Red Hat OpenShift policies in DevOps Config

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read
    • Summarize
    Summarized using AI
    This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.

    Summary of Red Hat OpenShift policies in DevOps Config

    The DevOps Config Policy content pack includes a predefined set of policies designed to validate and ensure compliance of your Red Hat OpenShift configuration. These policies help maintain security, stability, and proper configuration of your OpenShift environment. Note that from the Washington D.C. release onward, DevOps Config is being prepared for future deprecation and will no longer be activated on new instances, although existing support continues.

    Show full answer Show less

    While the default policies cannot be modified directly, you can create copies to customize according to your organization's specific needs. This enables you to manage and enforce compliance of your OpenShift configurations effectively.

    Key Features

    • Audit Log Policies: Validate audit log file retention and size settings to ensure proper log management. Checks include whether maximum backup count and maximum file size limits are set within specified ranges, and if audit log file paths are configured correctly.
    • Authentication Checks: Verify that basic authentication and static token files are not used for API server authentication, enhancing security by discouraging less secure authentication methods.
    • Container Privilege and Security Context Constraints (SCC): Ensure containers are not running with privileged access and that host PID namespace sharing is disabled in security context constraints, reducing potential attack surfaces.
    • API Server and Kubelet Settings: Confirm critical configurations such as NamespaceLifecycle admission plugin enabled, read-only Kubelet port disabled (set to 0), global request timeouts set within limits, and streaming connection timeouts enabled to protect against denial-of-service risks and resource exhaustion.

    Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers

    By leveraging these policies within your ServiceNow DevOps Config environment, you can automate validation of your OpenShift configurations against best practices and security standards. This automation helps reduce manual oversight, ensures consistent compliance, and facilitates lifecycle management of policy enforcement.

    To customize enforcement, create copies of the default policies and adjust input parameters such as limits for audit log sizes, request timeouts, and other configuration options to fit your organizational requirements.

    Overall, these policies enable proactive governance of OpenShift environments, helping you maintain secure and stable container orchestration within your DevOps processes.

    By default, the DevOps Config Policy content pack contains a set of policies to validate your Red Hat OpenShift configuration.

    Important:
    Starting with the Washington D.C. release, DevOps Config is being prepared for future deprecation. It will be hidden and no longer activated on new instances but will continue to be supported.
    You can use or customize these default DevOps Config policies to validate that your configuration data content is conformable, or administrate the full life cycle of PaCE policies.
    Note:
    You can’t modify the default policies. However, you can make a copy of the policy and customize your copy.
    Table 1. First-letter navigation for policies on this page

    A | B | C | H | N | R | S | T

    Audit Log Maximum Backup Is Set (openshift_audit_log_maxbackup_is_set)

    Checks whether the maximum number of old audit log files to be retained for API servers is set.

    Results into a non-compliant status when the --audit-log-maxbackup argument is either not set or not within the specified limits.

    Input arguments
    • lowerLimit
      • The lower limit of the --audit-log-maxbackup argument.
      • Type: Integer
      • Mandatory: False
    • upperLimit
      • The upper limit of the --audit-log-maxbackup argument.
      • Type: Integer
      • Mandatory: False

    Audit Log Maximum File Size Is Set (openshift_audit_log_maxsize_is_set)

    Checks whether the maximum file size specified as the rollover threshold for audit log files is set. After an audit log file reaches the maximum file size, the original audit log file is renamed and a new log file with the original name is created.

    Results into a non-compliant status when the --audit-log-maxsize argument is either not set or not within the specified limits.

    Input arguments
    • lowerLimit
      • The lower memory limit of the --audit-log-maxsize argument.
      • Type: Integer
      • Mandatory: True
    • upperLimit
      • The upper memory limit of the --audit-log-maxsize argument.
      • Type: Integer
      • Mandatory: True

    Audit Log Path Isn't Set (openshift_audit_log_path_is_not_set)

    Checks whether the auditing is enabled in OpenShift and the audit log file path is set.

    Results into a non-compliant status when either the --audit-log-path argument for openshift-kube-apiserver isn’t set to /var/log/kube-apiserver/audit.log or the --audit-log-path argument for openshift-apiserver isn’t set to /var/log/openshift-apiserver/audit.log.

    Basic Auth File Isn’t Set (openshift_basic_auth_file_is_not_set)

    Checks whether OpenShift doesn’t use the basic authentication mechanism to authenticate requests to the API server.

    Results into a non-compliant status when the --basic-auth-file argument is set.

    Containers Run Without Privilege Access (openshift_container_is_not_privileged)

    Checks whether the containers within an OpenShift pod are run without privileged access.

    Results into a non-compliant status when the privileged field for a container is set to true.

    Host PID Namespace Is Disabled (openshift_scc_with_hostPID_namespace_disabled)

    Checks whether there is at least one security context constraint (SCC) is defined that doesn’t allow containers to share the host PID namespace.

    Results into a warning when there’s an SCC defined with the allowHostPID field set to true.

    NamespaceLifecycle Plugin Is Enabled (openshift_namespacelifecycle_plugin_is_enabled)

    Checks whether the admission control plugin NamespaceLifecycle is enabled.

    Results into a non-compliant status when the NamespaceLifecycle plugin is disabled.

    Read-Only Port Is Disabled (openshift_read_only_port_disabled)

    Checks whether the Kubelet API server isn’t using the read-only port or the read-only port is set to 0.

    Results into a non-compliant status when the kubelet-read-only-port argument isn’t set to 0.

    Request Timeout Is Set (openshift_request_timeout_is_set)

    Checks whether the global request timeout for API servers is set.

    Results into a non-compliant status when the --min-request-timeout argument is either not set or not within the specified limits.

    Input arguments
    • lowerLimit
      • The lower limit of the --min-request-timeout argument.
      • Type: Integer
      • Mandatory: False
    • upperLimit
      • The upper limit of the --min-request-timeout argument.
      • Type: Integer
      • Mandatory: False

    Streaming Connections Timeout Isn't Disabled (openshift_streaming_connections_timeout_not_disabled)

    Checks whether the timeouts are set on streaming connections to ensure protection against denial-of-service attacks, inactive connections, and ephemeral ports exhaustion.

    Results into a non-compliant status when the streamingConnectionIdleTimeout argument is set to 0 in the Kubelet config file.

    Token Auth File Isn’t Set (openshift_token_auth_file_is_not_set)

    Checks whether OpenShift doesn't use a static token file to authenticate requests to the API server.

    Results into a non-compliant status when the --token-auth-file argument is set.