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Cloud Computing · Intermediate

Organizational Unit (OU)

Container for AWS accounts within AWS Organizations used to group accounts and apply policies hierarchically.

Definition

OUs can be nested and inherit policies from parent OUs and the root. Grouping accounts by function or environment, such as Security, Sandbox and Production, lets administrators apply consistent guardrails.

Example

Production accounts are placed in a Prod OU with stricter SCPs than accounts in the Sandbox OU.

Exam tip

Policies attached to an OU apply to every account beneath it, including nested OUs.

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