topic Re: ISE Backup--Disk space requirement in Network Access Control

ISE Backup--Disk space requirement

hsangral — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 18:27:24 GMT

Hello,

Does ISE stage the backup before it copies it to an external repository, IF yes is there a fix disk space allocated for staging the backup File , As far as i know ACS had 50% disk allocation for staging backups but thats is not the case with ISE.

If the backups are staged before they are transferred, what is the minimum free Disk space requirement for ISE

Re: ISE Backup--Disk space requirement

Nadav — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 18:37:23 GMT

ISE 2.4? Don't think so, it creates the backup locally and then transfers it to the repository.

Just the other day someone created a thread here asking a similar question:

https://community.cisco.com/t5/identity-services-engine-ise/backup-staging-url-ise/td-p/3830564

The configuration backups themselves are generally small (less than 1GB in my experience). It's the operational data backups that take up a great deal of space.

Re: ISE Backup--Disk space requirement

hsangral — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 19:13:17 GMT

Yes that was my question and backup-staging has been removed from ISE after 1.2.

So there is no staging of the backup before transfer?

Re: ISE Backup--Disk space requirement

Nadav — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 19:20:55 GMT

There is staging in the sense that the backup is created, compressed and only then sent to the repository. But it's performed entirely within the PAN.

Re: ISE Backup--Disk space requirement

Damien Miller — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 19:23:56 GMT

There has to be staging of the backup at some point because the files need to be built in to a TAR and then GZIP'd and encrypted. Like Nadav said, config backups are generally manageable. Some of the largest deployments I have seen are still around 2-4 GB.

If you were taking an operation backup, then the MNT node should have the capacity "reserved" to handle the file creation/save before transfer. MNT uses something like 60% of provisioned disk space for RADIUS/TACACS logs, and the rest for the system. One of the reasons is likely to avoid issues when you take an operational backup too.