Dell Storage Manager 2020 R1 Administrator's Guide

Account Management and Authentication

FluidFS clusters include two types of access:

• Administrator-level access for FluidFS cluster management
• Client-level access to SMB shares, NFS exports, and FTP folder

Administrator accounts control administrator-level access. Users and groups control client-level access to SMB shares and NFS exports.

The FluidFS cluster supports administrator-level and client-level authentication for both local and remote users and groups:

• Local users and groups – User and group identities defined and managed on and by the FluidFS system. Local management is useful when you have only a limited number of users and groups. In addition, authentication does not depend on external servers.
• External users and groups – User and group identities defined and managed on and by an external repository. External management is useful when managing access of many users and groups to many different resources, but depends on the availability of the external database. FluidFS supports the following external identity repositories:
  • Active Directory – Configure the FluidFS cluster to access an Active Directory database to authenticate Windows users.
    NOTE:Active Directory can also be used as an LDAP database for UNIX/Linux users.
  • NIS or LDAP – Configure the FluidFS cluster to access an NIS or LDAP database to authenticate UNIX and Linux users.