Cloudera Manager Server has its own internal authentication mechanism, a database repository of user accounts. However, the user accounts defined in the internal Cloudera Manager account repository cannot be assigned Cloudera Navigator user roles. The only user role that can be effectively applied to an account created in the Cloudera Manager internal repository is that of Navigator Administrator. In other words, assigning Cloudera Navigator user roles to user accounts requires using one of the external authentication mechanisms detailed in this section.

Cloudera Manager and Cloudera Navigator have their own distinct sets of user roles. Cloudera Manager and Cloudera Navigator can be configured to use external authentication mechanisms. The organization may have a central Active Directory or other LDAP-identity service used by Cloudera Manager and Cloudera Navigator for external authentication, but the relationship between each of these to the external system functions independently. That means a Cloudera Manager user that successfully authenticates to the external LDAP system cannot log in to Cloudera Manager using that same authentication token.