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This document provides design considerations for configuring and troubleshooting user access and file management with the Dell PowerScale scale-out NAS platform. Support for multiple protocols requires a model for ensuring that users are provided equal rights irrespective of the access protocol and authentication providers. Additionally, the model must define file permission management. To provide consistent, flexible, and secure access across supported protocols, PowerScale OneFS uses a Unified Permission Model combined with an Authentication, Identity Management, and Authorization (AIMA) stack. This document dissects and explains the Unified Permission Model and AIMA stack.
Traditionally, legacy NAS systems only provided support for a single protocol. However, PowerScale supports several protocols, introducing the challenges of multi-protocol support. While many vendors provide multi-protocol support on a single platform, each vendor implements a proprietary model to provide user access and file management in a multi-protocol environment. Given that multi-protocol support is not governed by an RFC or an open-source model, each vendor provides a different approach and implementation. The goal of this paper is to provide an understanding of PowerScale implementation of multi-protocol support, which is different from other vendors but is simple to apply once it is understood.