Old & New ISE Distributed Deployment Migration

[fatalXerror]

Hi Guys,

I have 5x nodes running in VM in distributed deployment mode (PAN/PMnT, SAN/SMnT, 3x PSNs). Our old VM servers will need to be migrated to the new VM servers which means the ISE should be migrated also to the new VM servers. Connectivity between the old VM servers and new VM servers are not an issue.

My plan is to have 2x phase approach, the 1st phase will be the SAN and 1x PSN then the 2nd phase will be the PAN and the other PSNs.

1. Build 2x new VM nodes in the new VM servers. These 2x new VM will be the new SAN and new PSN.
2. Deregister the SAN from the existing PAN and shutdown the SAN from the old VM servers.
3. Configure the SAN in the new VM server with the same CLI configuration of the old SAN.
4. Re-register new SAN to the old PAN.
5. Same procedure will be done for the PSNs.

My question now is about the license as we are using Traditional License. 

1. Since I have a new SAN in the 1st phase which means it has a new serial number. Do I need to re-host the license already so that it will match the new serial number of the SAN then import it in the old PAN?
2. What will happen if I re-host and import the license during the 2nd phase? Will my ISE service be affected even though the discrepancy is only in the SAN and not the PAN?

Thank you

[ahollifield]

Why not just vMotion them to the new hosts?

[fatalXerror]

Hi @ahollifield , my customer does not want to use the cold migration strategy because they told me it does not work the last time they did that and they want to have at least a minimal downtime that is why we are building a new one in parallel per phases. 

[ahollifield]

It does work as long as the ISE nodes are shutdown when they are moved.  Hot VMotion is only supported from 3.1.  What exact issues did they have last time?  I also don't think phase 2 of your approach would work.  How are you planning on building out a new PAN?  Or are you making the new SAN the PAN in Phase 2?