topic ACS 5.1 - Why so much disk space required ? in Network Access Control

ACS 5.1 - Why so much disk space required ?

Ronald Nutter — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 00:03:17 GMT

We are getting ready to bring up 2 new 5.1 ACS servers to replace our ACS 4.2 configuration.

The documentation says that 512GB of disk space is required for each server. This means we will need to request

1 TB of disk space. The VMware folks in our group are asking why we need so much space when the 4.2 servers are only using 20 gigs including the OS.

Any assistance will be appreciated.

Ron

Re: ACS 5.1 - Why so much disk space required ?

Jagdeep Gambhir — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:37:19 GMT

Hi Ron,
ACS 5 includes "ACS view" for analyzing the logs and the ability to run reports on your logs. ACS View is what requires most of the space so that log data can be stored for an extended period of time and from multiple log sources. We are currently looking at possibly allowing smaller drive sizes in the future for non log targets but nothing at this point is committed. Currently to install ACS 5.1 you will need 500GB of hard drive space.

Regards,

~JG

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ACS 5.1 - Why so much disk space required ?

Joshua Engels — Tue, 28 May 2013 18:14:04 GMT

Any updates on this with 5.4? Also, do I need 500 Gigs for both the primary AND the secondary instance?

Thanks,Josh

ACS 5.1 - Why so much disk space required ?

Jatin Katyal — Tue, 28 May 2013 18:30:32 GMT

Well, you may run one of the instances on the lesser space which only handles authentication. However, I'd recommend you to use 500 GB HDD on both the instances ( authentication and log collector) because you never know when you need to switch it back to primary instance.

More info from the doc:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/net_mgmt/cisco_secure_access_control_system/5.4/installation/guide/csacs_vmware.html

The disk space management mechanism in ACS 5.4 manages the system automatically and configures the available file volumes on the file system per file type, such as local store, logs, configuration, cache, and so on. The actual file size limits are calculated at the time of installation, based on the hard coded relative disk quota configuration (percent based), using the disk size as an input. However, ACS database logs have a fixed size. ACS 5.4 gets installed with a variable hard disk size between 60 GB and 750 GB, based on the disk size that was chosen while creating the VMware instance. If you want to change the size of the ACS disk after the installation, complete the following procedure:

•Back up your data.

•Reimage the ACS application or install a fresh application.

•Restore the backed up data.

In ACS 5.4, the log collector server can be installed on a 60 GB disk space. An ACS view log collector node usually requires more space to maintain a database of logs and reports. Therefore, the recommended disk size for the secondary instance, which acts as a log collector server, is 500 GB.

When you allocate 60 GB for the log collector server, the view database gets only 5.6 GB as total disk space. As a result of this, some of the functionalities may not work properly. The functionalities that may be affected are backup, full backup, incremental backup, logging recovery, purge, database compress operation, and so on.

While creating the VMware instances, make sure that the resources allocated for VMware instances with respect to CPU cores, RAM, and disk, are not more than the actual physical resources of the VMware host server. For example, if the VMware host server has a total number of CPU cores as 10, then the sum of the allocated CPU cores for all the VMware instances that are created on that server should not exceed 10.

Jatin Katyal
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Jatin, Do you know if ACS 5.7

ampm_25 — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 17:10:31 GMT

Jatin,

Do you know if ACS 5.7 still has the requirement of starting with a 500 GB drive for a VM? Basically, I would like to provision in with say a 100 GB drive, and grow as I need it, but I see you said that at least v.5.4 requires a back up/reimage (reinstall)/restore process to change the drive size. I'm trying to see if that's still the case with v.5.7.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Arras

Arras,Unfortunately nothing

Jatin Katyal — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 19:53:09 GMT

Arras,

Unfortunately nothing has changed in this section.

ACS 5.7 gets installed with a variable hard disk size between 60 GB and 750 GB, based on the disk size that was chosen while creating the VMware instance. If you want to change the size of the ACS disk after the installation, complete the following procedure:

1. Back up your data.

2. Reimage the ACS application or install a fresh application.

3. Restore the backed up data.

While restoring the backed up data, a warning message is displayed when the backup size or ACS view database size exceeds the corresponding disk quota. However, the restore operation will not be interrupted. The restore operation fails only when the hard limit of /opt partition size is reached. In ACS 5.7, the log collector server can be installed on a 60 GB disk space. An ACS view log collector node usually requires more space to maintain a database of logs and reports. Therefore, the recommended disk size for the secondary instance, which acts as a log collector server, is 500 GB.

When you allocate 60 GB for the log collector server, the view database gets only 5.7 GB as total disk space. As a result of this, some of the functionalties may not work properly. The functionalities that may be affected are backup, full backup, incremental backup, logging recovery, purge, database compress operation, and so on.

For more information on the same matter, please review:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/net_mgmt/cisco_secure_access_control_system/5-7/installation/guide/csacs_book/csacs_vmware.pdf

Regards,

Jatin

Re: Arras,Unfortunately nothing

vikasmit — Fri, 27 Apr 2018 07:28:11 GMT

Hi Jatin,

I Just want to confirm while taking the backup (In Case of changing the size of the ACS disk after the installation) which type of backup you recommend 1. Application and Application Deployment Engine (ADE) Operating System (OS) Backup OR 2. Application Only Backup

Thanks

Vikas Mittal