Question on ISE2.2 to ISE2.4 upgrade

[jsprange]

Hi Team,

the FAQs published under the latest 2.4 ordering guide are a bit confusing. Please, help me explaining to my customer:

As the Device Admin licenses are much more expensive with 2.4, can't the customer just buy ISE with 2.2 and then upgrade free of charge to ISE2.4? The FAQ below suggests this being a valid strategy.

thanks,

Jürgen

Ordering Guide Seite 16 die letzte und Seite 17 die erste Q&A:
Q. We purchased VM previously and it had no PAK or license key associated. We are planning to upgrade to 2.4
now. What do I need?
A. Upon upgrade to 2.4, you would be prompted to install VM licenses keys. But if you purchased ISE VM
previously with no PAK or license key associated, please reach out to ise-vm-license@cisco.com with the
Sales Order (SO) number reflecting the VM purchases.
Note: 2.4 only provides License Warning for the VM licenses. The ISE deployment continues to operate
without disruption.Q. We purchased Device Admin previously. Do I need to buy more licenses if I upgrade to 2.4?
A. If you purchased Device Admin as a deployment-wide license, you can continue to utilize all nodes in the
deployment for TACACS+ transactions even after upgrade to 2.4. This means the license entitles your
deployment to the maximum number of nodes supported by ISE for the deployment.

[Jason Kunst · Accepted solution]

Yes for now they are grandfathered, future this will not be available

[jsprange]

Hi Jason,

thanks for the fast feedback.

Any indications about how long this "window of opportunity" will exist"?

thanks,

Jürgen

[Jason Kunst]

Please reach out to our ISE product management team thru sales channel as this is a future ask

[Arne Bier]

Jason, I have a follow up question to this one.

We also purchased our Base, TACACS, Plus and Apex licenses back in the ISE 2.2 days, and I have heard about this grandfathering concept.  We have also moved our PAK's from traditional licensing to Smart Licensing.

But I don't see any mention of the VM license in the Smart Licensing portal.  I have not had a chance to hook up my lab ISE 2.4 node to tools.cisco.com to see what happens (I am working on getting that done).

In the meantime I would appreciate your comments on the following questions, for customers running on VMWare platforms:

• Do we need to procure VM licenses if we already are using ISE 2.2 traditional licenses?
• Do we need to procure VM licenses if we have converted our ISE 2.2 PAK's to Smart Licenses?

My Smart Licensing portal tells me that I have 1 TACACS license - when I hook my ISE 2.3 deployment into it, it will consume 1 license for the entire deployment.  What will happen with ISE 2.4 if I have 4 PSN's and they all need TACACS, do I need a count of 4 in Smart Licensing Portal? Or will Smart Licensing Portal be aware of this grandfathering and automagically grant me up to 50 TACACS licences?

Below is the portal view from one of our labs running ISE 2.3

In my ISE 2.4 lab (which runs on VMWare) I don't see any mention of VM licenses when the deployment is running on eval licences.

I don't have any traditional licenses to apply to this lab because we're moving to Smart Licenses.

I need to get a handle on this with real examples so that I can explain to my peers how this works when we upgrade to ISE 2.4 - I am sure I am not the only customer/partner in this boat.

Some examples from your labs would be appreciated.

thanks

Arne

[hslai]

ISE 2.4 is not currently enforcing VM licenses other than triggering the alarms. However, we should obtain the VM licenses according to what shown in Juergen's original post, for ISE purchases made before ISE 2.4 released.

[Damien Miller]

I sent in a request for node licenses to ise-vm-license@cisco.com on April 22nd for a clients 2.3 to 2.4 upgrade.  Are these being issued yet?  I have heard nothing back. 

[hslai]

I will ask our PM team about your request.

[Arne Bier]

I also sent a request and am awaiting feedback.  Can I piggy back on that discussion with the PM please?

[hslai]

It's done case by case so I created another at our PM forum.