent pools in the project.
storagetransfer.agentpools.report Used by transfer agents to report status.

Predefined roles

This section describes the predefined roles for Storage Transfer Service. Roles are the preferred way of setting IAM permissions.

Role comparison

You can assign the following project role or Storage Transfer Service predefined roles:

Capability Editor (roles/editor) Storage Transfer (roles/storagetransfer.)
Admin (admin) User (user) Viewer (viewer)
List/get jobs
Create jobs
Run jobs
Update jobs
Delete jobs
List/get transfer operations
Pause/resume transfer operations
Read Google service account details that are used by Storage Transfer Service to access Cloud Storage buckets.
List agents
List agent pools
Create agent pools
Update agent pools
Delete agent pools
Get agent pools
Read or set project bandwidth

Role details

The following table describes in detail the predefined roles for Storage Transfer Service:

Role Description Included Permissions
Storage Transfer Admin
(roles/storagetransfer.
admin
)

Provides all Storage Transfer Service permissions, including deleting jobs.

Rationale: This is the highest-level role with the broadest responsibilities, the superuser who supports their colleagues as they perform transfers. This is most suitable for people that will administer transfers, such as IT admins.

  • resourcemanager.projects.get
  • resourcemanager.projects.list
  • storagetransfer.*
Storage Transfer User
(roles/storagetransfer.
user
)

Provides permissions for the user to create, get, update, and list transfer jobs within the project. However, they can't delete their own jobs.

Rationale: This role allows the separation of creating and maintaining jobs from deleting jobs. This role is best suited for users who are required to execute transfers as part of their job function, such as an employee. This role doesn't allow transfer to be deleted, so that auditors or security personnel can view a fully preserved record of past transfers.

  • resourcemanager.projects.get
  • resourcemanager.projects.list
  • storagetransfer.agentpools.create
  • storagetransfer.agentpools.get
  • storagetransfer.agentpools.list
  • storagetransfer.agentpools.report
  • storagetransfer.agentpools.update
  • storagetransfer.jobs.create
  • storagetransfer.jobs.get
  • storagetransfer.jobs.list
  • storagetransfer.jobs.run
  • storagetransfer.jobs.update
  • storagetransfer.operations.*
  • storagetransfer.projects.getServiceAccount
Storage Transfer Viewer
(roles/storagetransfer.
viewer
)

Provides permissions to list and get jobs and transfer operations within the project. The user can't schedule, update, or delete jobs.

Rationale: The viewer role is intended for read-only access to view transfer jobs and operations. This role allows separating the report and auditing tasks from creating and maintaining jobs. This role is most suitable for users or internal teams that audit transfer usage, such as security, compliance, or business unit leaders.

  • resourcemanager.projects.get
  • resourcemanager.projects.list
  • storagetransfer.agentpools.get
  • storagetransfer.agentpools.list
  • storagetransfer.jobs.get
  • storagetransfer.jobs.list
  • storagetransfer.operations.get
  • storagetransfer.operations.list
  • storagetransfer.projects.getServiceAccount
Storage Transfer Agent (roles/storagetransfer.transferAgent)

Gives transfer agents the Storage Transfer Service and Pub/Sub permissions required to complete a transfer.

Grant this role to the user or service account being used by agents.

  • storagetransfer.operations.get
  • storagetransfer.operations.report
  • storagetransfer.operations.assign
  • storagetransfer.agentpools.report
  • pubsub.topics.create
  • pubsub.topics.get
  • pubsub.topics.list
  • pubsub.subscriptions.create
  • pubsub.subscriptions.get
  • pubsub.subscriptions.delete
  • pubsub.subscriptions.consume
  • pubsub.topics.attachSubscription
  • pubsub.topics.publish
Storage Transfer Service Agent (roles/storagetransfer.serviceAgent)

Gives the Storage Transfer Service service agent the permissions required to create and modify Pub/Sub topics to communicate from Google Cloud to transfer agents.

Grant this role to the Storage Transfer Service service agent.

  • pubsub.subscriptions.consume
  • pubsub.subscriptions.create
  • pubsub.subscriptions.delete
  • pubsub.subscriptions.get
  • pubsub.subscriptions.update
  • pubsub.topics.attachSubscription
  • pubsub.topics.create
  • pubsub.topics.delete
  • pubsub.topics.get
  • pubsub.topics.publish
  • pubsub.topics.update

Custom roles

You can create and apply custom IAM roles to meet your organization's access requirements.

When creating custom roles, we recommend using a combination of predefined roles to ensure that the correct permissions are included together.

The Google Cloud console will not work properly if the custom role is missing required permissions. For example, some parts of the Google Cloud console assume a role has read access to display an item before editing it, so a role with only write permissions may encounter Google Cloud console screens that don't work.