## About Cisco Key Management Center

The Cisco Key Management Center (Cisco KMC) is the centralized management system that stores the key database for active and archived keys. The keys stored in the Cisco KMC are not usable without the master key. To manage the potential increase in tape volume keys, SME provides the option to store the tape volume key on the tape itself. In this case, the Cisco KMC stores the tape volume group keys.

This option exponentially increases the number of managed tapes by reducing the number of keys stored on the Cisco KMC. However, this option also restricts the capability of purging keys at a later time.

The Cisco KMC provides the following advantages:

• Centralized key management to archive, purge, recover, and distribute tape keys.

• Integrated into DCNM-SAN Server depending on the deployment requirements.

• Integrated access controls using AAA mechanisms.

Note The Cisco KMC listens for key updates and retrieves requests from switches on a TCP port. The default port is 8800; however, the port number can be modified in the smeserver.properties file.