ISE 2.2 to 2.7 is it worth it?

[craiglebutt]

Hi

Trying to put a document forward to upgrade our 2.2 to 2.7.

Is there any real benefits that a management person would understand?

Is there a feature list/matix with benefits of moving to 2.7, one of the main issues is, we have 2 appliances that can't upgrade any further and no VM on that location.

cheers

[balaji.bandi]

Most of the release notes give you New feature of ISE Version along with Caveats to understand.

ISE 2.2 is quite old, either i go with 2.4 - 2.6 ( for now i avoid 2.7 - until you are fancy to go with 2.7 in production environment as NEW version)

Also ask quesiton ? what is the reason for the upgrade, is the upgrade give advantage for your network, required some planning also.

here is the path planning from 2.2 to 2.6

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/ise/2-6/upgrade_guide/Upgrade_Journey/Cisco_ISE_2_6_Upgrade_Journey.html

[Damien Miller]

It sounds like you are on SNS 34x5 appliances, that's a very strong driver for an upgrade/refresh considering they are end of support in a ~two months, Oct 31st 2021. ISE 2.2 itself is not so you can still get support for the software until June 2022, but if you have a hardware appliance provlem then TAC won't be able to help.
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/security/identity-services-engine/eos-eol-notice-c51-737032.html

Lots of customers and peers are reporting positive results running 2.7 p2. I have just started moving customer deployments to it as well, and other than minor post upgrade issues we were able to work through, it's been a positive experience. I would skip 2.6 now and go with 2.7. 

The changes from 2.2 to 2.7 are not documented in a single location, but if you google "ise 2.x release notes" for each release version, there is a section in each titled "What is New in Cisco ISE, Release 2.x?". example. 
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/ise/2-7/release_notes/b_ise_27_RN.html#id_86140