- Preface
-
- Administration User Interface Reference
- Guest Access User Interface Reference
- Web Portals Customization Reference
- Policy User Interface Reference
- Operations User Interface Reference
- Network Access Flows
- Switch and Wireless LAN Controller Configuration Required to Support Cisco ISE Functions
- Supported Management Information Bases in Cisco ISE
- Cisco ISE Distributed Deployment
- Cisco ISE Deployment Terminology
- Personas in Distributed Cisco ISE Deployments
Set Up Cisco ISE in a Distributed Environment
This chapter describes how to set up your Cisco ISE deployment.
- Cisco ISE Distributed Deployment
- Cisco ISE Deployment Terminology
- Personas in Distributed Cisco ISE Deployments
- Cisco ISE Distributed Deployment
- Configure a Cisco ISE Node
- Register an Inline Posture Node
- View Nodes in a Deployment
- Synchronize Primary and Secondary Cisco ISE Nodes
- Create a Policy Service Node Group
- Deploy Cisco pxGrid Services
- Change Node Personas and Services
- Promote Secondary Administration Node To Primary
- Configure Monitoring Nodes for Automatic Failover
- Remove a Node from Deployment
- Change the Hostname or IP Address of a Standalone Cisco ISE Node
- Replace the Cisco ISE Appliance Hardware
Cisco ISE Distributed Deployment
A deployment that has more than one Cisco ISE node is called a distributed deployment. To support failover and to improve performance, you can set up your deployment with multiple Cisco ISE nodes in a distributed fashion. In Cisco ISE distributed deployment, administration and monitoring activities are centralized, and processing is distributed across the Policy Service nodes. Depending on your performance needs, you can scale your deployment. Each Cisco ISE node in a deployment can assume any of the following personas: Administration, Policy Service, and Monitoring. The Inline Posture node cannot assume any other persona, due to its specialized nature. The Inline Posture node must be a dedicated node.
Cisco ISE Deployment Terminology
The following terms are commonly used when discussing Cisco ISE deployment scenarios:
Service—A service is a specific feature that a persona provides such as network access, profiler, posture, security group access, monitoring and troubleshooting, and so on.
Node—A node is an individual instance that runs the Cisco ISE software. Cisco ISE is available as an appliance and also as a software that can be run on VMware. Each instance, appliance or VMware that runs the Cisco ISE software is called a node.
Persona—The persona or personas of a node determine the services provided by a node. An Cisco ISE node can assume any of the following personas: Administration, Policy Service, Monitoring, and Inline Posture. A Cisco ISE node can assume the Administration, Policy Service, and Monitoring personas. The Inline Posture persona requires a dedicated Cisco ISE node. The menu options that are available through the Admin portal are dependent on the role and personas that an Cisco ISE node assumes.
Deployment Model—Determines if your deployment is distributed, standalone, or high availability in standalone, which is a basic two-node deployment.
Personas in Distributed Cisco ISE Deployments
A Cisco ISE node can assume the Administration, Policy Service, Monitoring, or Inline Posture personas.
A Cisco ISE node can provide various services based on the persona that it assumes. Each node in a deployment, with the exception of the Inline Posture node, can assume the Administration, Policy Service, and Monitoring personas. In a distributed deployment, you can have the following combination of nodes on your network:
You need to add Canonical Name (CNAME) record of the ISE hostname to the DNS. Ensure that you create CNAME RR along with the A record for each Cisco ISE node. If CNAME record is not created, it might result in the alarm ‘DNS Resolution failed for CNAME <hostname of the node>’.
- Administration Node
- Policy Service Node
- Monitoring Node
- Cisco pxGrid Services
- Cisco pxGrid Live Logs
- Cisco pxGrid Identity Mapping
- Inline Posture Node
Administration Node
A Cisco ISE node with the Administration persona allows you to perform all administrative operations on Cisco ISE. It handles all system-related configurations that are related to functionality such as authentication, authorization, auditing, and so on. In a distributed environment, you can have only one or a maximum of two nodes running the administration persona. The administration persona can take on any one of the following roles: Standalone, Primary, or Secondary.
High Availability in Administration Nodes
In a high-availability configuration, the primary Administration node is in the active state to which all configuration changes are made. The secondary Administration node is in the standby state, and will receive all configuration updates from the primary Administration node. Therefore, it will always have a complete copy of the configuration from the primary Administration node.
