Orgs, spaces, roles, and permissions in Cloud Foundry

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This topic tells you about orgs and spaces in Cloud Foundry foundations. It also describes the default permissions for user roles in Cloud Foundry.

Cloud Foundry uses a role-based access control (RBAC) system to grant appropriate permissions to Cloud Foundry users.

Admins, Org Managers, and Space Managers can assign user roles using the Cloud Foundry Command Line Interface (cf CLI). For more information, see Managing roles.

Orgs

An org is a development account that an individual or multiple collaborators can own and use. All collaborators access an org with user accounts, which have roles such as Org Manager, Org Auditor, and Org Billing Manager. Collaborators in an org share a resource quota plan, apps, services availability, and custom domains.

An admin can suspend an org for various reasons such as failure to provide payment or misuse. When an org is suspended, users cannot perform certain activities within the org, such as push apps, modify spaces, or bind services.

Note In the v3 Cloud Controller API, this state is exposed as a boolean suspended field on the org. In the v2 Cloud Controller API, it was formerly known as the status field.

For more information about the actions that each role can perform, see User Roles and User Role Permissions.

For details on what activities are allowed for suspended orgs, see Roles and Permissions for Suspended Orgs.

Spaces

A space provides users with access to a shared location for app development, deployment, and maintenance. An org can contain multiple spaces. Every app, service, and route is scoped to a space. Roles provide access control for these resources and each space role applies only to a particular space.

An admin or an Org Manager can suspend a space. When a space is suspended, only admins and Org Managers of the parent org can operate on the space. Other space roles cannot perform actions in the space until it is reactivated.

The Org Manager role administers the org but does not by itself grant permission to push apps, bind services, or otherwise modify the contents of a space. To perform these actions in a suspended space, a user must hold the Org Manager role and an appropriate space role, such as Space Manager or Space Developer.

Note The v3 Cloud Controller API exposes this state as a boolean suspended field on the space. The v2 Cloud Controller API does not expose space suspension.

For details on what activities are allowed for suspended spaces, see Roles and Permissions for Suspended Spaces.

Org Managers can set quotas on the following for a space:

• Usage of paid services
• Number of app instances
• Number of service keys
• Number of routes
• Number of reserved route ports
• Memory used across the space
• Memory used by a single app instance
• Log volume per second used across the space

User roles

A user account represents an individual person within the context of a Cloud Foundry foundation. A user can have one or more roles. These roles define the user’s permissions in orgs and spaces.

Roles can be assigned different scopes of User Account and Authentication (UAA) privileges. For more information about UAA scopes, see Scopes in User Account and Authentication (UAA) Server.

UAA clients

In addition to human users, Cloud Foundry supports non-human principals called UAA clients. UAA clients authenticate using the client_credentials grant type and are intended for automation, CI/CD pipelines, and platform tooling that need to interact with the Cloud Controller API without a user session.

Like users, UAA clients can be assigned org and space roles. The UAA client ID takes the place of the username when managing client roles with the cf CLI. For more information, see Assign roles to UAA clients.

The following describes each type of user role in Cloud Foundry:

• Admin: Perform operational actions on all orgs and spaces using the Cloud Controller API. Assigned the cloud_controller.admin scope in UAA.

• Admin Read-Only: Read-only access to all Cloud Controller API resources. Assigned the cloud_controller.admin_read_only scope in UAA.

• Global Auditor: Read-only access to all Cloud Controller API resources except for secrets, such as environment variables. The Global Auditor role cannot access those values. Assigned the cloud_controller.global_auditor scope in UAA.

• Org Managers: Administer the org.

• Org Auditors: Read-only access to user information and org quota usage information.

• Org Billing Managers: Create and manage billing account and payment information.

Note The Billing Manager role is only relevant for Cloud Foundry environments deployed with a billing engine.

• Org Users: Read-only access to the list of other org users and their roles. In the v2 Cloud Controller API, when an Org Manager gives a person an Org or Space role, that person automatically receives Org User status in that org. This is no longer the case in the V3 Cloud Controller API.

• Space Managers: Manage a space within an org.

• Space Developers: Manage apps, services, and space-scoped service brokers in a space.

• Space Auditors: Read only access to a space.

• Space Supporters: Troubleshoot and debug apps and service bindings in a space.

Note The Space Supporter role is only available for the Cloud Controller V3 API. If a user with this role tries to access a V2 endpoint, the API returns a 403.

For non-admin users, the cloud_controller.read scope is required to view resources, and the cloud_controller.write scope is required to create, update, and delete resources.

Before you assign a space role to a user or UAA client, you must first assign them an org role in the parent org. The error message Server error, error code: 1002, message: cannot set space role because user is not part of the org occurs if you try to assign a space role first.

User role permissions

Each user role includes different permissions in a Cloud Foundry foundation. The following sections describe the permissions associated with each user role in active orgs, suspended orgs, and suspended spaces in Cloud Foundry.

Roles and permissions for active orgs

The following table describes the default permissions for various Cloud Foundry roles in active orgs.

You can use feature flags to edit some of the default permissions in the following table. For more information, see Using Feature Flags.

¹Not by default, unless feature flag user_org_creation is set to true.

²Admin, admin read-only, and global auditor roles do not need to be added as members of orgs or spaces to view resources.

³Org Managers can rename their orgs and edit some fields. They cannot delete orgs.

⁴Unless deactivated by feature flags.

⁵The user attempting to share must have permissions in both the source and target orgs.

⁶This assumes that SSH is enabled for the platform, space, and app. For more information, see SSH Access Control Hierarchy in App SSH Overview.

⁷Applies only to orgs they belong to.

⁸Space Developers can optionally be granted these permissions. For more information, see Grant Permissions in Configuring Container-to-Container Networking.

⁹Cannot create packages or delete resources. For more information, see the Cloud Controller V3 Documentation.

Roles and permissions for suspended orgs

The following table describes roles and permissions applied after an admin suspends an org.

^†Unless disabled by feature flags.

^**Admin, admin read-only, and global auditor roles do not need to be added as members of orgs or spaces to view resources.

Roles and permissions for suspended spaces

The following table describes roles and permissions applied after an admin or Org Manager suspends a space.

¹A user who holds the Org Manager role and an appropriate space role, such as Space Manager or Space Developer, has the same permissions in a suspended space as they would in an active space. The Org Manager role alone does not grant permission to deploy apps or otherwise modify the contents of any space.

²Unless deactivated by feature flags.