In the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), IAM policies are used to control access to resources and to specify who can perform certain actions on those resources. On GCP, the resource hierarchy plays a role in how IAM policies are inherited.

Here is an example of how the resource hierarchy controls IAM policy inheritance in GCP, using the following resource hierarchy:

Copy codeOrganization
  |
  |- Project 1
  |   |
  |   |- Compute Engine instance 1
  |   |- Compute Engine instance 2
  |   |- Cloud Storage bucket 1
  |   |- BigQuery dataset 1
  |
  |- Project 2
  |   |
  |   |- Compute Engine instance 3
  |   |- Cloud Storage bucket 2
  |   |- BigQuery dataset 2
  |
  |- Project 3
      |
      |- Compute Engine instance 4
      |- Cloud Storage bucket 3
      |- BigQuery dataset 3

Suppose you have the following IAM policies in place:

  • At the organization level, you have a policy that grants the compute.instances.create and compute.instances.delete permissions to the user1 identity.
  • At the project level, you have a policy that grants the storage.buckets.create and storage.buckets.delete permissions to the user1 identity.

With these policies in place, user1 will have the following permissions:

  • The ability to create and delete Compute Engine instances in all projects within the organization.
  • The ability to create and delete Cloud Storage buckets in the project where the policy is set.

It is important to note that IAM policies are additive, meaning that a user will have the permissions granted by all policies that apply to them. For example, if a user has a policy that grants them the ability to create and delete Compute Engine instances at the organization level, and a policy that grants them the ability to create and delete Cloud Storage buckets at the project level, they will have the ability to create and delete both types of resources.

In summary, the resource hierarchy in GCP controls how IAM policies are inherited by specifying which policies apply to which resources. IAM policies are inherited down the hierarchy, and a user will have the permissions granted by all policies that apply to them.

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