A user account with a unique security identifier (SID) that has visibility only on the storage virtual machine (SVM) on which it is created. Local user accounts have a set of attributes, including user name and SID. A local user account authenticates locally on the CIFS server using NTLM authentication.

User accounts have several uses:

A group with a unique SID has visibility only on the SVM on which it is created. Groups contain a set of members. Members can be local users, domain users, domain groups, and domain machine accounts. Groups can be created, modified, or deleted.

Groups have several uses:

A domain that has local scope, which is bounded by the SVM. The local domain’s name is the CIFS server name. Local users and groups are contained within the local domain.

A SID is a variable-length numeric value that identifies Windows-style security principals. For example, a typical SID takes the following form: S-1-5-21-3139654847-1303905135-2517279418-123456.

A Microsoft Windows security method used to authenticate users on a CIFS server.

A replicated database with an instance on each node in a cluster. Local user and group objects are stored in the RDB.