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Policy Simulator for Organization Policy lets you preview the impact of a new custom constraint or organization policy that enforces a custom or managed constraint before it is enforced on your production environment. Policy Simulator provides a list of resources that violate the proposed policy before it is enforced, allowing you to reconfigure those resources, request exceptions, or change the scope of your organization policy, all without disrupting your developers or bringing down your environment.
This page describes how to test a change to an organization policy using Policy Simulator. It also explains how to interpret the results of the simulation and how to apply the tested organization policy if you so choose.
Before you beginIf you are using the Google Cloud CLI, set the project you want to use for making API calls:
gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID
Replace PROJECT_ID
with the name or ID of the project.
Enable the Policy Simulator and Resource Manager APIs.
To get the permissions that you need to run and access simulations, ask your administrator to grant you the OrgPolicy Simulator Admin (roles/policysimulator.orgPolicyAdmin
) IAM role on the organization. For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.
This predefined role contains the permissions required to run and access simulations. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:
Required permissionsThe following permissions are required to run and access simulations:
orgpolicy.constraints.list
orgpolicy.customConstraints.get
orgpolicy.policies.list
cloudasset.assets.searchAllResources
cloudasset.assets.listResource
cloudasset.assets.listOrgPolicy
policysimulator.orgPolicyViolationsPreviews.list
policysimulator.orgPolicyViolationsPreviews.get
policysimulator.orgPolicyViolationsPreviews.create
policysimulator.orgPolicyViolations.list
You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.
Test a policy changeYou can test a change to a custom constraint, an organization policy that enforces a custom or managed constraint, or both at the same time.
Note: Policy Simulator cannot test changes to legacy managed constraints. Test a change to a custom constraint ConsoleIn the Google Cloud console, go to the Organization policies page.
From the organization selector, select your organization resource.
Do one of the following:
To test a new custom constraint, click add Custom constraint.
To make changes to an existing custom constraint, select it from the list on the Organization policies page, and then click edit Edit constraint.
Create or update the custom constraint you want to test.
In the Display name box, enter a human-friendly name for the constraint. This field has a maximum length of 200 characters. Don't use PII or sensitive data in display names, because it could be exposed in error messages.
In the Constraint ID box, enter the name you want for your new custom constraint. A custom constraint must start with custom.
, and can only include uppercase letters, lowercase letters, or numbers, for example, custom.disableGkeAutoUpgrade
. The maximum length of this field is 70 characters, not counting the prefix, 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.
The constraint ID can't be changed after a custom constraint is created.
In the Description box, enter a human-friendly description of the constraint to display as an error message when the policy is violated. This field has a maximum length of 2000 characters. Don't include PII or sensitive data in your description, because it could be exposed in error messages.
In the Resource type box, select the name of the Google Cloud REST resource containing the object and field you want to restrict—for example, container.googleapis.com/NodePool
. Most resource types can have a maximum of 20 custom constraints per resource. If you try to create a custom constraint for a resource that already has the maximum number of custom constraints, the operation fails.
In the Enforcement method section, select whether to enforce the constraint on a REST CREATE
method, or on both CREATE
and UPDATE
methods. Not all Google Cloud services support both methods. To see supported methods for each service, find the service in Supported services.
To define a condition, click edit Edit condition.
In the Add condition panel, create a CEL condition that refers to a supported service resource, for example resource.management.autoUpgrade == false
. This field has a maximum length of 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.
Click Save.
In the Action section, select whether to allow or deny the evaluated method if the condition you wrote is met.
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.
Click Test constraint.
If this is a new constraint, then the Configure organization policy pane appears. To define an organization policy that enforces the custom constraint, do the following:
In the Select scope box, select the resource for which you want to test the custom constraint.
Click Override parents' policy.
Click Add a rule.
In the Enforcement section, select On.
Optionally, to make the organization policy conditional on a tag, click Add condition. 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 details, see Setting an organization policy with tags.
Click Done, and then click Continue.
The Simulation history page appears, with a list of simulations performed by you in the last 14 days. See Policy Simulator results on this page for more information.
gcloudTo test enforcing a new or updated custom constraint, create a JSON or YAML file that defines the custom constraint you want to test.
If you want to test changes to an existing custom constraint, you can use the organizations.customConstraints.get
gcloud CLI command to retrieve the current JSON or YAML representation of the custom constraint, and then make edits to that file.
