Cisco ISE 3.0 OVA file Disk and RAM issue

[laurathaqi]

Dear community, 

I have a small VM license for Cisco ISE 3.0 which as documented requires 32GB RAM. 

Based on documentation, it is stated that for ISE deployment you can reserve starting from 600 to 2TB Disk. So I decided to use 1200GB OVA file which is listed on the official site. 

However, when deploying the OVA file of 1200GB, it automatically allocated 96GB RAM. Which leads to a Medium VM ISE deployment, and this is what I do not have, as I have small license VM. 

My question is, do you know if there is an issue if I change manually the VM GB of RAM to 32GB, as per the small VM documentation? or Should I proceed with the 600GB of Storage OVA file from Scratch? 

Any thoughts would be highly appreciated. 

Thank you,

Laura 

[balaji.bandi]

I do not see any isseu changing the RAM and see if the performance, changing the disk required re-image from scratch as per ISE, may be different case with ISE 3.0

[laurathaqi]

Hi @balaji.bandi 

Thanks for the thoughts! 

That is the plan for now. However, in general, I wanted to know if there will be any issues deploying the OVA image of 1200(Medium VM) in a Planned Small VM. Keeping in mind that RAM will be decreased to 32GB and also CPU will be set based on a Small VM specification. What I am not sure is, if something else(other checks) will cause issues that are not documented in the official documentation or not though per this use case.

In general I could have just use the .iso file and allocate the 1200GB of Disk manually. However, I was recommended to go with the .OVA file. And since there was no available 1200GB OVA file for Small VM, I used the 1200GB OVA file of Medium VM. After the OVA file deploy I see 96GB RAM allocated automatically. 

I am going to proceed with manual decrease of RAM and see is the VM license gets accepted or any performance issues seen. As the license is checked based on RAM and CPU. Wondering if there is any other check done from the image application/system for VM license that leads to pass or fail license allocation!?

Best,

Laura 

[Marcelo Morais · Accepted solution]

Hi @laurathaqi ,

 if you have a Small VM License, then the recommendation is:

PS.: as soon as you are installing ISE 3.0, you have the option to use the feature Health Check (Administration > System > Health Check) to validate your deployment after any changes, for example:

Note: this is an example of a LAB with a small disk, that's why the Platform Support Check didn't pass !!!

Hope this helps !!!

[balaji.bandi]

was bit late here  - As other poster noted - you should choose the smaller VM with lower HDD and RAM should able to meet the requirement.

[Damien Miller · Accepted solution]

The disk space does not matter as long as it is more than 300 GB (recommended minimum). If you want to use less disk space, then a reinstall is required as others have pointed out but keeping it as 600/1200 GB will not cause problems. 

You can shut down the VM, adjust the memory and CPU, boot it back up, and the node will pick up the new platform properties. Once online I would recommend running the ISE counters report to make sure it shows up as SNS_3615 and not a legacy platform type such as UCS small/large or evaluation. Remember to also adjust the reservations for memory and mhz so you don't waste anything more than you have to on the host. 

[laurathaqi]

Hi all, 

Thank you for the information provided. Your support and information lead me towards answering my questions. I will be testing this tomorrow and see how it goes. 

I will update you for the progress latest tomorrow.

Many thanks and best wishes,

Laura 

[laurathaqi]

Dear community, 

I deployed the OVA files and done the tests based on small VM specs of 32GB RAM and 16CPU. And even thoughts 1200GB Disk OVA was meant for Medium to Large appliances, it registered as Small appliance, based on these two spec(RAM and CPU). 

A weird issue happened when I tried to put two appliances in HA setup. Cert import went all good. ISE 2 registered in ISE 1 Deployment page, and when the process of restart took place after this, appliance ISE1 Application Server is stuck in initialization stage since hours now. 

I did actions of: application stop, start, and reload, restart VM but none lead to successful Application server running status. All other services in the "show application status ise" are running ok.

Do you have have any idea why this is happening and if it has any relation to the previous doubts of OVA file I had? 

Thank you,

Laura