Chapter 11 Working with User Databases
About External User Databases
11-4
User Guide for Cisco Secure ACS for Windows Server
78-14696-01, Version 3.1
•
Database Replication—Database Replication creates user accounts on a
secondary Cisco Secure ACS by overwriting all existing user accounts on a
secondary Cisco Secure ACS with the user accounts from the primary
Cisco Secure ACS. Any user accounts unique to a secondary
Cisco Secure ACS are lost in the replication. For more information, see
CiscoSecure Database Replication, page 8-9
.
About External User Databases
You can configure Cisco Secure ACS to forward authentication of users to one
external user database or more. Support for external user databases means that
Cisco Secure ACS does not require that you create duplicate user entries in the
CiscoSecure user database. In organizations in which a substantial user database
already exists, Cisco Secure ACS can leverage the work already invested in
building the database without any additional input.
In addition to performing authentication for network access, Cisco Secure ACS
can perform authentication for enable privileges using external user
databases. For more information about enable passwords, see
Setting
Enable Password Options for a User, page 7-35
.
Note
You can only use external users databases to authenticate users and to determine
which group Cisco Secure ACS assigns a user to. The CiscoSecure user database,
internal to Cisco Secure ACS, provides all authorization services. With few
exceptions, Cisco Secure ACS cannot retrieve authorization data from external
user databases. Exceptions are noted where applicable in the discussions of
specific databases in this chapter. For more information about group mapping for
unknown users, see
Database Group Mappings, page 12-11
.
Users can be authenticated using the following databases.
•
Windows NT/2000 User Database
•
Generic LDAP
•
Novell NetWare Directory Services (NDS)
•
Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)-compliant relational databases
•
LEAP Proxy RADIUS servers