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NAC Profiler without collectors

r.canchela
Level 1
Level 1

Can I deploy NAC profiler server in standalone mode without any collectors and use it just to collect endpoints information?

5 Replies 5

Faisal Sehbai
Level 7
Level 7

Ray,

Profiler server only collects information from the Collectors, so yes you could deploy it, but it wouldn't be of much use then :-)

HTH,

Faisal

Hi Faisal,

Thanks for the reply...

Customer is not ready for full NAC deployment at this time, budget and network complexity reasons. They have a large network, more or less 20K endpoints and they want to do this on a phase by phase basis but wants to start collecting endpoints information only.

Thanks agian,

Rey

Ray,

Yep. Confirmed. You can't have data being sent to NPS without collectors.

HTH,

Faisal

Follow up on this - we're designing a Cisco Secure Access Control Server/System (ACS) solution for a customer, and want to give them an option for supplementing their deployment with a NAC Profiler (for the benefit of automatically discovering and profiling new network-attached devices so that ACS can become aware and activate an appropriate security policy.  (This is my understanding at this point - really, the only benefit in the NAC Profiler solution alongside ACS is that it prevents having to manually identify non-802.1x-capable devices to the system, and add them to an appropriate ACS security.  SO, an administrative time-saver.)  So, my questions:

1) Is the above true?  The NAC Profiler appliances are VERY expensive, obviously, and I want to be able to clearly define/justify their value to the customer before presenting.

2) Regarding the Collector(s), the NAC Profiler configuration guide indicates that the Collector is actually a "service" of a NAC Server.  If this was true, and you had to purchase an actual NAC Server (even though you're not going to do NAC client posturing), does this also suggest you need to deploy a NAC Manager as well (since this is the only means to manage the NAC Server)?   I'm guessing "no" to this, and I noticed on the Cisco Dynamic Configuration Tool that there are separate line items for NAC Collector appliances, but  need confirmation on this.

Thank you.

1) That's right - when integrated with ACS, the NAC Profiler is basically used for automated discovery of non-802.1x devices for MAB.

2) Collectors use the same hardware as a NAC server (and can run together on the same box) - but if you're just integrating it with ACS, implementing NAC (with the NAC manager, etc) isn't required.

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