---
sidebar_position: 4
title: Operations
---

OPA is commonly deployed alongside other applications in distributed
environments. Sometimes it is loaded with user policies. This page details some
general notes about operating OPA in such cases.

## HTTP Proxies

OPA uses the standard Go [net/http](https://pkg.go.dev/net/http) package
for outbound HTTP requests that download bundles, upload decision logs, etc. In
environments where an HTTP proxy is required, you can configure OPA using the
pseudo-standard `HTTP_PROXY`, `HTTPS_PROXY`, and `NO_PROXY` environment
variables.

## CPU and Memory Requirements

For more information see the [Resource Utilization section on the Policy Performance page](./policy-performance#resource-utilization).

## Operational Readiness and Failure Modes

Depending on how you deploy OPA, it may or may not have policies available as soon as it starts up. If OPA starts making decisions without any policies, it will return `undefined` as an answer to all policy queries. This can be problematic because even though OPA returns a response, it has not actually returned the decision dictated by policy.

For example, without loading any policies into OPA whatsoever, a policy query will return the answer `undefined`, which via the HTTP API is represented as an empty JSON object `{}`.

```
$ opa run -s
$ curl localhost:8181/v1/data/foo/bar
{}
```

In contrast, when policies are loaded, OPA is operationally ready for policy queries, and the answer is defined, the answer is a JSON object of the form `{"result": ...}`

```
$ opa run foo.rego -s
$ curl localhost:8181/v1/data/foo/bar
{"result": 7}
```

However, it is possible that even though policies have been loaded the policy response is still `undefined` because the policy makes no decision for the given inputs.

```
$ opa run foo.rego -s
$ curl localhost:8181/v1/data/baz
{}
```

Just because OPA has returned an answer for a policy query, that does not indicate that it was operationally ready for that query. Moreover, the operational readiness of OPA cannot be ascertained from the query response, as illustrated above. Two issues must therefore be addressed: how to know when OPA is operationally ready for policy queries and how to make a decision before OPA is ready.

### Ensuring Operational Readiness

The relevance of the discussion above depends on how you have chosen to deploy policies into OPA.

If you deploy policies to OPA on disk (e.g. volume mounting into the OPA container on Kubernetes), then OPA will only start answering policy queries once all the policies are successfully loaded. In this case, it is impossible for OPA to answer policy queries before it has loaded policy, so the discussion above is a non-issue.

On the other hand, if you use the [Bundle service](./management-bundles) OPA will start up without any policies and immediately start downloading a bundle. But even before the bundle has successfully downloaded, OPA will answer policy queries if asked (which is in every case except the bootstrap case the right thing to do). For this reason, OPA provides a `/health` [API](./rest-api/#health-api) that verifies that the server is operational and optionally that a bundle has been successfully activated. As long as no policy queries are routed to OPA until the `/health` API verifies that OPA is operational. The recommendation is to ensure the `/health` API indicates that OPA is operational before routing policy queries to it.

Finally, you might choose to push policies into OPA via its [REST API](./rest-api/#create-or-update-a-policy). In this case, there is no way for OPA to know whether it has a complete policy set, and so the decision as to when to route policy queries to OPA must be handled by whatever software is pushing policies into OPA.

### Making Decisions before OPA is Ready

The mechanisms discussed above ensure that OPA is not asked to answer policy queries before it is ready to do so. But from the perspective of the software needing decisions, until OPA is operational, the software must make a decision on its own. Typically there are two choices:

- fail-open: if OPA does not provide a decision, then treat the decision as allowed.
- fail-closed: if OPA does not provide a decision, then treat the decision as denied.

The choices are more varied if the policy is not making an allow/deny decision, but often there is some analog to fail-open and fail-closed. The key observation is that this logic is entirely the responsibility of the software asking OPA for a policy decision. Despite the fact that what to do when OPA is unavailable is technically a policy question, it is one that OPA cannot answer. The right logic can depend on many factors including the likelihood of OPA not making a decision and the cost of allowing or denying a request incorrectly.

In Kubernetes admission control, for example, the Kubernetes admin can choose whether to fail-open or fail-closed, leaving the decision up to the user. And often this is the correct way to build an integration because it is unlikely that there is a universal solution. For example, running an OPA-integration in a development environment might require fail-open, but running exactly the same integration in a production environment might require fail-closed.

## Capabilities

OPA now supports a _capabilities_ check on policies. The check allows callers to restrict the [built-in](./policy-reference/#built-in-functions) functions that policies may depend on. If the policies passed to OPA require built-ins not listed in the capabilities structure, an error is returned. The capabilities check is currently supported by the `check` and `build` sub-commands and can be accessed programmatically on the `ast.Compiler` structure. The OPA repository includes a set of capabilities files for previous versions of OPA in the [capabilities](https://github.com/open-policy-agent/opa/tree/main/capabilities) folder.

