3PAR Supports LDAP

FREMONT, Calif. -- 3PAR, the leading global provider of utility storage, announced today native support for lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP). Support for LDAP enables centralized user authentication and authorization using a standard protocol for managing access to IT resources. With 3PAR’s support for LDAP, customers are able to now integrate 3PAR Utility Storage--a simple, cost-efficient, and massively scalable storage platform--with standard, open enterprise directory services. The result is simplified security administration with centralized access control and identity management.

“3PAR Utility Storage already provides us with a reliable, shared, and easy-to-use consolidated storage platform,” said Burzin Engineer, Vice President of Infrastructure Services at Shopzilla. "Now, with 3PAR support for LDAP, managing security commonly--across all our resources, including storage--is also simple and efficient.”

Problem: Decentralized Storage Security with Traditional Storage

In today’s security-sensitive IT environments, user authentication and authorization are tightly scrutinized processes, where complexity can lead to security vulnerability. Without standards such as LDAP, managing authentication and authorization in an environment with a myriad of devices and multiple users is cumbersome and risk-prone. Despite this, storage device user authentication (proof of identity typically through user names and passwords) and user authentication (verification that users have permission to perform certain operations) have traditionally been managed on a device-by-device basis. This approach is not only complex to administer, but any failure to diligently maintain device-based security policies can compromise integrity of data and data service levels.

3PAR’s Solution: Centralized IT Security Based on 3PAR Utility Storage with LDAP SupportWith the addition of LDAP support, 3PAR Utility Storage introduces new levels of simplicity and efficiency to managing storage device authentication and authorization. LDAP is a widely adopted standard network protocol for communication between clients and servers and is used for adding, removing, and modifying resources, and for searching hierarchical directory information. 3PAR support for LDAP enables administrators to easily manage the authentication and authorization of 3PAR InServ® Storage Server users by leveraging proven, well-known processes that are commonplace in IT environments. The result is simplified, robust security administration through centralized access control and identity management. IT agility is also improved through the accelerated ability to add, delete, and modify storage devices and administrative resources.

"The need to secure and authenticate access to datacenter resources is paramount in the datacenter," said Benjamin Woo, IDC Vice President, Enterprise Storage Systems. "However, storage security has as yet, not had the necessary attention it deserves. 3PAR's native support of a broadly accepted open standard such as LDAP makes logical sense. Given the pervasive implementation of LDAP-based security schemas, customers can now extend their centralized security management platform to storage."

3PAR Inc.