Orgs, Spaces, Roles, and Permissions

This topic describes orgs and spaces in PWS foundations. It also describes the default permissions for user roles in PWS.

Overview

PWS uses a role-based access control (RBAC) system to grant appropriate permissions to Pivotal Web Services (PWS) users.

Admins, Org Managers, and Space Managers can assign user roles using the Cloud Foundry Command Line Interface (cf CLI). For more information, see Users and Roles in Getting Started with the cf CLI.

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. Collaborators in an org share a resource quota plan, applications, services availability, and custom domains.

By default, an org has the status of active. An admin can set the status of an org to suspended 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. For details on what activities are allowed for suspended orgs, see Roles and Permissions for Suspended Orgs.

Spaces

Every application and service is scoped to a space. An org can contain multiple spaces. A space provides users with access to a shared location for application development, deployment, and maintenance. Each space role applies only to a particular space.

User Roles

A user account represents an individual person within the context of a PWS 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 Component: User Account and Authentication (UAA) Server.

The following describes each type of user role in PWS:

• 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.

• Org Users: Read-only access to the list of other org users and their roles. When an Org Manager gives a person an Org or Space role, that person automatically receives Org User status in that org.

• Space Managers: Administer a space within an org.

• Space Developers: Manage applications and services in a space.

• Space Auditors: Read-only access to a space.

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, you must assign an org role to the user. The error message Server error, error code: 1002, message: cannot set space role because user is not part of the org occurs when you try to set a space role before setting an org role for the user.

User Role Permissions

Each user role includes different permissions in a PWS foundation. The following sections describe the permissions associated with each user role in both active and suspended orgs in PWS.

Roles and Permissions for Active Orgs

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

^* Managed by PWS administrators.

^**Org Managers can rename their orgs and edit some fields; they cannot delete orgs.

Roles and Permissions for Suspended Orgs

The following table describes roles and permissions applied after an operator sets the status of an org to suspended.