Skip to main content
Snap Creator Framework

Managing user access

Contributors NetAppZacharyWambold
PDFs

Snap Creator provides security features such as role-based access control (RBAC), which enables you to manage user access within Snap Creator.

RBAC involves users, roles, permissions, operations, and profiles. The users, roles, and permissions can be defined by Snap Creator users.

Users

  • Users are uniquely identified by a user name and password.

  • A user can be assigned and unassigned to one or more roles and profiles.

  • The SNAPCREATOR_USER in the snapcreator.properties file is added as a user when the Snap Creator Server is started.

  • The SNAPCREATOR_USER in the snapcreator.properties file is assigned the Default Administrator role when the user is created during startup.

Roles

Roles have one or more permissions. The assigned permissions determine the actions a user can perform and also which GUI elements the user can access. There are three built-in roles:

  • ADMINISTRATOR

    Has full access to all the APIs. This is the only role which can create, edit, and delete users.

  • OPERATOR

    This role is configured to be a super user and has access to all the APIs except RBAC.

  • VIEWER

    Has very limited access. This role has access to read-only Snap Creator API calls.

These built-in roles cannot be added, removed, or modified.

Permissions

Permissions are a set of operations the user is authorized to perform. The following are built-in permissions:

  • BACKUP

    Required to perform a backup or clone operation.

  • CONFIGURATION

    Required to create, read, update, and delete configuration files.

  • CUSTOM

    Required to start a custom plug-in operation.

  • EXTENDED_REPOSITORY

    Required to perform catalog (also known as extended repository) operations.

  • GLOBAL

    Required to create, edit, and delete global configuration files.

  • POLICY_ADMIN

    Required to call policy operations (for example, addPolicy, updatePolicy, removePolicy).

  • POLICY_VIEWER

    Required for read-only policy operations.

  • RBAC_ADMIN

    Required to manage users (for example, create, update, delete users, and roles; also to assign and unassign roles, permissions).

  • RBAC_VIEW

    Required to view user accounts, assigned roles, and assigned permissions.

  • RESTORE

    Required to perform restore operations.

  • SCHEDULER

    Required to perform scheduler operations.

  • VIEWER

    Provides authorization for read-only operations.

Operations

Operations are the base values that Snap Creator checks for authorization. Some examples of operations are getTask, fileCloneCreate, createTask, dirCreate, and so on.

Note Operations cannot be added, removed, or modified.

Profiles

  • Profiles are assigned to users.

  • Profiles in RBAC are created in the profile directory on the file system.

  • Certain Snap Creator APIs check if a user is assigned to a profile and also check the permissions for operations.

    For example, if a user wants a job status, RBAC verifies if the user has authorization to call SchedulergetJob and then checks if the profile associated with the job is assigned to the user.

  • If a user, who is assigned the Operator role, creates a profile, then that profile is automatically assigned to the user.

Managing user access for storage controllers

If you are not using the Active IQ Unified Manager proxy, you need a user name and password to communicate with the storage controllers. Passwords can be encrypted for security.

Note You should not use the root user or the admin/vsadmin user. Best practice is to create a backup user with the necessary API permissions.

Network communications are through HTTP (80) or HTTPS (443), so you must have one or both of these ports open between the host where Snap Creator runs and the storage controllers. A user must be created on the storage controllers for authentication. For HTTPS, you must ensure that the user is enabled and configured on the storage controllers.