6.1 Access Manager Appliance Overview and Prerequisites
This section discusses the concepts involved in installing Access Manager Appliance to protect the Web portal:
After you go through this portal, you should understand the basic features of Access Manager Appliance and know how the software is used to protect your own Web servers and applications.
6.1.1 Overview
Access Manager Appliance offers a simplified deployment model. The Access Manager components are deployed as an appliance in a single‐box form factor. For more information, see Installing the Access Manager Appliance
in the NetIQ Access Manager Appliance 3.2 SP3 Installation 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 as well as traditional server-based (non-HTTP) resources. As shown in the following illustration, those users who are authorized to use the protected resources are allowed access, while unauthorized users are denied access.
The following diagram illustrates how the default web portal is integrated with the 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.
You can see the IP address of the Access Gateway installed in the Access Gateways window. The health of the configured Access Gateway is Green. The published DNS name to access your sample web portal site, in this example uses namapp.com. This DNS name resolves the IP address set up as the listening address. When you edit the , you can see that it is already configured.
In the option, the configuration assigned to the Identity Server that is the default IDP-Cluster is displayed. This establishes the trust relationship between the Access Gateway and the Identity Server that is used for authentication. In the NAM-RP which is the default reverse proxy is listed.
6.1.2 Prerequisites
Before starting with the default web portal, you must perform the following tasks:
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Enable pop-ups on a Mozilla Firefox browser or Internet Explorer browser (7.x or above) for managing and configuring the Access Manager Appliance components.
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Install the NetIQ Access Manager Appliance as described in the NetIQ Access Manager Appliance 3.2 SP3 Installation Guide.