Add a custom organization policy

This page shows you how to use Organization Policy Service custom constraints to restrictspecific operations on the following Google Cloud resources:

  • spanner.googleapis.com/Backup
  • spanner.googleapis.com/Database
  • spanner.googleapis.com/Instance
  • spanner.googleapis.com/InstanceConfig

To learn more about Organization Policy, seeCustom organization policies.

About organization policies and constraints

The Google Cloud Organization Policy Service gives you centralized, programmaticcontrol over your organization's resources. As theorganization policy administrator, you can define an organizationpolicy, which is a set of restrictions calledconstraints that apply toGoogle Cloud resources and descendants of those resources in theGoogle Cloud resource hierarchy. You can enforce organizationpolicies at the organization, folder, or project level.

Organization Policy provides built-inmanaged constraintsfor various Google Cloud services. However, if you want more granular,customizable control over the specific fields that are restricted in yourorganization policies, you can also createcustom constraints and use thosecustom constraints in an organization policy.

Policy inheritance

By default, organization policies are inherited by the descendants of theresources on which you enforce the policy. For example, if you enforce a policyon a folder, Google Cloud enforces the policy on all projects in thefolder. To learn more about this behavior and how to change it, refer toHierarchy evaluation rules.

Before you begin

  1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

  2. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Roles required to select or create a project

    • Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
    • Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains theresourcemanager.projects.create permission.Learn how to grant roles.
    Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

    Go to project selector

  3. Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  4. Install the Google Cloud CLI.

  5. If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

  6. Toinitialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command:

    gcloudinit

  7. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Roles required to select or create a project

    • Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
    • Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains theresourcemanager.projects.create permission.Learn how to grant roles.
    Note: If you don't plan to keep the resources that you create in this procedure, create a project instead of selecting an existing project. After you finish these steps, you can delete the project, removing all resources associated with the project.

    Go to project selector

  8. Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  9. Install the Google Cloud CLI.

  10. If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

  11. Toinitialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command:

    gcloudinit
  12. Ensure that you know yourorganization ID.

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to manage organization policies, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles:

  • Organization Policy Administrator (roles/orgpolicy.policyAdmin) on the organization resource
  • To create or update a Spanner database: (roles/spanner.admin) on the project resource

For more information about granting roles, seeManage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

These predefined roles contain the permissions required to manage organization policies. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand theRequired permissions section:

Required permissions

The following permissions are required to manage organization policies:

  • orgpolicy.* on the organization resource
  • To create or update a Spanner database:
    • spanner.databases.create on the project resource
    • spanner.databases.get on the project resource
    • spanner.databases.list on the project resource
    • spanner.databases.update on the project resource

You might also be able to get these permissions withcustom roles or otherpredefined roles.

Set up a custom constraint

A custom constraint is defined in a YAML file by the resources, methods,conditions, and actions that are supported by the service on which you areenforcing the organization policy. Conditions for your custom constraints aredefined usingCommon Expression Language (CEL). For more information about how to buildconditions in custom constraints using CEL, see the CEL section ofCreating and managing custom constraints.

Console

To create a custom constraint, do the following:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to theOrganization policies page.

    Go to Organization policies

  2. From the project picker, select the project that you want to set the organization policy for.
  3. ClickCustom constraint.
  4. In theDisplay name box, enter a human-readable name for the constraint. This name is used in error messages and can be used for identification and debugging. Don't use PII or sensitive data in display names because this name could be exposed in error messages. This field can contain up to 200 characters.
  5. In theConstraint ID box, enter the name that you want for your new custom constraint. A custom constraint can only contain letters (including upper and lowercase) or numbers, for examplecustom.disableGkeAutoUpgrade. This field can contain up to 70 characters, not counting the prefix (custom.), for example,organizations/123456789/customConstraints/custom. Don't include PII or sensitive data in your constraint ID, because it could be exposed in error messages.
  6. In theDescription box, enter a human-readable description of the constraint. This description is used as an error message when the policy is violated. Include details about why the policy violation occurred and how to resolve the policy violation. Don't include PII or sensitive data in your description, because it could be exposed in error messages. This field can contain up to 2000 characters.
  7. In theResource type box, select the name of the Google Cloud REST resource containing the object and field that you want to restrict—for example,container.googleapis.com/NodePool. Most resource types support up to 20 custom constraints. If you attempt to create more custom constraints, the operation fails.
  8. UnderEnforcement method, select whether to enforce the constraint on a RESTCREATE method or on bothCREATE andUPDATE methods. If you enforce the constraint with theUPDATE method on a resource that violates the constraint, changes to that resource are blocked by the organization policy unless the change resolves the violation.

