Reasons for creating local users and groups

There are several reasons for creating local users and groups on your Vserver. For example, you can access the CIFS server using a local user account if the domain controllers are unavailable, or you may want to use local groups to assign privileges.

You can create one or more local user accounts for the following reasons:

•	You want the ability to authenticate and log in to the CIFS server if domain controllers are unavailable.

Local users can authenticate with the CIFS server using NTLM authentication when the domain controller is down or when network problems prevent your CIFS server from contacting the domain controller.

•	You want to assign a local user User Rights Management privileges.

User Rights Management is the ability for a CIFS server administrator to control what rights users and groups have on the Vserver. You can assign privileges to a user by assigning the privileges to the user's account or by making the user a member of a local group that has those privileges.

Note: Although a local user can authenticate locally, the CIFS server is not operating in Workgroup mode. Workgroup mode is not supported in this version of Data ONTAP. The CIFS server must still be part of an Active Directory domain. The Vserver's CIFS server is operating as a member server in an Active Directory domain.

You might want to create one or more local groups for the following reasons:

•	You want to control access to file and folder resources by using local groups for share and file-access control.

•	You want to create local groups with customized User Rights Management privileges.

There are certain built-in user groups with predefined privileges. To assign a customized set of privileges, you can create a local group and assign that group the necessary privileges. You can then add local users, domain users, and domain groups to the local group.