Installation and Upgrade Guides › Web Agent Installation Guide for Apache-based servers › Preparation › Policy Server Requirements

Policy Server Requirements

Verify the following criteria:

• Your Policy Server is installed and configured.
• Your Policy server can communicate with the computer where you plan to install the agent.

To install and configure a CA SiteMinder® agent, a Policy Server requires at least the following items:

• A CA SiteMinder® administrator that has the right to register trusted hosts.

  A trusted host is a client computer where one or more CA SiteMinder® Agents are installed and registered with the Policy Server. The CA SiteMinder® administrator must have permissions to register trusted hosts with the Policy Server. Registering a trusted host creates a unique trusted host name object on the Policy Server.

• An Agent identity

  An Agent identity establishes a mapping between the Policy Server and the name or IP address of the web server instance hosting an Agent. You define an Agent identity from the Agents object in the Administrative UI. You assign it a name and specify the Agent type as a Web Agent.

• A Host Configuration Object (HCO)

  The host configuration object on the Policy Server defines the communication between the agent and the Policy Server that occurs after an initial connection. The Initial connections use the parameters in the SmHost.conf file.

• Agent Configuration Object (ACO)

  This object includes the parameters that define the agent configuration. All CA SiteMinder® agents require at least one of the following configuration parameters that are defined in the ACO:

AgentName

Defines the identity of the web agent. This identity links the name and the IP address or FQDN of each web server instance hosting an Agent.

The value of the DefaultAgentName is used instead of the AgentName parameter if any of the following events occur:

• The AgentName parameter is disabled.
• The value of AgentName parameter is empty.
• The values of the AgentName parameter do not match any existing agent object.

Note: This parameter can have more than one value. Use the multivalue option when setting this parameter in an Agent Configuration Object. For local configuration files, add each value to a separate line in the file.

Default: No default

Limit: Multiple values are allowed, but each AgentName parameter has a 4,000 character limit. Create additional AgentName parameters as needed by adding a character to the parameter name. For example, AgentName, AgentName1, AgentName2.

Limits: Must contain 7-bit ASCII characters in the range of 32-127, and include one or more printable characters. Cannot contain the ampersand (&) and asterisk (*) characters. The value is not case-sensitive. For example, the names MyAgent and myagent are treated the same.

Example: myagent1,192.168.0.0 (IPV4)

Example: myagent2, 2001:DB8::/32 (IPV6)

Example: myagent,www.example.com

Example (multiple AgentName parameters): AgentName1, AgentName2, AgentName3. The value of each AgentNamenumber parameter is limited to 4,000 characters.

DefaultAgentName

Defines a name that the agent uses to process requests. The value for DefaultAgentName is used for requests on an IP address or interface when no agent name value exists in the AgentName parameter.

If you are using virtual servers, you can set up your CA SiteMinder® environment quickly by using a DefaultAgentName. Using DefaultAgentName means that you do not need to define a separate agent for each virtual server.

Important! If you do not specify a value for the DefaultAgentName parameter, then the value of the AgentName parameter requires every agent identity in its list. Otherwise, the Policy Server cannot tie policies to the agent.

Default: No default.

Limit: Multiple values are allowed.

Limits: Must contain 7-bit ASCII characters in the range of 32-127, and include one or more printable characters. Cannot contain the ampersand (&) and asterisk (*) characters. The value is not case-sensitive. For example, the names MyAgent and myagent are treated the same.