Connecting a cloud account

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
GCP
Azure

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

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.

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

To revoke Porter’s access:

First, delete any clusters through the Porter dashboard
Navigate to CloudFormation Stacks in your AWS console
Select the stack named PorterRole and click Delete

This removes the IAM role and prevents Porter from accessing your account.

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

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.

Run the setup in Cloud Shell

In the Porter dashboard:

Copy the command shown in the Run Setup in Cloud Shell panel.
Click Open Cloud Shell to launch a new tab with the porter-dev/gcp-onboarding repository pre-loaded.
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.
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.

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.

Porter-Managed Infrastructure

Once your project is connected, Porter provisions and continuously reconciles infrastructure in it: the VPC, Cloud NAT and Cloud Router, the GKE cluster, its node pools, and the cluster load balancer.

Do not modify Porter-managed resources directly in the GCP Console or with gcloud. Out-of-band changes are detected as drift on the next cluster update: Porter will revert them, which can itself disrupt traffic. Changes to settings that GKE cannot update in place may cause the cluster to be replaced entirely, resulting in downtime and the loss of any manually created in-cluster resources.

Settings that can trigger reconciliation or cluster replacement when changed outside of Porter include:

Cloud NAT and Cloud Router — port allocation (min ports per VM, dynamic port allocation), endpoint-independent mapping, TCP timeouts, NAT IP allocation mode and static NAT IPs, source subnetwork ranges
VPC — the cluster VPC and subnet, primary and secondary CIDR ranges, Private Google Access and its associated routes and DNS
GKE control plane — cluster version, private cluster settings (private nodes, endpoint access), master authorized networks and CIDR, workload identity pool, logging and system components, cluster autoscaling, KMS settings
GKE node pools — machine type, disk, image type, autoscaling settings, node locations and versions, spot/preemptible flag, OAuth scopes, labels, taints, network tags, GPU settings, upgrade and management settings
Load balancer — the external static IP

Settings like NAT port allocation and node pool configuration can be changed safely from the Porter dashboard. For any requirement not exposed there (for example, public node IPs to reduce egress cost), contact Porter support before changing it in GCP.

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:

In Porter, navigate to Integrations → Cloud accounts and select your GCP account.
Click Migrate to Workload Identity Federation in the banner at the top of the page.
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:

In the GCP Console, open IAM & Admin → Service Accounts.
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).
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

To disconnect Porter from your GCP project:

First, delete any clusters through the Porter dashboard.
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.

Optionally, also delete the porter-manager-* service account under IAM & Admin → Service Accounts for full cleanup.

Porter connects to Azure using workload identity federation. You create a managed identity that trusts a Porter-managed OIDC issuer. Porter generates short-lived JWT tokens using this OIDC isser and exchanges them with Azure for short-lived Azure tokens.

Prerequisites

You must have permissions to create app registrations, role definitions, and role assignments in your Azure subscription
You must have the Azure CLI and jq installed

Connect Your Azure Subscription

Begin the Azure connection process in Porter

In the Porter dashboard, click Connect a new account and select Azure. Porter generates a one-time setup command with your OIDC subject and issuer already substituted. Keep this open — you’ll paste it into your terminal in the next step.

Run the setup commands

Copy the commands shown in the dashboard and run it in your terminal. The commands look like:

# Authenticate the Azure CLI
az login

# Download the setup script
curl -O https://install.porter.run/scripts/setup-azure-porter-wif.sh

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

# Run the script with the OIDC subject and issuer from Porter
./setup-azure-porter-wif.sh \
  --subject <oidc-subject-from-porter> \
  --issuer <oidc-issuer-from-porter>

The script performs the initial setup in your Azure account:

Enables the required Azure resource providers:
- Microsoft.Capacity
- Microsoft.Compute
- Microsoft.ContainerRegistry
- Microsoft.ContainerService
- Microsoft.ManagedIdentity
- Microsoft.Network
- Microsoft.OperationalInsights
- Microsoft.OperationsManagement
- Microsoft.ResourceGraph
- Microsoft.Resources
- Microsoft.Storage
Creates the custom porter-aks-restricted role and grants all subscription actions except:
- Microsoft.Authorization/elevateAccess/Action
- Microsoft.Blueprint/blueprintAssignments/write
- Microsoft.Blueprint/blueprintAssignments/delete
- Microsoft.Compute/galleries/share/action
Creates the azure-porter-federated-sp app registration and matching service principal, then assigns the custom role at the subscription scope
Makes the service principal an owner of its own app registration
Adds the Application.ReadWrite.OwnedBy Microsoft Graph application permission and grants admin consent for it. This is the only Graph permission Porter uses, and Porter uses it solely to manage the federated identity credentials on the app registration the service principal owns. Its write access is limited to applications the service principal creates or owns, so Porter cannot modify any other application in your tenant
Adds a federated identity credential on the app registration trusting Porter’s OIDC issuer (audience api://AzureADTokenExchange)
Waits for Azure’s eventually consistent IAM service to propogate changes.
Outputs the app registration’s metadata: Subscription ID, Application (Client) ID, and Tenant ID

Setup can take a few minutes.

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

Enter app metadata into Porter

Paste the outputted Subscription ID, Application (Client) ID, and Tenant ID back into the Porter dashboard to register the connection.

Revoking Access

To revoke Porter’s access:

In the Azure portal, search for App registrations and delete azure-porter-federated-sp
[Optional] Delete the custom role definition created by Porter

This ensures that Porter can no longer access your Azure subscription.

​Create the IAM Role

​Permissions Granted

​Revoking Access

​Prerequisites

​Connect Your GCP Project

​Porter-Managed Infrastructure

​Migrating from a Service Account JSON

​After Migration

​Revoking Access

​Prerequisites

​Connect Your Azure Subscription

​Revoking Access

Create the IAM Role

Permissions Granted

Revoking Access

Prerequisites

Connect Your GCP Project

Porter-Managed Infrastructure

Migrating from a Service Account JSON

After Migration

Revoking Access

Prerequisites

Connect Your Azure Subscription

Revoking Access