Currently, there is an unprecedented need for scalable high performance storage and data management, partly due to the wide use of cloud computing. Large distributed storage systems have been developed to satisfy this need for scalable high performance storage and data management. Some of these large distributed storage systems may support a number of tenants, each of which may include one or more clients. Such large distributed storage systems provide isolated storage services to the different tenants. In order to provide these isolated storage services, the distributed storage systems utilize authentication schemes so that each tenant can access the storage services dedicated to that tenant. Some of the distributed storage systems require each tenant to use a provider specific authentication scheme.
Although isolated storage services are desired for most situations involving tenants, there are situations where it may be desirable to share at least some of the storage services for a particular tenant with clients external to that particular tenant. In addition, having the tenants convert to a provider specific authentication scheme is often inconvenient and sometimes impossible.
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