ISE Timezones

[trevorjenix]

I have a question about timezones in ISE 1.3 for distributed deployments across the globe. I've seen some comments/recommendations on not configuring timezone on ISE nodes when deploying in dispersed geography and just leaving timezone as UTC. I've even seen that, supposedly, it's not allowed to change timezone after installation.

Is this an outdated recommendation that doesn't apply to ISE 1.3 anymore?

Should I use the same UTC timezone on all ISE nodes?

How do admins deal with reading logs in this environment? I can see how tricky it can be to analyze. What about guest provisioning in sponsor portals, won't it be confusing for sponsors when setting time periods for guest accounts? What about Active Directory sync, is it ok if the ISE PSN's timezone doesn't match AD server's timezone?

Just looking for a general recommendation.

[Johannes Luther]

Wow - an old post. Nevertheless here's how I do it

Should I use the same UTC timezone on all ISE nodes?

At least I use the same timezone on all the ISE nodes in one deployment (Europe/Berlin)

I guess this is still needed.

What about guest provisioning in sponsor portals, won't it be confusing for sponsors when setting time periods for guest accounts?

This is why there is a "location" configuration within the sponsor portals

What about Active Directory sync, is it ok if the ISE PSN's timezone doesn't match AD server's timezone

This was something which bugged me a lot as well. Because there are PSNs worldwide and these PSNs should be joined to the local DCs. These DCs have the location configuration according to the server location.

I found out, that as long the clocks are the same regarding NTP (so UTC), the timezone and therefore absolute time between ISE and DC may differ.