Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) provides the Compartments feature as a way to organize and isolate your cloud resources. Compartments are a fundamental component of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s security architecture, serving as a container to house and separate resources to keep your environment neatly organized. Below are some of the attributes or characteristics of OCI Compartments:

Hierarchical Structure

• Compartments can have a hierarchical structure, meaning you can have nested compartments within a parent compartment. This allows for better organization and delegation of resources and policies.

Resource Isolation

• Compartments are designed to isolate resources. You can only access resources in a compartment if you have the necessary permissions to do so.

Policy-Based Access Control

• OCI Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies define what actions you can perform on resources in a compartment. Policies can be written to grant or deny permissions based on the compartment.

Easy to Manage

• Compartments can be easily managed from the OCI Console, SDKs, APIs, and CLI. This enables easy allocation and deallocation of resources.

Resource Reallocation

• Some types of resources can be moved from one compartment to another, offering flexibility in managing and organizing your cloud infrastructure.

Tagging

• You can apply tags to compartments to categorize them according to your organizational needs.

Transparency

• Compartments are not a physical construct but a logical one, allowing for transparent operations without affecting the characteristics of resources.

Auditability

• Actions taken on resources within a compartment can be audited, enhancing compliance and security monitoring.

No Extra Cost

• Compartments are a built-in feature and do not incur additional costs. You pay only for the resources that you use within compartments.

Flexibility

• There is no limit on the number of compartments you can create, allowing for high flexibility in resource organization.

Global Scope

• Compartments are a global resource, meaning they span across all regions and availability domains.

By understanding these attributes, organizations can make more effective use of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to manage their cloud resources securely and efficiently.