The governance layer consists of high-level automation and policy enforcement. This layer can be thought of as an opinionated version of the application management layer, as it provides the ability to enforce tenancy, gather metrics, and do intelligent provisioning and autoscaling of containers. The APIs at this layer should be considered options for running containerized applications.

The governance layer allows operators to control methods used for authorization, as well as quotas and control around network and storage. At this layer, functionality should be applicable to scenarios that large enterprises care about, such as operations, security, and compliance scenarios.