The authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) features allows you to verify the identity of, grant access to, and track the actions of users who manage Cisco Nexus devices. The Cisco Nexus device supports Remote Access Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) or Terminal Access Controller Access Control device Plus (TACACS+) protocols.

Based on the user ID and password that you provide, the switches perform local authentication or authorization using the local database or remote authentication or authorization using one or more AAA servers. A preshared secret key provides security for communication between the switch and AAA servers. You can configure a common secret key for all AAA servers or for only a specific AAA server.

AAA security provides the following services:

• Authentication—Identifies users, including login and password dialog, challenge and response, messaging support, and, encryption depending on the security protocol that you select.

• Authorization—Provides access control.

  Authorization to access a Cisco Nexus device is provided by attributes that are downloaded from AAA servers. Remote security servers, such as RADIUS and TACACS+, authorize users for specific rights by associating attribute-value (AV) pairs, which define those rights with the appropriate user.

• Accounting—Provides the method for collecting information, logging the information locally, and sending the information to the AAA server for billing, auditing, and reporting.

Note	The Cisco NX-OS software supports authentication, authorization, and accounting independently. For example, you can configure authentication and authorization without configuring accounting.

AAA provides the following benefits:

• Increased flexibility and control of access configuration

• Scalability

• Standardized authentication methods, such as RADIUS and TACACS+

• Multiple backup devices

Remote AAA services provided through RADIUS and TACACS+ protocols have the following advantages over local AAA services:

• User password lists for each switch in the fabric are easier to manage.

• AAA servers are already deployed widely across enterprises and can be easily used for AAA services.

• The accounting log for all switches in the fabric can be centrally managed.

• User attributes for each switch in the fabric are easier to manage than using the local databases on the switches.

You can specify remote AAA servers for authentication, authorization, and accounting using server groups. A server group is a set of remote AAA servers that implement the same AAA protocol. A server group provides for failover servers if a remote AAA server fails to respond. If the first remote server in the group fails to respond, the next remote server in the group is tried until one of the servers sends a response. If all the AAA servers in the server group fail to respond, that server group option is considered a failure. If required, you can specify multiple server groups. If a switch encounters errors from the servers in the first group, it tries the servers in the next server group.

On Cisco Nexus devices, you can have separate AAA configurations for the following services:

• User Telnet or Secure Shell (SSH) login authentication

• Console login authentication

• User management session accounting

The following table lists the CLI commands for each AAA service configuration option.

You can specify the following authentication methods for the AAA services:

• RADIUS server groups—Uses the global pool of RADIUS servers for authentication.

• Specified server groups—Uses specified RADIUS or TACACS+ server groups for authentication.

• Local—Uses the local username or password database for authentication.

• None—Uses only the username.

Note

If the method is for all RADIUS servers, instead of a specific server group, the Cisco Nexus devices choose the RADIUS server from the global pool of configured RADIUS servers in the order of configuration. Servers from this global pool are the servers that can be selectively configured in a RADIUS server group on the Cisco Nexus devices.

The following table describes the AAA authentication methods that you can configure for the AAA services.

Note	For console login authentication, user login authentication, and user management session accounting, the Cisco Nexus devices try each option in the order specified. The local option is the default method when other configured options fail.

The authentication and authorization process for user login is as occurs:

• When you log in to the required Cisco Nexus device, you can use the Telnet, SSH, Fabric Manager or Device Manager, or console login options.

• When you have configured the AAA server groups using the server group authentication method, the Cisco Nexus device sends an authentication request to the first AAA server in the group as follows:

  If the AAA server fails to respond, then the next AAA server is tried and so on until the remote server responds to the authentication request.

  If all AAA servers in the server group fail to respond, the servers in the next server group are tried.

  If all configured methods fail, the local database is used for authentication.

• If a Cisco Nexus device successfully authenticates you through a remote AAA server, the following conditions apply:

  If the AAA server protocol is RADIUS, user roles specified in the cisco-av-pair attribute are downloaded with an authentication response.

  If the AAA server protocol is TACACS+, another request is sent to the same server to get the user roles specified as custom attributes for the shell.

• If your username and password are successfully authenticated locally, the Cisco Nexus device logs you in and assigns you the roles configured in the local database.

The following figure shows a flowchart of the authentication and authorization process.

Note	"No more server groups left" means that there is no response from any server in all server groups. "No more servers left" means that there is no response from any server within this server group.

Remote AAA servers have the following prerequisites:

• At least one RADIUS or TACACS+ server must be IP reachable.

• The Cisco Nexus device is configured as a client of the AAA servers.

• The preshared secret key is configured on the Cisco Nexus device and on the remote AAA servers.

• The remote server responds to AAA requests from the Cisco Nexus device.

You can use vendor-specific attributes (VSAs) to specify the Cisco Nexus device user roles and SNMPv3 parameters on AAA servers.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) draft standard specifies a method for communicating VSAs between the network access server and the RADIUS server. The IETF uses attribute 26. VSAs allow vendors to support their own extended attributes that are not suitable for general use. The Cisco RADIUS implementation supports one vendor-specific option using the format recommended in the specification. The Cisco vendor ID is 9, and the supported option is vendor type 1, which is named cisco-av-pair. The value is a string with the following format:

protocol : attribute seperator value *

The protocol is a Cisco attribute for a particular type of authorization, separator is an equal sign (=) for mandatory attributes, and an asterisk (* ) indicates optional attributes.

When you use RADIUS servers for authentication on a Cisco Nexus device, the RADIUS protocol directs the RADIUS server to return user attributes, such as authorization information, with authentication results. This authorization information is specified through VSAs.

The following VSA protocol options are supported by the Cisco Nexus device:

• Shell— Used in access-accept packets to provide user profile information.

• Accounting—Used in accounting-request packets. If a value contains any white spaces, put it within double quotation marks.

The following attributes are supported by the Cisco Nexus device:

• roles—Lists all the roles assigned to the user. The value field is a string that stores the list of group names delimited by white space.

• accountinginfo—Stores additional accounting information in addition to the attributes covered by a standard RADIUS accounting protocol. This attribute is sent only in the VSA portion of the Account-Request frames from the RADIUS client on the switch, and it can only be used with the accounting protocol-related PDUs.

You can use the VSA cisco-av-pair on AAA servers to specify user role mapping for the Cisco Nexus device using this format:

shell:roles="roleA roleB …"

If you do not specify the role option in the cisco-av-pair attribute, the default user role is network-operator.

Note	For information on Cisco Unified Wireless Network TACACS+ configurations and to change the user roles, see Cisco Unified Wireless Network TACACS+ Configuration.

You can also specify your SNMPv3 authentication and privacy protocol attributes as follows:

shell:roles="roleA roleB..." snmpv3:auth=SHA priv=AES-128 

The SNMPv3 authentication protocol options are SHA and MD5. The privacy protocol options are AES-128 and DES. If you do not specify these options in the cisco-av-pair attribute, MD5 and DES are the default authentication protocols.

For additional information, see the Configuring User Accounts and RBAC chapter in the System Management Configuration Guide for your Cisco Nexus device.

The following example shows how to configure AAA:

 switch(config)# aaa authentication login default group radius

 switch(config)# aaa authentication login console group radius

 switch(config)# aaa accounting default group radius

The following table lists the default settings for AAA parameters.