Requirements for Using BCAAA with PacketShaper

Requirements for Using BCAAA with PacketShaper

Revision Date: July 2013

This document describes the requirements for using the Blue Coat Authentication
and Authorization Agent (BCAAA) with PacketShaper.
Topics in this document:
❐ "What’s New in BCAAA 6.1" on page 1
❐ "BCAAA Operating System Requirements" on page 1
❐ "BCAAA Disk Space Requirements" on page 2
❐ "Planning for your BCAAA Installation" on page 2
❐ "Installing BCAAA" on page 2
❐ "About the BCAAA Upgrade/Downgrade Process" on page 3

What’s New in BCAAA 6.1

BCAAA version 6.1 is required when using the user awareness feature in
PacketWise 9.2.2; it includes support for Active Directory users and groups. If you
were using an earlier version of BCAAA with PacketWise 9.2.1, you must install
the new version for PacketWise 9.2.2.
The new BCAAA Setup wizard has been enhanced, eliminating the need to do
extra configuration after running the installer. You no longer need to configure the
BCAAA service to work with Windows, nor do you need to enable Domain
Controller Querying in the SSO.INI file.
The BCAAA-PacketShaper communication port on your Windows server firewall
needs to be opened up for BCAAA to work. The BCAAA Setup wizard now has
an option for configuring this setting.

BCAAA Operating System Requirements

You must install BCAAA on a Windows Domain Controller (DC) or other
member server (running version Windows 2008 or 2012). When deciding where to
install BCAAA, keep in mind that it must be able to contact every DC that
contains user login sessions for the users you are authenticating. Therefore, you
should try to keep BCAAA on the same subnet as the DC whenever possible to
avoid excess WAN bandwidth usage.

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BCAAA Disk Space Requirements

Make sure that you have at least 45 MB of disk space on your Windows server to
accommodate the BCAAA files. Although some versions of BCAAA might
require less than 45 MB of disk space, allocating 45 MB of disk space will address
the needs to complete the BCAAA installation process.
PacketShaper uses Windows Single Sign On (SSO) with Domain Controller Query
(DCQ). For each concurrent login, you will need to add 256 bytes to your disk
space requirement. For example, if 1000 users will be concurrently logged in to the
Windows domain during peak hours, then this feature requires an extra 256K (256
bytes record * 1000 concurrently logged in users).

Planning for your BCAAA Installation

It’s important to size your BCAAA installation appropriately when preparing to
use the user awareness feature. To ensure that BCAAA can service all the queries
from PacketShaper, Blue Coat recommends the following BCAAA-to-
PacketShaper ratios:
• Install one instance of BCAAA per PacketShaper, for any number of
supported hosts.
or
• Multiple PacketShapers can share a single BCAAA server if the number of
active hosts on each PacketShaper is less than or equal to the user cache
size for that model. The cache size is equivalent to three times the
supported number of users.
Disregarding these recommendations could overload the BCAAA server,
resulting in BCAAA being unable to respond to PacketShaper IP-user queries. See
Configuration Limits in PacketGuide for per-model specifications.

Note: To prevent any impact on ProxySG authentication functionality,

PacketShaper should not share a BCAAA server with a ProxySG.

Installing BCAAA
For detailed instructions on installing BCAAA, see the following topic in
PacketGuide:
https://bto.bluecoat.com/packetguide/9.2/nav/tasks/configure/install-
bcaaa.htm

BCAAA Troubleshooting
For information, warning, and error messages pertaining to BCAAA, you can
look at the Windows Application Event Log.
1. Right-click My Computer and select Manage.
2. Select System Tools > Event Viewer > Windows Logs > Application
Look for messages with BCAAA listed in the Source column.

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Note: Although some of the BCAAA messages refer to ProxySG, these messages
apply to PacketShaper as well.

For additional troubleshooting tools and solutions, see the following topic in
PacketGuide:
https://bto.bluecoat.com/packetguide/9.2/info/bcaaa-troubleshooting.htm

About the BCAAA Upgrade/Downgrade Process

Before upgrading to, or downgrading from, your current PacketWise version, you
must first install the BCAAA version required for the release you are migrating to.
The latest version of BCAAA, version 6.1, can be used with PacketWise versions
9.2.1 and 9.2.2. Prior versions of PacketWise did not have support for user
awareness so they don’t need BCAAA.
Upgrade Notes
❐ BCAAA 6.1 introduces changes in BCAAA installation. All previous BCAAA
installations must be uninstalled before installing BCAAA 6.1. If you try to
install BCAAA version 6.1 before removing the previous version, you will
receive an error. The uninstall process retains the .ini files from previous
BCAAA installations to preserve any customer changes.
❐ Before upgrading BCAAA, you should stop the BCAAA service. You may
want to schedule downtime to perform the installation during off-peak hours.

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