Cisco Systems OL-24201-01 manual ACS Licensing Model, ACS Management Interfaces, Acs

Chapter 1 Introducing ACS 5.3

ACS Licensing Model

ACS 4.x did not provide incremental replication, only full replication, and there was service downtime for replication. ACS 5.3 provides incremental replications with no service downtime.

You can also force a full replication to the secondary instance if configuration changes do not replicate it. Full replication is used when a new secondary instance is registered and other cases when the replication gap between the secondary instance and the primary instance is significant.

Table 1-1lists some of the differences between ACS 4.x and 5.3 replication.

Table 1-1 Differences Between ACS 4.x and 5.3 Replication

ACS 4.x	ACS 5.3
You can choose the data items to be replicated.	You cannot choose the data items to be replicated.
	All data items, by default are replicated.
Supports multi-level or cascading replication.	Supports only a fixed flat replication. Cascading
	replication is not supported.
Some data items such as, the external database	All data items are replicated except Database key,
configurations are not replicated.	Database certificate and Master keys. The server
	certificates, CSRs, and private keys are replicated
	but they are not shown in the interface.

For more information about setting up a distributed deployment, see Configuring System Operations, page 17-1.

Note Network Address Translation (NAT) is not supported in ACS distributed deployment environment. That is, if a primary or secondary instance’s network address is translated then the database replication may not work properly, and displays a shared secret mismatch error.

ACS Licensing Model

You must have a valid license to operate ACS; ACS prompts you to install a valid base license when you first access the web interface. Each server requires a unique base license in a distributed deployment.

For information about the types of licenses you can install, see Types of Licenses, page 18-34.For more information about licenses, see Licensing Overview, page 18-34.

Related Topic

•ACS Distributed Deployment, page 1-2

ACS Management Interfaces

This section contains the following topics:

•ACS Web-based Interface, page 1-4

•ACS Command Line Interface, page 1-4

•ACS Programmatic Interfaces, page 1-5

User Guide for Cisco Secure Access Control System 5.3

OL-24201-01 1-3