Active Directory: Process & Setup (User & Provider Management in the VAST Management System)
This video from VAST Data Customer Education provides a detailed guide on Active Directory (AD) integration within the VAST Management System (VMS). For storage administrators implementing identity management and client access on VAST clusters, understanding this two-step join process is critical for seamless operations. We outline the essential prerequisites and account requirements for a successful AD join:
Join Rights User: An administrator or a user with delegated rights to create or modify a computer object in Active Directory, used for the actual domain join.
Separate Service Account: A read-only Windows account with no password expiration and limited AD rights, primarily used by VAST for supplemental group lookups. We emphasize the importance of this account's stability to prevent lookup failures.
The demonstration walks through the two distinct stages of the VAST AD join: initial configuration for validation and domain controller discovery, followed by the actual join utilizing the administrator account. The video also covers VAST's support for up to eight distinct Active Directory providers, which can belong to the same forest or be independent, and can be utilized across multiple tenants. We discuss the crucial requirement for domain controllers to be resolvable and routable from the VAST management network. Learn the step-by-step process for creating a new Active Directory connection in the VMS GUI, including:
Specifying the Active Directory domain name.
Defining the computer account name for the VAST cluster within AD.
Optionally, specifying an Organizational Unit (OU) for object placement.
Configuring the Bind DN and password for the service account, with tips on how to obtain these details.
Finally, we explain VAST’s support for custom attribute mapping, which defaults to RFC 2307 attributes like sAMAccountName for username lookups, and the retrieval of UID number and GID number attributes for POSIX compatibility. This tutorial equips VAST Data operators with the comprehensive knowledge needed to successfully configure and integrate Active Directory, ensuring robust user authentication and authorization for their enterprise storage environment.