Reasons to designate a workstation as an administrative host

You designate a workstation as an administration host to limit access to the storage system's root file system, to provide a text editor to edit configuration files, or to provide the ability to administer a storage system remotely.

During the setup process, you are prompted to designate a workstation on the network as an administration host. For more information about the setup process, see the Data ONTAP Software Setup Guide.

When you designate a workstation as an administration host, the storage system’s root file system (/vol/vol0 by default) is accessible only to the specified workstation in the following ways:

As a share named C$, if the storage system is licensed for the CIFS protocol
By NFS mounting, if the storage system is licensed for the NFS protocol

If you do not designate a workstation as an administration host, the storage system’s root file systems are available to all workstations on the network. As a result, any user can gain access to the storage system’s root file system and change or remove storage system configuration files in the /etc directory.

You can designate additional administration hosts after setup by modifying the storage system’s NFS exports and CIFS shares.

Parent topic: How to manage access from administration hosts