User authentication options

You can use one of the following options for user authentication in BMC TrueSight IT Data Analytics (or IT Data Analytics):

• BMC Atrium Single Sign-On version 9.0
• IT Data Analytics

This topic contains the following information:

Using Atrium Single Sign-On for user authentication

Using Atrium Single Sign-On can be useful to get a a unified experience of the product when you integrate with BMC TrueSight Presentation Server.

The advantages of using Atrium Single Sign-On are:

• Eliminate the need for logging on twice: You can cross-launch from an event or application of BMC TrueSight Presentation Server without logging on to IT Data Analytics. This means you can log on to IT Data Analytics with the same credentials (user name and password) that you used while logging on to BMC TrueSight Presentation Server.
• Single point of managing users and user groups: You can use Atrium Single Sign-On for managing users and user groups in both IT Data Analytics and BMC TrueSight Presentation Server. This eliminates the need for creating and maintaining users and user groups separately in IT Data Analytics and BMC TrueSight Presentation Server.

To be able to use Atrium Single Sign-On, you need to ensure that it is already up and running in your environment. Later, at the time of installing IT Data Analytics, you can configure details of the Atrium Single Sign-On server that you intend to use for the managing the user authentication. To be able to configure the Atrium Single Sign-On server, you need to perform a custom installation of the Console Server.

Using IT Data Analytics for user authentication

Using IT Data Analytics can be useful in the following scenarios:

• If you are using a standalone instance of IT Data Analytics.
• If you are using IT Data Analytics without integrating with BMC TrueSight Presentation Server.

In these scenarios, you can continue to use IT Data Analytics without opting to install or use Atrium Single Sign-On.

Keep in mind that prior to version 2.1, user authentication was handled differently.

The following table provides a comparison of the user authentication approaches in the different versions.

Switching to Atrium Single Sign-On for user authentication

In the following scenarios, it is possible that Atrium Single Sign-On is not already configured in your environment.

• Upgrade – When you perform an upgrade, by default the option to configure an Atrium Single Sign-On server is not available.
• Installation – When you perform a typical installation of the product, it is assumed that you do not want to enable the Atrium Single Sign-On configuration. And when you perform a custom installation, configuring the Atrium Single Sign-On sever is optional. 

In these cases, you can switch from IT Data Analytics to Atrium Single Sign-On for user authentication. To do this, you need to run the enablesso CLI command.

Where to go from here

To understand how user authentication with Atrium Single Sign-On works, see Deploying IT Data Analytics with BMC Atrium Single Sign-On.

To enable Atrium Single Sign-On in your environment, use one of the following topics based on whether you want to install or upgrade the product.

• Installing in a multiple-server environment.
• Performing the upgrade

To understand how user authorization works, see Managing user authentication.