Cisco ISE Licensing

[atiye.bigdeli]

• Identity Services Engine (ISE)

 

Hi.

I want to buy license for Cisco ISE. I searched and found 3 different part number for Cisco ISE Virtual Machines:

small, medium and large. 

I dont know  shoud I order icense according to VM size or the Session counts?

best regard

[atiye.bigdeli]

Hi.

I want to buy license for Cisco ISE. I searched and found 3 different part number for Cisco ISE Virtual Machines:

small, medium and large. 

I dont know  shoud I order icense according to VM size or the Session counts?

best regard

[kngitonga]

​Depends with your organization, so i would go with session counts​

[Arne Bier · Accepted solution]

Your VM size license is based on the vCPU and RAM assigned to your virtual machine.

Have a look at Craig Hyps's BRKSEC-3699 Cisco Live Session in Orlando 2018.  

e.g. 16GB RAM and 4 VCPU is a small

64GB RAM and 8vCPU is a Medium

There are still some licensing bugs in ISE 2.4 patch 1 regarding the correct detection of MEDIUM VM machines. 

You should align your VM resources with those of the SNS server appliances.  

VM licenses have nothing to do with Base licenses.  You need at least 100 base licenses to have a valid ISE setup

[atiye.bigdeli]

Hi 

thank you for your answer.

only I cant understand your meaning about this sentese

"VM licenses have nothing to do with Base licenses"

Best Regards

[Arne Bier]

Sorry if I caused confusion, but in your original question you asked "I don't know  should I order license according to VM size or the Session counts?" - what I meant is that Session counts are a separate discussion.  First you need to get a VM license for each node depending on CPU/RAM sizing.  Once that is in place you need to have some base licenses for Radius and Web Auth.  The Ordering Guide says that you need at least 100 base licenses for any system.  That means, you can't just order a TACACS license without also having the minimum 100 base licenses.  Base licenses are incremental and you can keep adding as many as you need. One successful radius auth (802.1X or MAB auth) consumes one base license.  

The latest Ordering Guide is available now - July 2018.