ACS 5.5 on VM instance to SNS-3515 ACS appliance Migration

[Jerry Montgomery]

Good afternoon, experts,

I have a customer that has 2each VM instances (primary-standby) running on ACS 5.5.

My concern is the following:

·         There is no active SMARTnet contract for these 2each VM instance.

·         EoS and EoL:  http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/security/secure-access-control-system/eos-eol-notice-c51-733079.html

·         End of New Service Attachment is April 14, 2016.

Customer would like to upgrade ACS versions and migrate to SNS-3515 ACS appliances.

·         What is the appropriate SKU to order?

o   ACS-SW-3515-K9

Or

o   ACS-SW-3515-UP-K9

I believe it would be ACS-SW-3515-K9.

Thank you,

Jerry

[kthiruve · Accepted solution]

Hi Jerry,

You need SAS/Smartnet for support. You can upgrade from ACS 5.5 to 5.8 directly that means you can do a backup and restore to ACS 5.8 after install.

Installation and Upgrade Guide for Cisco Secure Access Control System 5.8.1 - Upgrading the Cisco Secure Access Control …

To support SNS-35xx series you need ACS 5.8.1 that is similar to ACS 5.8 but supports secure boot and new hardware appliance such as 35xx. Please see Table 4 for the SKU's from the link below.

Cisco Secure Access Control System 5.8 Bulletin - Cisco

My suggestion is to look at ISE and see if this is something your customer can consider now.

ISE supports 35xx appliance and it supports migration from ACS 5.5 through 5.8 to ISE 2.x. It would be good to think about it since as you might know ACS is EOL'ed as a product and there are promotions that are going on that can be taken advantage of.

ISE ordering guide will have a good information on this

http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/security/identity-services-engine/guide_c07-656177.pdf

Thanks

Krishnan