3.11.1 Installation Overview and Prerequisites

Access Manager Appliance offers a simplified deployment model. The entire product is deployed as an appliance in a single-box form factor. For more information, see Installing Access Manager Appliancein the NetIQ Access Manager Appliance 4.4 Installation and Upgrade Guide.

The primary purpose of Access Manager Appliance is to protect resources by allowing access only to users you have authorized. You can control access to web (HTTP) resources and traditional server-based (non-HTTP) resources. As shown in the following illustration, the users who are authorized to use the protected resources are allowed access, while unauthorized users are denied access.

The following diagram illustrates how the sample portal is integrated with Access Manager Appliance.

Access Manager Appliance secures your protected web resources from Internet hackers. The addresses of the servers that host the protected resources are hidden from both external and internal users. The only way to access the resources is by logging in to Access Manager Appliance with authorized credentials.

In the Identity Server Cluster option, the configuration assigned to Identity Server that is the default IDP-Cluster is displayed. This establishes the trust relationship between Access Gateway and Identity Server that is used for authentication. In the Reverse Proxy List NAM-RP, which is the default reverse proxy, is listed.

You can see the IP address of Access Gateway installed in the Access Gateways page. The health of configured Access Gateway is green. This example uses namapp.com as the published DNS name to access your sample web portal site. This DNS name resolves the IP address set up as the listening address. When you edit the Reverse Proxy / Authentication, you can see that it is already configured.