Cisco ISE license migration

[hadzic.ivan]

Hello, help needed, if possible.

Cisco ISE deployment has “R-ISE-VM-K9=”, “L-ISE-BSE-500=” and “L-ISE-TACACS=” licenses that ends by contract in August and September 2021. End of Support for these licenses is February 28, 2022.

Cisco ISE version is 2.2.

I have reviewed ISE Licensing Migration Guide, but it is not clear because the specific requirements for this deployment.

Please help us find answers to the following questions:

1. Would it be possible to extend support for the existing licenses for another year starting the day “End Date” in August 2021?
2. If not, would it be possible to extend support for the existing licenses for the time until February 28, 2022 and after that make an offer with new SKUs for the 1Y or 3Y of 5Y period ?
3. Please, help us find new model SKUs for corresponding SKUs presented in Product / Offer Name column from the table above for “R-ISE-VM-K9=”, “L-ISE-BSE-500=” and “L-ISE-TACACS=” licenses.

Thanks in advance.

[Marvin Rhoads]

For #1 and #2, I believe the answer is "no". That said, under the legacy scheme, Base licenses and TACACS licenses don't require support SKUs. You get support entitlement for any perpetual licenses (e.g., Base and TACACS) in the deployment according to the VM SKU support contract (or SNS-3xxx hardware appliance if you had those).

For #3, the new SKUs are R-ISE-VMS-K9=, R-ISE-VMM-K9= and R-ISE-VML-K9= for Small, Medium and Large VMs respectively. Old Base perpetual licenses would be new Essentials term licenses under the Smart licensing scheme. However, it's not necessary to purchase or use those until you migrate/upgrade to ISE 3.0+. When you do, you are entitled to convert the Base classic licenses to Essentials smart licenses with a term expiring October 2023. Similarly the TACACS licenses would also be converted to (perpetual) Smart licenses. On older ISE deployments like this one, TACACS was enabled deployment-wide. When the deployment is upgraded to 2.4+, the customer is entitled to TACACS licenses for up to 50 nodes. L-ISE-TACACS-ND= would be the SKU for new orders.

[hadzic.ivan · Accepted solution]

Thank you very much for the answer. I have opened case with Cisco TAC, and received similar answers. Recommendation is to upgrade ISE version e.g. to 2.6 with longer EoL and EoS, and with help of Cisco TAC licensing team the existing licenses could be converted to new SKUs, and all together support could be extended.