Cisco ISE installed directly on CIMC Unsupported hardware detected

[kkhee5665]

Hi All,

I bought a refurbished Cisco SNS 3595 from vendor, but there is no ISE software inside, so I downloaded the software and installed it from CIMC, but there is "Unsupported hardware detected"

Cisco ISE: ise-2.7.0.356.SPA.x86_64.iso

Any help / inputs will be much appreciated.

[marce1000]

 - Ref : https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/ise/2-7/release_notes/b_ise_27_RN.html#id_64711

                       Check if you have Cisco SNS-3595-K9 (large)

 M.

[kkhee5665]

Hi Marce1000,

Please can you teach me how to view the hardware platform。 Sorry, I am not familiar with Cisco ISE.

My Secs is Cisco SNS-3595-K9
-Cisco UCS C220 M4
- Dual socket Intel Xeon E5-2640 v3 series CPU @ 2.60GHz, 8 total cores, 8*2 total threads
- 64 GB RAM
- 4 x 600-GB disks
- RAID 10
- 6 GbE network interfaces

[Greg Gibbs]

If this is truly an SNS-3595 appliance (and not just a standard UCS C220 M4 server), maybe the previous owner was running CS-ACS on it instead of ISE. You might try following the instructions in the "Upgrade the BIOS and Cisco IMC Firmware" section of the Hardware Installation Guide to ensure it is running the ISE compatible BIOS and IMC Firmware images.

[kkhee5665]

Hi Grey,

Is the CS-ACS you are referring to APIC? I'm very sorry I'm not familiar with these.

Here is the inquiry I captured from SNS-3595 appliance, you can check.

 

 

[Marcelo Morais]

Hi @kkhee5665 ,

 the CS-ACS is the Cisco Secure Access Control System an EoS product replaced by ISE. Please take a look at: EoS - EoL Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC-M2), search for APIC-Server-M2.

 For a better understand of firmware, please take a look at:

SNS 35x5 Firmware.

UCS C220 M4 Firmware.

 About your issue: "Unsupported hardware detected" ... instead using the ISO, did you try the OVA?

 For example: ISE-2.4.0.357-virtual-SNS3595-Medium-1200GBHD-64GBRAM-16CPU.OVA

Hope this helps !!!

[kkhee5665]

Hi @Marcelo Morais 

Thanks for the explanation, I'm downloading the version you suggested and will let you know the results when I try it out.

[kkhee5665]

Hi @Marcelo Morais ,

The final decision was to do exactly what @Greg Gibbs  said to do and go through the return process with our supplier. Thank you all for the valuable advice given, I appreciate it very much

[Greg Gibbs]

Okay, so this is NOT an SNS-3595 appliance for installing either CS-ACS or ISE. This is an APIC server used for Cisco's ACI Data Center Software Defined Network (SDN) solution.

I don't believe you can apply the ISE BIOS/IMC firmware on this appliance. You MIGHT be able to flash it with a standard C220 M4 BIOS/IMC firmware and use it as a standard server, but I doubt either of these options would be supported by TAC.

If you are able to flash it with the standard C220 M4 firmware, your best bet for running a supported instance of ISE would be to install the VMware hypervisor on it and run ISE as VM.

[kkhee5665]

Hi @Greg Gibbs ,

I tried your suggestion of installing ESXI in CIMC and then installing Cisco ISE from ESXI, and that worked!

But the customer does not accept to install Cisco ISE from ESXI, he only accepts to install Cisco ISE directly from CIMC.

Today I tried to upgrade BIOS and Cisco IMC Firmware to C220M4.3.0.3c.0 and 3.0(3f), and then installed Cisco ISE 2.7, but the following problem occurred.

[Greg Gibbs · Accepted solution]

I suspected this would not work, but it was worth a try. If this is for a customer's production environment, I would not suggest trying to somehow 'hack' it to try forcing ISE to install on this hardware (unless you go the VM route). If anything ever went wrong, the customer would never be able to get support from TAC as it's not installed on supported hardware.

If the vendor that sold you this appliance told you it was an SNS-3595, there were... let's say, not entirely truthful with you. If you need an SNS-3595 appliance to install ISE, I would suggest returning this appliance to the vendor for a refund if possible and tracking down an actual SNS-3595 appliance.