If the primary Administration node goes down, you must log in to the user interface of the secondary Administration node and manually promote the secondary Administration node. There is no automatic failover for the Administration persona.
When the primary Administration node is down, sponsors cannot create new guest accounts. During this time, guest and sponsor portals will provide read-only access to already created guests and sponsors, respectively. Also, a sponsor who has never logged in to the sponsor portal before the primary Administration node goes offline, will not be able to log in to the sponsor portal until a secondary Administration node is promoted or the primary Administration node becomes available.
At least one node in your distributed setup should assume the Administration persona.
The following table lists a set of features and specifies whether they are available or not when the PAN goes down.
|
Feature |
Available When the PAN Goes Down(Yes/No) |
|---|---|
|
Existing internal user RADIUS authentication |
Yes |
|
Existing or New AD user RADIUS authentication |
Yes |
|
Existing endpoint with no profile change |
Yes |
|
Existing endpoint with profile change |
Yes |
|
New endpoint learnt through profiling |
Yes |
|
Existing guest – LWA |
Yes |
|
Existing guest – CWA |
Yes |
|
Guest change password |
No (Guest must log in with old password) |
|
Guest – AUP |
Yes |
|
Guest – Max Failed Login Enforcement |
No |
|
New Guest (Sponsored or Self-registered) |
No |
|
Posture |
Yes |
|
New Device Registration |
No |
|
Existing Registered Devices |
Yes |
|
pxGrid Service |
No |
Policy Service Node
A Cisco ISE node with the Policy Service persona provides network access, posture, guest access, client provisioning, and profiling services. This persona evaluates the policies and makes all the decisions. You can have more than one node assume this persona. Typically, there would be more than one Policy Service node in a distributed deployment. All Policy Service nodes that reside behind a load balancer can be grouped together to form a node group. If one of the nodes in a node group fails, the other nodes detect the failure and reset any pending sessions.
At least one node in your distributed setup should assume the Policy Service persona.
- High Availability in Policy Service Nodes
- Session Failover in Policy Service Nodes
- Policy Service Node Failure Results in Failed Authentication
- Number of Nodes in a Policy Service Node Group
High Availability in Policy Service Nodes
In distributed deployments, you might have multiple Policy Service nodes located behind a load balancer to distribute the requests evenly. The load balancer distributes the requests to the functional nodes behind it. Also, to detect node failure and to reset sessions in pending state on the failed node, two or more Policy Service nodes can be placed in the same node group. When a node that belongs to a node group fails, another node in the same node group issues a Change of Authorization (CoA) for pending sessions on the failed node.
A session is said to be in the pending state if it has been authorized, but posture assessment is not yet complete. It is possible to set up a distributed deployment without node groups, but sessions in pending state on a failed Policy Service node will not be automatically reset.
All the nodes within the same node group should be configured on the network access device (NAD) as RADIUS servers and clients, because any one of them can issue a CoA request for the sessions that are established through that NAD to any node in the node group. The nodes in a node group should be the same as, or a subset of, the RADIUS servers and clients configured on the NAD. All the nodes in a node group share the same multicast address and use it to communicate their health status. These nodes would also be configured as RADIUS servers.
While a single NAD can be configured with many ISE nodes as RADIUS servers and dynamic-author clients, it is not necessary for all the nodes to be in the same node group.
Session Failover in Policy Service Nodes
When a Policy Service node that has a few active sessions fails, the endpoints are stuck in an intermediate state. Even if the posture agent detects that the Policy Service node that it has been communicating with has failed, it cannot re-initiate authorization.
If the Policy Service nodes are part of a node group, the nodes within a node group exchange heartbeats to detect node failures. If a node fails, one of its peers from the node group learns about the active sessions on the failed node and issues a CoA to disconnect those sessions.
As a result, the sessions are handled by another Policy Service node that is available using RADIUS load balancing. The session failover does not automatically move the sessions over from a Policy Service node that has gone down to one that is available, but issues a CoA to achieve that.
Policy Service Node Failure Results in Failed Authentication
The Policy Service nodes in a distributed deployment do not share their Machine Access Restriction (MAR) cache with each other. For example, if a client machine is authenticated by one of the Policy Service nodes that fails, then another Policy Service node in the deployment handles the user authentication. However, the user authentication then fails because the second Policy Service node does not have the host authentication information in its MAR cache.
