Default policies and policy families

This article describes the default compute policies available in your workspace and explains how to use them to create custom policies.

In your workspace, four default policies are designed for four different use cases. The policies are the following:

• Personal Compute
• Shared Compute
• Power User Compute
• Job Compute

Each policy includes rules that enforce best practices for its specific use case. Workspace admins can override or add rules to these policies.

Additionally, you can create new custom policies using these default policies by utilizing policy families. See Use policy families to create custom policies.

Who has access to the default policies?

By default, workspace admins have access to all four policies. Non-admins only have access to the Personal Compute policy but can be granted access to any default policy.

To edit the permissions of a default policy:

1. Click Compute in the workspace sidebar.
2. Click the Policies tab, then click the policy you want to edit.
3. Click the Edit button, then the Permissions tab.
4. Update the policy permissions then click the Update button.

Personal Compute

The Personal Compute policy is available to all users in your workspace by default (unless disabled at the account level).

The Personal Compute policy allows users to easily create a single-node compute resource with minimal configuration options. See Manage the Personal Compute policy.

Shared Compute

The Shared Compute policy allows users to create larger multi-node resource intended for multiple users to share.

Key details for this policy include:

• All-purpose compute only (no jobs)
• Uses the Shared access mode to allow multiple users to use this resource
• Defaults to latest LTS Databricks Runtime version
• By default, can only be used by workspace admins

Power User Compute

The Power User Compute policy allows users to create larger multi-node resources. The policy is intended for single-user workloads that require more compute resources than Personal Compute allows.

Key details for this policy include:

• All-purpose compute only (no jobs)
• Uses the Shared access mode to allow multiple users to use this resource
• Defaults to the latest Databricks Runtime ML version (not the latest Databricks Runtime LTS version)
• By default, can only be used by workspace admins

Job Compute

The Job Compute policy allows users to create a general-purpose default compute for jobs.

Key details for this policy include:

• Job compute only
• Defaults to latest Databricks Runtime LTS version
• By default, only workspace admins can use this policy

Use policy families to create custom policies

A policy family is a Databricks-provided template that you can use to create custom policies. When you create a new policy, you can choose to create it in a policy family. You can select any of the default policies to be the family for your new policy.

To create a policy using policy families:

1. From the Policies dashboard, click Create policy.
2. Enter a name and descrption of the policy.
3. From the Family dropdown, select the policy whose definintions you want to inherit.
4. After you select a family, the policy definitions get populated automatically.
5. Click Edit to add or override definitions in the policy.
6. Click OK then Create.