ONTAP authenticates a client machine and user by verifying their identities with a trusted source. ONTAP authorizes a user to access a file or directory by comparing the user's credentials with the permissions configured on the file or directory.
You can create local or remote user accounts:
ONTAP uses local or external name services to look up host name, user, group, netgroup, and name mapping information. ONTAP supports the following name services:
A name service switch table specifies the sources to search for network information and the order in which to search them (providing the equivalent functionality of the /etc/nsswitch.conf file on UNIX systems). When a NAS client connects to the SVM, ONTAP checks the specified name services to obtain the required information.
| Kerberos support Kerberos is a network authentication protocol that provides |
ONTAP evaluates three levels of security to determine whether an entity is authorized to perform a requested action on files and directories residing on an SVM. Access is determined by the effective permissions after evaluation of the security levels:
Export and share security applies to client access to a given NFS export or SMB share. Users with administrative privileges can manage export and share-level security from SMB and NFS clients.
Storage-Level Access Guard security applies to SMB and NFS client access to SVM volumes. Only NTFS access permissions are supported. For ONTAP to perform security checks on UNIX users for access to data on volumes for which Storage-Level Access Guard has been applied, the UNIX user must map to a Windows user on the SVM that owns the volume.
Native file-level security exists on the file or directory that represents the storage object. You can set file-level security from a client. File permissions are effective regardless of whether SMB or NFS is used to access the data.