Users Guide

Setup and Administration 19

process is running. This authentication scheme ensures that all Server

Administrator functions, whether accessed through the Server Administrator

home page or CLI, are properly authenticated.

Microsoft Windows Authentication

For supported Microsoft

Windows

operating systems, Server Administrator

authentication uses Integrated Windows Authentication (formerly called

NTLM) to authenticate. This authentication system allows Server

Administrator security to be incorporated in an overall security scheme

foryournetwork.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Authentication

For supported Red Hat

Enterprise Linux

and SUSE

Linux Enterprise

Server operating systems, Server Administrator uses various authentication

methods based on the Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) library.

Users can log in to Server Administrator either locally or remotely using

different account management protocols, such as LDAP, NIS, Kerberos,

and Winbind.

VMware ESX server 3 and 4

ESX Server uses the Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) structure for

authentication when users access the ESX Server host. The PAM

configuration for VMware services is located in /etc/pam.d/vmware-authd,

which stores paths to authentication modules.

The default installation of ESX Server uses /etc/passwd authentication, just as

Linux does, but you can configure ESX Server to use another distributed

authentication mechanism.

VMware ESX server 3i and 4i

ESXi authenticates users accessing ESXi hosts using the vSphere/VI Client or

SDK. The default installation of ESXi uses a local password database for

authentication. ESXi authentication transactions with Server Administrator

are also direct interactions with the vmware-hostd process. To make sure that

authentication works efficiently for your site, perform basic tasks such as

setting up users, groups, permissions, and roles, configuring user attributes,

adding your own certificates, and determining whether you want to use SSL.

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