Accounts, Domains, and Admin explained

A domain can have multiple Accounts. Each Account can have multiple users.

• A user can belong to only one Account, .ie. the same User cannot belong to multiple Accounts.
• Whenever creating an account at any domain level it can be of two types - Admin or user. If account == Admin then he will be domain admin of that domain and if created with type=user he will be a regular account under that domain.
• An admin created at ROOT level is called ROOT admin and since ROOT is the top domain he has privileges to act on all the resources.
• A Username is unique in a Domain across Accounts in that Domain. The same username can exist in other domains, including subdomains.
• Account name is unique in a domain. The same Account name can exist in other domains, including subdomains.
• Domain name can repeat as long as the full pathname from ROOT is unique. For ex, you can have ROOT/d1, as well as ROOT/foo/d1, and ROOT/bar/d1.
• Resources belong to an Account, not individual users in that account. Billing, resource limits etc are maintained by Account, not users
• CloudStack allows you to create 3 different types of accounts --> admin/domain-admin or user account. All the roles (admin, domain admins and user) are attached at account level.
• Under the account all the users have the same privileges. There are no role based users in one account.
• We can have multiple admins for the same domain.
• All the domains are created under the ROOT domain.