Admin roles

 

Administrative roles

The Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) role-based authorization concept is extended to protect the WebSphere Application Server administrative subsystem.

A number of administrative roles are defined to provide degrees of authority that are needed to perform certain administrative functions from either the Web-based administrative console or the system management scripting interface. The authorization policy is only enforced when global security is enabled. The following table describes the administrative roles:

Administrative roles
Role Description
Monitor An individual or group that uses the monitor role has the least amount of privileges. A monitor can complete the following tasks:

  • View the WebSphere Application Server configuration.

  • View the current state of the WebSphere Application Server.

Configurator An individual or group that uses the configurator role has the monitor privilege plus the ability to change the WebSphere Application Server configuration. The configurator can perform all the day-to-day configuration tasks. For example, a configurator can complete the following tasks:

  • Create a resource.

  • Map an application server.

  • Install and uninstall an application.

  • Deploy an application.

  • Assign users and groups-to-role mapping for applications.

  • Set up Java 2 security permissions for applications.

  • Customize the Common Secure Interoperability Version 2 (CSIv2), Security Authentication Service (SAS), and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) configurations.

Operator An individual or group that uses the operator role has monitor privileges plus ability to change the run time state. For example, an operator can complete the following tasks:

Administrator An individual or group that uses the administrator role has the operator and configurator privileges plus additional privileges that are granted solely to the administrator role. For example, an administrator can complete the following tasks:

  • Modify the server user ID and password.

  • Mapping users and groups to the administrator role.

  • Configure authentication and authorization mechanisms.

  • Enable or disable global security.

  • Enable or disable java 2 security.

  • Change the Lightweight Third Party Authencation (LTPA) password and generate keys.

The server ID specified when enabling global security is automatically mapped to the administrator role. Users and groups can be added or removed from the administrative roles from the WebSphere Application Server administrative console at any time. However, a server restart is required for the changes to take effect. A best practice is to map a group or groups, rather than specific users, to administrative roles because it is more flexible and easier to administer. By mapping a group to an administrative role, adding or removing users to or from the group occurs outside of WebSphere Application Server and does not require a server restart for the change to take effect.

In addition to mapping user or groups, a special-subject can also be mapped to the administrative roles. A special-subject subject is a generalization of a particular class of users. The AllAuthenticated special subject means that the access check of the administrative role ensures that the user making the request is at least authenticated. The Everyone special subject means that anyone, authenticated or not, can perform the action, as if security was not enabled.

Related concepts
Authorization technology


Related tasks
Assigning users to naming roles


Searchable topic ID: rsec_adminroles