topic Re: ISE upgrade 3.3 to 3.4 any problem in Network Access Control

ISE upgrade 3.3 to 3.4 any problem

DellBananaALK — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 20:33:50 GMT

anybody have problems upgrading ISE upgrade 3.3 to 3.4 any problem

Re: ISE upgrade 3.3 to 3.4 any problem

Karsten Iwen — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 21:05:45 GMT

This particular upgrade hasn't caused any problems so far. Make sure your deployment is stable and free of health issues.

My deployments range from 2 to 4 nodes. For these, I still prefer the upgrade from the CLI because the visibility into the process is quite good.

Re: ISE upgrade 3.3 to 3.4 any problem

Arne Bier — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 22:52:50 GMT

I had a successful two node upgrade using the GUI.

On another larger deployment, I also used the GUI and it was 100% successful. All nodes synced and everything working. The wheels came off when I did the last step, by promoting the Standby PAN to Primary again. After the usual wait and restarts, the PAN was Primary, but all its registered nodes had red icons and were not in sync. Had to manually sync them. Since then I have a "cosmetic" bug about reoccuring failed synced objects. The upgrade has also broken the CRL download for my Trusted Certs - I have ISE web Proxy configured, and I had the internal PKI domains bypassed in the proxy settings - I suspect that they broke the ISE proxy stuff - and that's why the CRL download is failing. I have a TAC case for both these issues and no resolution. Not service impacting - but I think that the "gold star" means very little these days. Simple things like this should not be happening - I would forgive Cisco if their new features were not quite working yet - but I lose fait in the quality of this product when they keep breaking old features that used to work.

Re: ISE upgrade 3.3 to 3.4 any problem

PSM — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 09:31:22 GMT

Recently upgraded a large deployment using CLI method. That's the method I trust and feel comfortable while upgrading. All nodes went well except one of the PSN. It got stuck on the following step.

XXXX-psn1/iseadmin#application upgrade proceed
Initiating Application Upgrade...
% Warning: Do not use Ctrl-C or close this terminal window until upgrade completes.
STEP 1: Stopping ISE application...

Did application upgrade clean up when it didn't recover. When tried to reset the application config, that also got stuck.

TAC looked into and found some locks getting applied. They tried to clear locks manually from root access.

But ultimately we had to reimage the PSN using bootable USB.

Re: ISE upgrade 3.3 to 3.4 any problem

hunnymonster — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 09:13:30 GMT

No issue here going from 3.2p6 to 3.4p1 (as it was at the time). Biggest thing was the massively reduced startup time (versus 3.2)

Re: ISE upgrade 3.3 to 3.4 any problem

klnnnnng — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 11:04:36 GMT

It is good to hear that your ISE deployment upgrades via CLI and GUI are running smoothly. Interesting that Cisco recommends the Backup and Restore method.

Re: ISE upgrade 3.3 to 3.4 any problem

DellBananaALK — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 13:57:18 GMT

do you have the link for best practice I need to upgrade 3.3 to 3.4

Re: ISE upgrade 3.3 to 3.4 any problem

Marcelo Morais — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 01:03:33 GMT

@DellBananaALK ,

please take a look at: Cisco Identity Services Engine Upgrade Journey, Release 3.4.

Hope this helps !

Re: ISE upgrade 3.3 to 3.4 any problem

Manuel25 — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 17:58:36 GMT

Yes, i tried to upgrade from 3.3 patch 8 to 3.4 patch 3 via the GUI. First i tried the full upgrade, all prechecks and URT looked fine, but the GUI never came up. So i reimaged the ISE with 3.3 ISO to try the Split Upgrade path. Everything prior the upgrade looked fine again, then the upgrade run through for Secondary PAN and it failed to come up again. Its only reachable via putty and when you try to start the Application ise again it displays "application failed to start" after 10-20 seconds. I think i will reimage the ISE just with 3.4 iso to not run into these kinda issues..

Re: ISE upgrade 3.3 to 3.4 any problem

Marcelo Morais — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 02:19:38 GMT

@Manuel25 ,

for Major release upgrade (from 3.3 to 3.4, for example), I always prefer the Reimage & Backup/Restore strategy !

Hope this helps !