Cisco Secure Solution Engine | Cisco Access Control Security: AAA Administration Services

An appliance version of Cisco Secure ACS exists. The Cisco Secure Solution Engine is a rack mountable, dedicated platform that provides nearly the same functionality as the Windows versions of Cisco Secure ACS. The Cisco Secure Solution Engine version 3.2 is a hardened operating system that is built on the Windows 2000 kernel; however, you do not have the ability to connect a mouse and keyboard to it. Only the services that are necessary for the Solution Engine to function are enabled, and you do not have access to the file system. In addition to the kernel being locked down, the ports that are open are also restricted to those that are required by the Solution Engine to perform its required task.

Certain features are a little different with the appliance as opposed to the software versions of Cisco Secure ACS. These include the following:

Authentication Authentication against Windows domain requires an agent to be running on the domain controller. A new ancillary software called a remote agent is used for this. Authentication against ODBC source is not supported.
Remote logging Accounting information is logged to a remote Windows or Solaris server.
User database synchronization User DB synchronization with ODBC source is not supported. Instead, the administrator can configure the Cisco Secure ACS appliance to synchronize its user DB with a CSV file on an FTP server.
ODBC logging ODBC logging is not supported. You should use remote logging instead.
Backup/restore Backup/restore is performed to the remote FTP server.
Diagnostics A package of gathered diagnostics is sent to the FTP server.

The Cisco Secure Solution Engine is a rack mountable 1U box with an Intel ISP 1100 motherboard, 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 processor with 1 GB memory, and two 10/100 Ethernet interfaces. The Solution Engine also has a 40 GB Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) hard drive, a floppy drive, and a CD-ROM. A serial interface is also present. The parallel port, video, keyboard, and mouse controllers are not used.