For example, given the following policy:

```rego
package example

deny contains "missing semantic version" if {
  not valid_semantic_version_tag
}

valid_semantic_version_tag if {
  semver.is_valid(input.version)
}
```

The policy's compatibility with different versions of OPA can be checked as follows:

```bash
# OK!
$ opa build ./policies/example.rego --capabilities ./capabilities/v0.22.0.json

# ERROR!
$ opa build ./policies/example.rego --capabilities ./capabilities/v0.21.1.json
```

### Built-ins

The 'build' command can validate policies against a configurable set of OPA capabilities. The capabilities define the built-in functions and other language features that policies may depend on. For example, the following capabilities file only permits the policy to depend on the "plus" built-in function ('+'):

```json
{
  "builtins": [
    {
      "name": "plus",
      "infix": "+",
      "decl": {
        "type": "function",
        "args": [
          {
            "type": "number"
          },
          {
            "type": "number"
          }
        ],
        "result": {
          "type": "number"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}
```

The following command builds a directory of policies ('./policies') and validates them against `capability-built-in-plus.json`:

```bash
opa build ./policies --capabilities ./capability-built-in-plus.json
```

### Network

When passing a capabilities definition file via `--capabilities`, one can restrict which hosts remote schema definitions can be retrieved from. For example, a `capabilities.json` containing the json below would disallow fetching remote schemas from any host but "kubernetesjsonschema.dev". Setting `allow_net` to an empty array would prohibit fetching any remote schemas.

```json title="capabilities.json"
{
    "builtins": [ ... ],
    "allow_net": [ "kubernetesjsonschema.dev" ]
}
```

Not providing a capabilities file, or providing a file without an `allow_net` key, will permit fetching remote schemas from any host.

Note that the metaschemas [https://json-schema.org/draft-04/schema](https://json-schema.org/draft-04/schema), [https://json-schema.org/draft-06/schema](https://json-schema.org/draft-06/schema), and [https://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema](https://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema), are always available, even without network access.

Similarly, the `allow_net` capability restricts what hosts the `http.send` built-in function may send requests to, and what hosts the `net.lookup_ip_addr` built-in function may resolve IP addresses for.

### Features

Some features of OPA can be toggled on and off through the `features` list:

```json
{
  "features": [
    "rule_head_ref_string_prefixes",
    "rule_head_refs",
    "rego_v1_import"
  ]
}
```

Features present in the list are enabled, while features not present are disabled. The following features are available:

- `rule_head_ref_string_prefixes`: Enables the use of a [reference in place of name](./policy-language/#rule-heads-containing-references) in the head of rules. This is a subset of `rule_head_refs`, and only covers references where all terms are primitive types, or where only the last element of the ref (the key in the generated object or set) is allowed to be a variable.
- `rule_head_refs`: Enables general support for [references in rule heads](./policy-language/#rule-heads-containing-references), including [variables at arbitrary locations](./policy-language/#variables-in-rule-head-references). This feature also covers the functionality of `rule_head_ref_string_prefixes`.
- `rego_v1_import`: enables use of the `rego.v1` import.

### Future keywords

:::info
Prior to OPA v1.0, it was recommended to use the `rego.v1` import instead of `future.keywords` imports, as this ensured that a policy was compatible with the [OPA v1.0](./v0-upgrade/) release once it shipped. Since OPA v1.0, v1 syntax is the default and the `rego.v1` import is no longer needed.
If the `rego.v1` import is present in a module, then `future.keywords.in`, `future.keywords.every`, `future.keywords.if`, and `future.keywords.contains` imports are implied, and not allowed.
:::

The availability of future keywords in an OPA version can also be controlled using the capabilities file:

```json
{
  "future_keywords": ["in"]
}
```

With these capabilities, the future import `future.keywords.in` would be available. See [the documentation
of the membership and iteration operator for details](./policy-language/#membership-and-iteration-in).

### Wasm ABI compatibility

A specific OPA version's capabilities file shows which Wasm ABI versions it is capable of evaluating:

```json
{
  "wasm_abi_versions": [
    {
      "version": 1,
      "minor_version": 1
    },
    {
      "version": 1,
      "minor_version": 2
    }
  ]
}
```

This snippet would allow for evaluating bundles containing Wasm modules of the ABI version 1.1 and 1.2.
See [the ABI version docs](./wasm/#abi-versions) for details.

### Building your own capabilities JSON

Use the following JSON structure to build more complex capability checks.

```json
{
  "builtins": [
    {
      "name": "name", // REQUIRED: Unique name of built-in function, e.g., <name>(arg1,arg2,...,argN)

      "infix": "+", // OPTIONAL: Unique name of infix operator. Default should be unset.

      "decl": { // REQUIRED: Built-in function type declaration.
        "type": "function", // REQUIRED: states this is a function

        "args": [ // REQUIRED: List of types to be passed in as an argument: any, number, string, boolean, object, array, set.
          {
            "type": "number"
          },
          {
            "type": "number"
          }
        ],
        "result": { // REQUIRED: The expected result type.
          "type": "number"
        }
      }
    }
  ],
  "allow_net": [ // OPTIONAL: allow_net is an array of hostnames or IP addresses, that an OPA instance is allowed to connect to.
    "mycompany.com",
    "database.safe"
  ],
  "future_keywords": ["in"]
}
```
