Site Recovery Manager determines whether a user has permission to perform an operation, such as configuring protection or running the individual steps in a recovery plan. This permission check ensures the correct authentication of the user, but it does not represent the security context in which the operation is performed.

Site Recovery Manager performs operations in the security context of the user ID that is used to connect the sites, or in the context of the ID under which the Site Recovery Manager service is running, for example, the local system ID.

After Site Recovery Manager verifies that a user has the appropriate permissions on the target vSphere resources, Site Recovery Manager performs operations on behalf of users by using the vSphere administrator role.

For operations that configure protection on virtual machines, Site Recovery Manager validates the user permissions when the user requests the operation. Operations require two phases of validation.

  1. During configuration, Site Recovery Manager verifies that the user configuring the system has the correct permissions to complete the configuration on the vCenter Server object. For example, a user must have permission to protect a virtual machine and use resources on the secondary vCenter Server instance that the recovered virtual machine uses.
  2. The user performing the configuration must have the correct permissions to complete the task that they are configuring. For example, a user must have permissions to run a recovery plan. Site Recovery Manager then completes the task on behalf of the user as a vCenter Server administrator.

As a result, a user who completes a particular task, such as a recovery, does not necessarily require permissions to act on vSphere resources. The user only requires the permission to run a recovery in Site Recovery Manager. Site Recovery Manager performs the operations by using the user credentials that you provide when you connect the protected and recovery sites.

Site Recovery Manager maintains a database of permissions for internal Site Recovery Manager objects that uses a model similar to the one the vCenter Server uses. Site Recovery Manager verifies its own Site Recovery Manager privileges even on vCenter Server objects. For example, Site Recovery Manager checks for the Resource.Recovery Use permission on the target datastore rather than checking multiple low-level permissions, such as Allocate space. Site Recovery Manager also verifies the permissions on the remote vCenter Server instance.

To use Site Recovery Manager with vSphere Replication, you must assign vSphere Replication roles to users as well as Site Recovery Manager roles. For information about vSphere Replication roles, see vSphere Replication Administration.