Overview of role-based access control in ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere
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vCenter Server provides role-based access control (RBAC) that enables you to control access to vSphere objects. vCenter Server provides centralized authentication and authorization services at many different levels within its inventory, using user and group rights with roles and privileges. vCenter Server features five main components for managing RBAC:
Components |
Description |
Privileges |
A privilege enables or denies access to perform actions in vSphere. |
Roles |
A role contains one or more system privileges where each privilege defines an administrative right to a certain object or type of object in the system. By assigning a user a role, the user inherits the capabilities of the privileges defined in that role. |
Users and groups |
Users and groups are used in permissions to assign roles from Active Directory (AD). vCenter Server has its own local users and groups that you can use. |
Permissions |
Permissions allow you to assign privileges to users or groups to perform certain actions and make changes to objects inside vCenter Server. vCenter Server permissions affect only those users who log into vCenter Server rather than users who log into an ESXi host directly. |
Object |
An entity upon which actions are performed. VMware vCenter objects are data centers, folders, resource pools, clusters, hosts, and VMs |
To successfully complete a task, you should have the appropriate vCenter Server RBAC roles. During a task, ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere checks a user's vCenter Server roles before checking the user's ONTAP privileges.
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The vCenter Server roles apply to ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere vCenter users, not to administrators. By default, administrators have full access to the product and do not require roles assigned to them. |
The users and groups gain access to a role by being part of a vCenter Server role.
Key points about assigning and modifying roles for vCenter Server
You only need to set up vCenter Server roles if you want to limit access to vSphere objects and tasks. Otherwise, you can log in as an administrator. This login automatically allows you to access all vSphere objects.
Where you assign a role determines ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere tasks that a user can perform. You can modify one role at any time. If you change the privileges within a role, the user associated with that role should log out and then log back in to enable the updated role.
Standard roles packaged with ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere
To simplify working with vCenter Server privileges and RBAC, ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere provides standard ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere roles that enable you to perform key ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere tasks. There is also a read-only role that enables you to view the information, but not perform any tasks.
You can view ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere standard roles by clicking Roles on the vSphere Client home page. The roles that ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere provides enable you to perform the following tasks:
Role |
Description |
NetApp ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere Administrator |
Provides all the native vCenter Server privileges and ONTAP tools-specific privileges that are required to perform some of ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere tasks. |
NetApp ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere Read Only |
Provides read-only access to ONTAP tools. These users cannot perform any ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere actions that are access-controlled. |
NetApp ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere provision |
Provides some of the native vCenter Server privileges and ONTAP tools-specific privileges that are required to provision storage. You can perform the following tasks:
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The ONTAP tools Manager admin role is not registered with vCenter Server. This role is specific to the ONTAP tools Manager.
If your company requires that you implement roles that are more restrictive than the standard ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere roles, you can use ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere roles to create new roles.
In this case, you would clone the necessary ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere roles and then edit the cloned role so that it has only the privileges your user requires.
Permissions for ONTAP storage backends and vSphere objects
If the vCenter Server permission is sufficient, ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere then checks the ONTAP RBAC privileges (your ONTAP role) that are associated with the storage backends credentials (the username and password) to determine whether you have sufficient privileges to perform the storage operations that are required by that ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere task on that storage backend. If you have the correct ONTAP privileges, you can access the storage backends and perform ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere tasks. The ONTAP roles determine ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere tasks that you can perform on the storage backend.