Amazon Web Services → Microsoft Azure
Azure equivalent of IAM roles for AWS services
IAM roles for EC2, Lambda, ECS, and EKS map to Azure managed identities (system-assigned or user-assigned).
About IAM roles for AWS services
| Provider | Amazon Web Services |
|---|---|
| Status | Generally available |
| What it is | Roles assumed by EC2 instance profiles, Lambda execution roles, ECS task roles, and EKS Pod Identity, giving workloads temporary credentials from AWS STS with no stored keys. |
| Documentation | docs.aws.amazon.com |
| Pricing | Official pricing page |
Azure mappings (1)
| Capability | Azure equivalent | Match |
|---|---|---|
| Credential-free identities for cloud workloads | Managed identities for Azure resources | Direct match |
Identity & access management(1)
Credential-free identities for cloud workloads Direct match
IAM roles for EC2, Lambda, ECS, and EKS map to Azure managed identities (system-assigned or user-assigned). Both hand short-lived tokens to code through the platform.
- Lifecycle. A system-assigned managed identity is created and deleted with its resource, while a user-assigned identity is standalone and reusable, much like an IAM role shared by many instances.
- Kubernetes. EKS uses Pod Identity or IRSA, and AKS uses Microsoft Entra Workload ID (federation to a managed identity).