User Guide

User Management
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Managing Users
Before using Data Center Planner, an administrator must create users and assign roles to users. Data Center Planner
utilizes existing and custom authentication methods to create and authorize new users and establish roles and
effective rights.
The administrator does not have rights for any other part of the application. They can only log into the application
and select User Management and Licensing to manage users and activate licenses unless other rights are assigned.
Authentication
Internal authentication is configured automatically when the Avocent Management Platform is installed.
External Authentication
Data Center Planner also allows External Authentication and Authorization through LDAP and Active Directory.
External authentication is based on plugging in external services to the Authentication Manager. All instance
creation is managed using the configuration console. The Avocent server authenticates to the actual external
authentication service when doing instance creation. If you can normally authenticate to a service, the same rights
should be adequate for creating an external authentication instance using the Avocent server. For additional
information, see External Authentication and Authorization on page 137.
Users
These options are used to manage users, groups and external group mappings.
Permissions
Permissions are a relationship between a user and a role. A role is a set of rights and targets.
Rights
For a role to be effective, it must have a right. A role can be created without targets, and it can be assigned to users,
groups and collections.
The following descriptions are default roles that can be assigned to a user and the rights assigned to them. For
additional information, see Roles on page 20.
• User - Persons authenticated with access to the authorization system. Only the unique identifier of the person is
stored.
• Effective Rights - Used to identify the effective rights for users, rights and targets.
• Permission - An unnamed association of a user and role.