Sentinel

Sentinel is a HashiCorp policy engine that enables organizations to create, manage, and enforce policies across their infrastructure as code and cloud resources using a purpose-built policy language. It allows organizations to implement governance controls and compliance requirements programmatically.

Key Characteristics

• Policy Language: Purpose-built language for policy definition
• Infrastructure as Code: Integrates with IaC tools like Terraform
• Governance Controls: Enforces governance and compliance policies
• Runtime Evaluation: Evaluates policies at runtime

Advantages

• Governance: Enables strong governance controls
• Compliance: Ensures compliance with policies
• Automation: Automates policy enforcement
• Flexibility: Flexible policy definition and enforcement

Disadvantages

• Learning Curve: Requires learning Sentinel policy language
• Complexity: Complex to implement comprehensive policies
• Performance: May impact deployment performance
• Maintenance: Requires ongoing policy maintenance

Best Practices

• Start with simple policies and expand gradually
• Use version control for policy files
• Regularly review and update policies
• Test policies in non-production environments

Use Cases

• Infrastructure as Code policy enforcement
• Compliance policy implementation
• Security policy validation
• Governance and audit controls