Cisco ISE lab Requirement

[MD_SHAHNAWAZ]

Hey Team,

This is the requirement to setup a lab of cico ISE, I have on SNS-3595-K9 ise box with me and i am not sure what other devices i need...please help me what other devices are required to setup a ISE lab.

MD

[Damien Miller]

This is really your decision and comes down to your end goals. You can run all ISE features on a single box, but you won't be able to lab up failure scenarios that requires HA.

So here are some of the things you need to consider.
What is the goal of the ISE lab?
Based on your goals, do you need network hardware?
If you need network hardware, what's available to you? Routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, WSA's etc.

When I build an ISE lab for a client deployment, it usually consists of any production standard equipment that they have in the environment. I find it very important to test use cases and functionality across the various platforms. You start with bug scrubs, move to proving out that equipment in the lab, validating that the software selected has no critical issues. Eventually you move to a pilot in production, if all is good then you have done your job and it's time to roll out a bit wider. In a perfect world the lab environment would mimic production perfectly, we're never usually that lucky.

On a much smaller scale, I carry a mini ISE lab around on my laptop, I have a domain controller and an ISE node running in VMware workstation. It helps when I need to test something configuration related where endpoint testing isn't needed.

[MD_SHAHNAWAZ]

Damien,

Thanks you so much for help.

What is the goal of the ISE lab?

ANS: this ISE lab we will use as non prod because we have one production setup as well.
Based on your goals, do you need network hardware? 

ANS: Yes.
If you need network hardware, what's available to you? Routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, WSA's etc.

ANS: I have 9K switches WLC and asa firewall in spare in our lab so we can use them.

and i want to know what would be the hardware requirement for this.

[RaffyLindogan · Accepted solution]

Hi mate,

If your goal is to simulate the prod environment for lab, you have to consider the following:

 1. What version are you running for ISE in prod.

 2. What type of deployment (How many admin/mnt and psn nodes)

 3. What services will you enable (NAC, Posture, Device administration, etc..)

Most of the devices can run virtual now (e.g. routers, firewalls, etc.) but switch is still recommended to be hardware.

This link by @howon might help you in considering how to scale your lab:

 https://community.cisco.com/t5/security-documents/ise-performance-amp-scale/ta-p/3642148

Cheers,

Raffy