Controlling Access to SAS Environment Manager

About Native Roles and Users

SAS Environment Manager controls access and permissions within the application with its own registry of users and its own system of roles and permissions. In order to distinguish between the SAS Environment Manager access features and those in SAS metadata, this document and the SAS Environment Manager online Help refers to features internal to SAS Environment Manager as native features (such as native users or native roles). However, the SAS Environment Manager interface does not use the native terminology.

Although native user definitions are internal to SAS Environment Manager, they are mapped to user definitions created in SAS metadata. Native users are created by first creating the user definition in metadata and then synchronizing the user information with SAS Environment Manager. You cannot create native user definitions in SAS Environment Manager directly.

Native roles enable you to grant capabilities and permissions for actions in SAS Environment Manager to selected users. For example, an administrator role could be granted full permissions for all resource types and the ability to acknowledge and fix alerts, and a guest role could be denied the ability to fix or acknowledge alerts and have only Read permission for resources. Assigning a native role to a native user determines the actions that the user can perform in SAS Environment Manager.

Each native role also has its own unique Dashboard page, which you can customize to match the native role’s tasks. Each user has access to their own personal Dashboard page and the Dashboard pages of all native roles of which they are a member.

SAS Environment Manager and SAS Metadata Users

Users in SAS Environment Manager are mapped to users created in SAS metadata. During installation, three user groups are created in SAS metadata to contain SAS Environment Manager users. Users and subgroups that are members of these groups are mapped to user definitions in SAS Environment Manager with corresponding roles. The user groups and their corresponding roles are as follows:

Group name in SAS metadata	Role in SAS Environment Manager
SAS_EV_Super_User	Super User role
SAS_EV_Guest	Guest role
SAS_EV_AppServer_Tier	SAS App Tier role

For example, users that are members of the group SAS_EV_Guest in metadata are created as users in SAS Environment Manager and are assigned to the Guest role when the users are synchronized.

When you install SAS Environment Manager, all existing SAS Environment Manager user definitions are automatically added to the SAS_EV_Guest group in metadata. After the existing users have been added to the SAS_EV_Guest group, use SAS Management Console to modify the user definitions or assign the users to other SAS_EV groups in metadata.

After you have defined new users in SAS metadata, sign on to SAS Environment Manager, and select Manage

Synchronize Users. User definitions are created for all users that are defined in the three SAS_EV groups in metadata. Any SAS Environment Manager users that are not associated with user definitions in metadata are deleted.

If you sign on to SAS Environment Manager using a user ID that is defined in metadata, is a member of one of the SAS_EV groups, but is not defined in SAS Environment Manager, then a user definition is automatically created in SAS Environment Manager and assigned to the correct role.

The mapping between user information in metadata and in a SAS Environment Manager user definition is as follows:

Metadata field	SAS Environment Manager field
Display Name	First Name and Last Name
Name	First Name if the Display Name is not specified
Account	Username
Email	Email
Phone	Phone

To create a new SAS Environment Manager user, use an application such as SAS Management Console to define the user and assign it to the appropriate SAS_EV user group, and then select Manage

Synchronize Users to create the user in SAS Environment Manager and assign the user to the proper role.

The users in the SAS App Tier role are automatically granted access to the resources in these resource groups:

SAS App Tier group
SAS App Tier Server group
SAS App Tier Services group

An internal account, sasevs (sasevs@saspw), is also created during installation. This account is assigned to the SAS_EV_Guest group. The account is used for communications between the SAS Environment Manager agent and server and enables plugins to access the SAS Metadata Server. The internal account sasadm@saspw is the default account for signing on to SAS Environment Manager.

The SAS Logon Manager is used to control the process of logging on to SAS Environment Manager. The application uses the same authentication process and authentication provider as the other SAS web applications.

Updating Passwords for SAS Environment Manager Metadata Identities

To update the password for the saseve@saspw account, follow these steps:

Stop all SAS Environment Manager agents on the system.
On the middle-tier machine, use the SAS Deployment Manager to change the password for the sasevs account.
Use the SAS Deployment Manager to update the sasevs password on the machines in the other tiers in the system.
Restart the SAS Environment Manager agents.

Creating a Native Role

To create a native role, follow these steps:

On the Manage page, select New Role.
On the New Role page, specify a name for the role and select the native permissions and capabilities for each resource type. If you grant the Read Only permission for a resource type, you can also select the native capabilities for the resource type. For all other permissions, the capabilities are automatically selected or disabled and cannot be changed.
Use these guidelines to determine the native permissions to set:

Adding resource to the inventory and creating alert definitions

Select Full or Read / Write permissions. Users can also respond to alerts and control resources.

Monitoring resources, responding to alerts, controlling resources

Select the Read Only permission and grant the capability to acknowledge and fix alerts and to control resources. Users can respond to alerts and control resources but cannot create or modify alerts or resources.

Monitoring resources

Select the Read Only permission, but do not grant capabilities for alerts resource control. Users can view and monitor only resources.
When you click OK, the role and associated Dashboard page are created, and the Role Properties page is displayed. Use this page to select native users and resource groups that should be associated with the role and to create an alert calendar.
To create an alert calendar, select the days and times during which the roles’ users will be notified of alerts. Make sure that at least one role is available during every time period.