Cisco Cisco Configuration Engine 1.4 Fiche De Données
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DATA SHEET
CISCO CONFIGURATION ENGINE 1.5
The Cisco
®
Configuration Engine provides a unified, secure solution for automating the deployment of Cisco customer
premises equipment (CPE). The Cisco Configuration Engine scalably 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 Cisco 2116 Intelligence Engine]hardware platform and can
be used by Cisco customers to manage as many as 5000 CPE devices, including Cisco routers, Cisco switches, and Cisco PIX devices. The Cisco
Configuration Engine is a self-contained, rack-mountable, one-rack-unit (1-RU) device that requires minimal configuration and can be deployed
without any changes to a customer’s operation or business processes. Cisco Configuration Engine is ready to deploy and accessible through a Web-
based GUI or Web services such as Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).
Service provider or large enterprise customers are faced with similar challenges of deploying and managing large volumes of network devices. This
complexity is further increased when service providers or large enterprises 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, enabling 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), enabling 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 Switch to load balance Cisco IOS Software device connections.
In case of failure, the Cisco Content Switch can be configured to move the connections to another Cisco Configuration Engine appliance.