    9. Not all Google Cloud services support both methods. To see supported methods for each service, find the service in Supported services.

  9. To define a condition, clickEdit condition.
    1. In theAdd condition panel, create a CEL condition that refers to a supported service resource, for example,resource.management.autoUpgrade == false. This field can contain up to 1000 characters. For details about CEL usage, see Common Expression Language. For more information about the service resources you can use in your custom constraints, see Custom constraint supported services.
    2. ClickSave.
  10. UnderAction, select whether to allow or deny the evaluated method if the condition is met.

    11. The deny action means that the operation to create or update the resource is blocked if the condition evaluates to true.

    The allow action means that the operation to create or update the resource is permitted only if the condition evaluates to true. Every other case except ones explicitly listed in the condition is blocked.

  11. ClickCreate constraint.

    12. When you have entered a value into each field, the equivalent YAML configuration for this custom constraint appears on the right.

gcloud

  1. To create a custom constraint, create a YAML file using the following format:
    2. name:organizations/ORGANIZATION_ID/customConstraints/CONSTRAINT_NAMEresourceTypes:-RESOURCE_NAMEmethodTypes:-CREATE
    - UPDATE    condition:"CONDITION"actionType:ACTIONdisplayName:DISPLAY_NAMEdescription:DESCRIPTION

    Replace the following:

    • ORGANIZATION_ID: your organization ID, such as123456789.
    • CONSTRAINT_NAME: the name that you want for your new custom constraint. A custom constraint can only contain letters (including upper and lowercase) or numbers, for example,custom.spannerDatabase. This field can contain up to 70 characters.
    • RESOURCE_NAME: the fully qualified name of the Google Cloud resource containing the object and field that you want to restrict. For example,spanner.googleapis.com/Database.
    • CONDITION: a CEL condition that is written against a representation of a supported service resource. This field can contain up to 1000 characters. For example,"resource.name.contains('denied-database-name')".

      • For more information about the resources available to write conditions against, seeSupported resources.

    • ACTION: the action to take if thecondition is met. Possible values areALLOW andDENY.

      • The allow action means that if the condition evaluates to true, the operation to create or update the resource is permitted. This also means that every other case except the one explicitly listed in the condition is blocked.

      The deny action means that if the condition evaluates to true, the operation to create or update the resource is blocked.

    • DISPLAY_NAME: a human-friendly name for the constraint. This field can contain up to 200 characters.
    • DESCRIPTION: a human-friendly description of the constraint to display as an error message when the policy is violated. This field can contain up to 2000 characters.
  2. After you have created the YAML file for a new custom constraint, you must set it up to make it available for organization policies in your organization. To set up a custom constraint, use thegcloud org-policies set-custom-constraint command:
    3. gcloudorg-policiesset-custom-constraintCONSTRAINT_PATH

    ReplaceCONSTRAINT_PATH with the full path to your custom constraint file. For example,/home/user/customconstraint.yaml.

    After this operation is complete, your custom constraints are available as organization policies in your list of Google Cloud organization policies.

  3. To verify that the custom constraint exists, use thegcloud org-policies list-custom-constraints command:
    4. gcloudorg-policieslist-custom-constraints--organization=ORGANIZATION_ID

    ReplaceORGANIZATION_ID with the ID of your organization resource.

    For more information, see Viewing organization policies.

Enforce a custom organization policy

You can enforce a constraint by creating an organization policy that references it, and thenapplying that organization policy to a Google Cloud resource.

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to theOrganization policies page.

    Go to Organization policies

  2. From the project picker, select the project that you want to set the organization policy for.
  3. From the list on theOrganization policies page, select your constraint to view thePolicy details page for that constraint.
  4. To configure the organization policy for this resource, clickManage policy.
  5. On theEdit policy page, selectOverride parent's policy.
  6. ClickAdd a rule.
  7. In theEnforcement section, select whether this organization policy is enforced or not.
  8. Optional: To make the organization policy conditional on a tag, clickAdd condition. Note that if you add a conditional rule to an organization policy, you must add at least one unconditional rule or the policy cannot be saved. For more information, see Setting an organization policy with tags.
  9. ClickTest changes to simulate the effect of the organization policy. For more information, see Test organization policy changes with Policy Simulator.
  10. To enforce the organization policy in dry-run mode, clickSet dry run policy. For more information, see Create an organization policy in dry-run mode.
  11. After you verify that the organization policy in dry-run mode works as intended, set the live policy by clickingSet policy.

gcloud

  1. To create an organization policy with boolean rules, create a policy YAML file that references the constraint:
    2. name:projects/PROJECT_ID/policies/CONSTRAINT_NAMEspec:rules:-enforce:truedryRunSpec:rules:-enforce:true

    Replace the following:

    • PROJECT_ID: the project that you want to enforce your constraint on.
    • CONSTRAINT_NAME: the name you defined for your custom constraint. For example,custom.spannerDatabase.
  2. To enforce the organization policy indry-run mode, run the following command with thedryRunSpec flag:
    3. gcloudorg-policiesset-policyPOLICY_PATH\--update-mask=dryRunSpec

    ReplacePOLICY_PATH with the full path to your organization policy YAML file. The policy requires up to 15 minutes to take effect.