A YAML file that defines a custom constraint looks similar to the following:
name: organizations/ORGANIZATION_ID/customConstraints/CONSTRAINT_NAME
resourceTypes:
- RESOURCE_NAME
methodTypes:
- METHOD1
- METHOD2
condition: "CONDITION"
actionType: ACTION
displayName: DISPLAY_NAME
description: DESCRIPTION
Replace the following:
ORGANIZATION_ID
: your organization ID, such as 123456789
.
CONSTRAINT_NAME
: the name you want for your new custom constraint. A custom constraint must start with custom.
, and can only include uppercase letters, lowercase letters, or numbers, for example, custom.disableGkeAutoUpgrade
. The maximum length of this field is 70 characters, not counting the prefix, for example, organizations/123456789/customConstraints/custom.
.
RESOURCE_NAME
: the fully qualified name of the Google Cloud REST resource containing the object and field you want to restrict. For example, container.googleapis.com/NodePool
. Most resource types can have a maximum of 20 custom constraints per resource. If you try to create a custom constraint for a resource that already has the maximum number of custom constraints, the operation fails. For more information about the service resources you can use in your custom constraints, see Custom constraint supported services.
METHOD1,METHOD2
: a list of RESTful methods for which to enforce the constraint. Can be CREATE
or CREATE
and UPDATE
. Not all Google Cloud services support both methods. To see supported methods for each service, find the service in Supported services.
CONDITION
: a CEL condition that refers to a supported service resource, for example "resource.management.autoUpgrade == false"
. This field has a maximum length of 1000 characters. For details about CEL usage, see Common Expression Language.
ACTION
: the action to take if the condition
is met. This can be either ALLOW
or DENY
.
The deny action means that if the condition evaluates to true, the operation to create or update the resource is blocked.
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.
DISPLAY_NAME
: a human-friendly name for the constraint. This field has a maximum length of 200 characters.
DESCRIPTION
: a human-friendly description of the constraint to display as an error message when the policy is violated. This field has a maximum length of 2000 For more information about how to create custom constraints, see Creating and managing custom constraints.
Create or modify an organization policy that enforces the custom constraint.
To test enforcing a new or updated custom constraint, create a JSON or YAML file that defines the organization policy you want to test:
name: organizations/ORGANIZATION_ID/policies/CONSTRAINT_NAME
spec:
rules:
- enforce: true
Replace the following:
ORGANIZATION_ID
with your organization ID, such as 1234567890123
.
CONSTRAINT_NAME
with the name of the custom constraint you want to test. For example, custom.EnforceGKEBinaryAuthz
.
To test enforcing a custom constraint conditionally based on the existence of a particular tag, create a JSON or YAML file that defines the organization policy:
name: organizations/ORGANIZATION_ID/policies/CONSTRAINT_NAME
spec:
rules:
- condition:
expression: CONDITION
enforce: false
- enforce: true
Replace the following:
ORGANIZATION_ID
with your organization ID, such as 1234567890123
.
CONSTRAINT_NAME
with the name of the custom constraint you want to test. For example, custom.EnforceGKEBinaryAuthz
.
CONDITION
with a CEL condition that refers to a supported service resource, for example "resource.matchTag('env', 'dev')"
.
For more information about conditional organization policies, see Setting an organization policy with tags.
To test deleting an organization policy that enforces a custom constraint, create a JSON or YAML file that defines the organization policy with no rules set except for inheriting the policy from its parent resource:
name: organizations/ORGANIZATION_ID/policies/CONSTRAINT_NAME
spec:
inheritFromParent: true
Replace the following:
ORGANIZATION_ID
with your organization ID, such as 1234567890123
.
CONSTRAINT_NAME
with the name of the custom constraint you want to test. For example, custom.EnforceGKEBinaryAuthz
.
To simulate the change to a custom constraint, organization policy, or both, run the policy-intelligence simulate orgpolicy
command:
gcloud policy-intelligence simulate orgpolicy \
--organization=ORGANIZATION_ID \
--custom-constraints=CONSTRAINT_PATH \
--policies=POLICY_PATH
Replace the following:
ORGANIZATION_ID
: your organization ID, such as 1234567890123
. Simulating changes over multiple organizations is not supported.
CONSTRAINT_PATH
: the full path to the custom constraint that you have created or updated. For example, tmp/constraint.yaml
. If you set the --policies
flag, you don't need to set the --custom-constraints
flag.
