Cisco Cisco Configuration Engine 1.4 Hoja De Datos

Data Sheet

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Cisco Configuration Engine 2.0

The Cisco

Configuration Engine provides a unified, secure solution for automating the

deployment of Cisco customer premises equipment (CPE). This scalable product distributes

device and service configuration files and software images to one device or a group of devices,

thereby reducing operating costs and deployment time to enable new services and customers.

The Cisco Configuration Engine is a highly scalable software application running on a Solaris or

Linux server; with this application customers can manage CPE devices, including Cisco routers,

Cisco switches, and Cisco PIX

devices. Cisco Configuration Engine is accessible through a web-

based GUI or web services such as XML and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).

Service provider and large enterprise customers face similar challenges of deploying and

managing large volumes of network devices. This complexity is further increased when they

introduce integrated managed enterprise service applications such as IP communications,

security, and VPNs. Traditionally, customers deploy management products from hardware

vendors, which often do not meet operational challenges for managing the service-oriented

network.

The Cisco Configuration Engine architecture addresses customers' operational concerns such as

scalability, performance, programmatic interfaces, and the flexibility to customize CPE

deployments to meet their business and operation requirements. Adapting to standards-based web

and networking technologies, the Cisco Configuration Engine supports a highly scalable, available,

distributed, and fault-tolerant architecture, allowing customers to customize core components to

meet their requirements. Figure 1 shows a high-level overview of a fault-tolerant, distributed Cisco

Configuration Engine implementation.

Cisco IOS

Software devices connect to the Cisco Configuration Engine through persistent and

secure TCP connections over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), facilitating the distribution of device

and service configuration to thousands of devices in minutes. The Cisco Configuration Engine is

shipped with all the necessary software components and an embedded data repository to quickly

begin managing devices. As shown in Figure 1, customers managing large volumes of Cisco

devices can adapt a distributed, highly available, fault-tolerant architecture with no single point of

failure.

In this scenario, all Cisco Configuration Engines can share a common external data repository,

which can be duplicated for redundancy. Because Cisco IOS Software devices connect to the

Cisco Configuration Engine through persistent TCP connections, a Cisco Configuration Engine

failure will lead to a loss of connectivity. Customers can optionally deploy a Cisco Content

Switching Module to load balance Cisco IOS Software device connections and then configure the

switch to move the connections to another Cisco Configuration Engine appliance if failure occurs.

Figure 1. High-Level Overview of a Cisco Configuration Engine Implementation