  3. After you verify that the organization policy in dry-run mode works as intended, set the live policy with theorg-policies set-policy command and thespec flag:
    4. gcloudorg-policiesset-policyPOLICY_PATH\--update-mask=spec

    ReplacePOLICY_PATH with the full path to your organization policy YAML file. The policy requires up to 15 minutes to take effect.

Test the custom organization policy

The following example creates a custom constraint and policy that require alldatabases in a specific org to not have names that contain the string"denied-database-name".

Before you begin, you must know the following:

  • Your organization ID
  • A project ID

Create the constraint

  1. Save the following file asdatabasecustomconstraint.yaml:

    name:organizations/ORGANIZATION_ID/customConstraints/custom.spannerDatabaseresourceTypes:-spanner.googleapis.com/DatabasemethodTypes:-CREATEcondition:"resource.name.contains('denied-database-name')"actionType:DENYdisplayName:spannerDatabaseConstraintdescription:Database resource name contains "denied-database-name"

    This defines a constraint where for every new database, if the database name contains "denied-database-name", the operation is denied.

  2. Apply the constraint:

    gcloudorg-policiesset-custom-constraint~/databasecustomconstraint.yaml

  3. Verify that the constraint exists:

    gcloudorg-policieslist-custom-constraints\--organization=ORGANIZATION_ID

    The output is similar to the following:

      CUSTOM_CONSTRAINT       ACTION_TYPE  METHOD_TYPES  RESOURCE_TYPES                   DISPLAY_NAME  custom.spannerDatabase  DENY         CREATE        spanner.googleapis.com/Database  spannerDatabaseConstraint  ...

    Create the policy

  4. Save the following file asdatabaseorgpolicy.yaml:

    name:projects/PROJECT_ID/policies/custom.spannerDatabasespec:rules:-enforce:true

    ReplacePROJECT_ID with your project ID.

  5. Apply the policy:

    gcloudorg-policiesset-policy~/databaseorgpolicy.yaml

  6. Verify that the policy exists:

    gcloudorg-policieslist--project=PROJECT_ID

    The output is similar to the following:

      CONSTRAINT              LIST_POLICY  BOOLEAN_POLICY  ETAG  custom.spannerDatabase  -            SET             COCsm5QGENiXi2E=

    After you apply the policy, wait for about two minutes for Google Cloud tostart enforcing the policy.

    Test the policy

    Try to create a Spanner database in the project:

    gcloudspannerdatabasescreatedenied-database-name100\--instance=INSTANCE_NAME\

    The output is the following:

    PERMISSION_DENIED: Either caller is missing IAM permissionspanner.databases.create on resource or theCreateDatabaseRequest.create_statement field is malformed and the databasename could not be identified to verify Cloud IAM Conditions.

    Spanner supported resources

    The following table lists the Spanner resources that you can referencein custom constraints.

    ResourceField
    spanner.googleapis.com/Backupresource.database
    resource.expireTime
    resource.name
    resource.versionTime
    spanner.googleapis.com/Databaseresource.enableDropProtection
    resource.name
    spanner.googleapis.com/Instanceresource.autoscalingConfig.autoscalingLimits.maxNodes
    resource.autoscalingConfig.autoscalingLimits.maxProcessingUnits
    resource.autoscalingConfig.autoscalingLimits.minNodes
    resource.autoscalingConfig.autoscalingLimits.minProcessingUnits
    resource.autoscalingConfig.autoscalingTargets.highPriorityCpuUtilizationPercent
    resource.autoscalingConfig.autoscalingTargets.storageUtilizationPercent
    resource.config
    resource.displayName
    resource.freeInstanceMetadata.expireBehavior
    resource.instanceType
    resource.name
    resource.nodeCount
    resource.processingUnits
    spanner.googleapis.com/InstanceConfigresource.baseConfig
    resource.displayName
    resource.leaderOptions
    resource.name
    resource.replicas.defaultLeaderLocation
    resource.replicas.location
    resource.replicas.type

    What's next

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Last updated 2025-12-15 UTC.