POLICY_PATH
: the full path to the organization policy you have created or updated. For example, tmp/policy.yaml
If you set the --custom-constraints
flag, you don't need to set the --policies
flag.
After several minutes, the command prints a list of resources that would violate the changes to the custom constraint, the organization policy, or both.
Results are also viewable on the Simulation history page of the Google Cloud console. See Policy Simulator results on this page to learn how to read the results.
The following is a sample response for an organization policy simulation. This simulation involves a custom constraint that restricts the creation of Google Kubernetes Engine cluster resources where Binary Authorization is not enabled. In this case, if the proposed change were applied, two cluster resources would violate the policy: orgpolicy-test-cluster
under the project simulator-test-project
, and autopilot-cluster-1
under the project orgpolicy-test-0
.
Waiting for operation [organizations/012345678901/locations/global/orgPolic
yViolationsPreviews/85be9a2d-8c49-470d-a65a-d0cb9ffa8f83/operations/1883a83
c-c448-42e5-a7c5-10a850928f06] to complete...done.
---
customConstraint:
actionType: ALLOW
condition: resource.binaryAuthorization.enabled == true
methodTypes:
- CREATE
name: organizations/012345678901/customConstraints/custom.EnforceGKEBinaryAuthz
resourceTypes:
- container.googleapis.com/Cluster
name: organizations/012345678901/locations/global/orgPolicyViolationsPreviews/3dd47fd3-6df1-4156-8f10-413a3fc0ed83/orgPolicyViolations/b9fd23a5-7163-46de-9fec-7b9aa6af1113
resource:
ancestors:
- organizations/012345678901
- projects/456789012345
assetType: container.googleapis.com/Cluster
resource: //container.googleapis.com/projects/simulator-test-project/locations/us-central1/clusters/orgpolicy-test-cluster
---
customConstraint:
actionType: ALLOW
condition: resource.binaryAuthorization.enabled == true
methodTypes:
- CREATE
name: organizations/012345678901/customConstraints/custom.EnforceGKEBinaryAuthz
resourceTypes:
- container.googleapis.com/Cluster
name: organizations/012345678901/locations/global/orgPolicyViolationsPreviews/3dd47fd3-6df1-4156-8f10-413a3fc0ed83/orgPolicyViolations/e73896e6-7613-4a8d-8436-5df7a6455121
resource:
ancestors:
- organizations/012345678901
- folders/789012345678
- projects/456789012345
assetType: container.googleapis.com/Cluster
resource: //container.googleapis.com/projects/orgpolicy-test-0/locations/us-central1/clusters/autopilot-cluster-1
Test a change to a managed constraint Console
In the Google Cloud console, go to the Organization policies page.
Click **Select project, and then select the organization, folder, or project resource for which you want to edit the organization policy.
From the list, select the managed constraint for which you want to update the organization policy. On the Policy details page, you can see the source of this organization policy, the effective policy evaluation on this resource, and more details about the managed constraint.
To update the organization policy for this resource, click Manage policy.
On the Edit policy page, select Override parent's policy.
Click Add a rule.
In the Enforcement section, select whether enforcement of this organization policy should be on or off.
Optionally, to make the organization policy conditional on a tag, click Add condition. 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 details, see Setting an organization policy with tags.
Click Test changes.
The Simulation history page appears, with a list of simulations performed by you in the last 14 days. See Policy Simulator results on this page for more information.
gcloudCreate or modify an organization policy that enforces a managed constraint.
To test creating or updating an organization policy that enforces a managed constraint, create a JSON or YAML file that defines the organization policy.
name: RESOURCE_TYPE/RESOURCE_ID/policies/CONSTRAINT_NAME
spec:
rules:
- enforce: ENFORCEMENT_STATE
Replace the following:
RESOURCE_TYPE
with organizations
, folders
, or projects
.
RESOURCE_ID
with your organization ID, folder ID, project ID, or project number, depending on the type of resource specified in RESOURCE_TYPE
.
CONSTRAINT_NAME
with the name of the managed constraint you want to test. For example, iam.managed.disableServiceAccountKeyCreation
.
ENFORCEMENT_STATE
with true
to enforce this organization policy when set, or false
to disable it when set.
