Cisco ISE upgrade to 3.1

[Gouthami Nair]

Hi All,

We are upgrading our 2.7 deployment to 3.1 patch 4. Will there be any licensing issues while doing the upgrade node by node from CLI, since there is a license structure change in 3.x versions? Also, during the upgrade some nodes will be having 2.7 version and others will be having 3.1 version. At this time, will there be any issues?

[Nancy Saini]

You need to get your license converted to the new model before upgrading as the old licensing model won't work with ISE 3.x. You can rollback to old licensing model if required.

You can refer this document for license conversion.

[Rodrigo Diaz · Accepted solution]

hi @Gouthami Nair , you are correct when you say that there is a change of licensing scheme between ISE 2.X and ISE 3.X versions,  you might have to convert the licenses that you have from your 2.7 in valid licenses for 3.1 , please refer to https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/security/identity-services-engine/ise-licensing-guide-og.html or contact TAC licensing team in case you need help during these conversions. 

Now related to your other queries, when you upgrade from a 2.X version to a 3.X version the ISE by default will give you a 90 day trial to convert/acquire the corresponding licensing your environment needs with base on your flows configured , the upgrade can be done in several ways (one including the CLI that you mention) more information can be seen here https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/ise/3-1/upgrade_guide/HTML/b_upgrade_method_3_1.html , at the end you will have the same result and evaluation trial licensing while upgrading, so having this trial version into account you can have a split environment between 2.7 and 3.1 without no issue during the trial period. 

Rate and comment if that helped you.