Optionally, to make the organization policy conditional on a tag, add a condition
block to the rules
. 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 details, see Setting an organization policy with tags.
To test the deletion of an organization policy that enforces a managed constraint, create a JSON or YAML file that defines the organization policy with no rules set except for inheriting the policy from its parent resource:
name: organizations/ORGANIZATION_ID/policies/CONSTRAINT_NAME
spec:
inheritFromParent: true
Replace the following:
ORGANIZATION_ID
with your organization ID.
CONSTRAINT_NAME
with the name of the managed constraint you want to delete. For example, iam.managed.disableServiceAccountKeyCreation
.
Run the policy-intelligence simulate orgpolicy
command:
gcloud policy-intelligence simulate orgpolicy \
--organization=ORGANIZATION_ID \
--policies=POLICY_PATH
Replace the following:
ORGANIZATION_ID
with your organization ID, such as 1234567890123
. Simulating changes over multiple organizations is not supported.
POLICY_PATH
with the full path to your organization policy YAML file.
After several minutes, the command prints a list of resources that would violate the changes to the custom constraint, the organization policy, or both.
Results are also viewable on the Simulation history page of the Google Cloud console. See Policy Simulator results on this page to learn how to read the results.
Policy Simulator reports the results of a change in a custom constraint or organization policy as a list of violations of the simulated policy. The Google Cloud console stores results of simulations generated by you in the last 14 days.
To view simulation results, go to the Simulation history page.
Select a simulation to see details. On the Simulation report page, you can see the preview of violations, which lists the number of total violations caused by the new custom constraint or organization policy, the number of resources that were checked in the scope of the simulation, and the time at which the simulation completed.
If you simulated a custom constraint, you can click Constraint details to see the specific configuration that was simulated. If you simulated an organization policy, the Policy details tab shows the configuration that was simulated.
All violations are listed in the table of resources. Each resource that violates the new custom constraint or organization policy is listed with a link to the resource entry in Cloud Asset Inventory. Project, folder, and organization resources are displayed with the sum total of resources below them in the hierarchy that violate the new custom constraint or organization policy.
Apply a tested policy changeAfter you have tested your custom constraint, organization policy, or both, you can set up the custom constraint and enforce the organization policy. You can see all Policy Simulator results in the Google Cloud console, regardless of how they were generated. If your simulation report includes changes to no more than one organization policy, you can enforce the organization policy directly through the simulation results. To enforce test changes in multiple organization policies, use the Google Cloud CLI.
ConsoleTo enforce a custom constraint Policy Simulator results, go to the Simulation history page.
Select the simulation report for the custom constraint or organization policy you want to apply.
If this simulation report includes a custom constraint, click Save constraint.
If this simulation report includes changes to no more than one organization policy, you can apply that organization policy as a dry-run policy to monitor behavior in production without introducing risk by clicking Set dry run policy. The Policy details page for the new organization policy page appears.
You can enforce the organization policy immediately by clicking expand_more and then clicking Set policy.
To enforce a custom constraint, you must set it up to make it available for organization policies in your organization. To set up a custom constraint, use the gcloud org-policies set-custom-constraint command:
gcloud org-policies set-custom-constraint CONSTRAINT_PATH
Replace CONSTRAINT_PATH
with the full path to your custom constraint file. For example, /home/user/customconstraint.yaml
.
After this is completed, your custom constraint is available in your list of Google Cloud organization policies.
To set the organization policy, use the gcloud org-policies set-policy command:
gcloud org-policies set-policy POLICY_PATH
Replace POLICY_PATH
with the full path to your organization policy YAML file.
The policy takes up to 15 minutes to take effect.
If you are using the Google Cloud console, you can save Policy Simulator results as a CSV file.
To save Policy Simulator results, go to the Simulation history page.
Select the simulation report you want to save.
Click upload Export full results.
If you are using the gcloud CLI, you can save Policy Simulator results as JSON or YAML files.
By default, test results in the Google Cloud CLI are output in YAML format. To save a test result as a YAML file, redirect the output of the simulate orgpolicy
command when running the simulation:
> FILENAME
Replace FILENAME
with a name for the output file.
To save a test result as a JSON file, add the following flag to the simulate orgpolicy
command when running the simulation:
--format=json > FILENAME
Replace FILENAME
with a name for the output file.
Except as otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. For details, see the Google Developers Site Policies. Java is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2025-07-02 UTC.
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