Number of Nodes in a Policy Service Node Group
The number of nodes that you can have in a node group depends on your deployment requirements. Node groups ensure that node failures are detected and that a peer issues a CoA for sessions that are authorized, but not yet postured. The size of the node group does not have to be very large.
If the size of the node group increases, the number of messages and heartbeats that are exchanged between nodes increases significantly. As a result, multicast traffic also increases. Having fewer nodes in a node group helps reduce the multicast traffic and at the same time provides sufficient redundancy to detect Policy Service node failures.
You can have a maximum of 10 Policy Service nodes in a node group cluster.
If you want to minimize the number of node groups and thereby reduce the number of multicast addresses that must be managed, then you can group all the RADIUS servers and clients that are configured on the NADs as one node group.
If management of multiple multicast addresses is not a problem, but there is a need for minimizing multicast traffic, then you can have fewer nodes in a node group.
Monitoring Node
A Cisco ISE node with the Monitoring persona functions as the log collector and stores log messages from all the administration and Policy Service nodes in your network. This persona provides advanced monitoring and troubleshooting tools that you can use to effectively manage your network and resources. A node with this persona aggregates and correlates the data that it collects to provide you with meaningful information in the form of reports.
Cisco ISE allows you to have a maximum of two nodes with this persona that can take on primary or secondary roles for high availability. Both the primary and secondary Monitoring nodes collect log messages. In case the primary Monitoring node goes down, the secondary Monitoring node automatically becomes the primary Monitoring node.
At least one node in your distributed setup should assume the Monitoring persona. We recommend that you not have the Monitoring and Policy Service personas enabled on the same Cisco ISE node. We recommend that the node be dedicated solely to monitoring for optimum performance.
You can access the Monitoring menu from the primary Administration node and the primary Monitoring node in your deployment.
Automatic Failover in Monitoring Nodes
The term automatic failover is used because high availability is not supported on Monitoring nodes in the true sense. For Monitoring nodes, operation audit data is duplicated by the Policy Service node(s), which then sends copies to both the primary and secondary Monitoring nodes.
Automatic Failover Process
When a primary Monitoring node goes down, the secondary Monitoring node takes over all monitoring and troubleshooting information. The secondary node provides read-only capabilities.
To convert the existing secondary node to an active primary node, the administrator must first manually promote the secondary node to a primary role. If the primary node comes back up after the secondary node has been promoted, it assumes the secondary role. If the secondary node was not promoted, the primary Monitoring node will resume its role after it comes back up.
 Caution | When the primary node comes back up after a failover, obtain a backup and restore the data to update the primary node. |
Guidelines for Setting Up an Active-Standby Pair of Monitoring Nodes
You can specify two Monitoring nodes on an ISE network and create an active-standby pair. When you register a secondary Monitoring node, we recommend that you back up the primary Monitoring node and then restore the data to the new secondary Monitoring node. This ensures that the history of the primary Monitoring node is in sync with the new secondary node as new changes are replicated. Once the active-standby pair is defined, the following rules apply:
-
All changes must be made on the primary Monitoring node. The secondary node is read-only.
-
Changes made to the primary node are automatically replicated on the secondary node.
-
Both the primary and secondary nodes are listed as log collectors to which all other nodes send logs.
-
The Cisco ISE dashboard is the main entry point for monitoring and troubleshooting. Monitoring information is displayed on the dashboard from the primary Monitoring node. If the primary node goes down, the information is served from the secondary node.
-
Backing up and purging monitoring data is not part of a standard Cisco ISE node backup process. You must configure repositories for backup and data purging on both the primary and secondary Monitoring nodes, and use the same repositories for each.
Monitoring Node Failover Scenarios
The following scenarios apply to the active-standby or single node configurations corresponding to the monitoring nodes:
-
In an active-standby configuration of the monitoring nodes, the primary Administration node always points to the active monitoring node to collect the monitoring data. After the active monitoring node fails, the Administrative PAP points to the standby monitoring node. The failover from the active monitoring node to the standby monitoring node happens after it is down for more than 5 minutes.
However, after the active node fails, the standby node does not become the active node. In case the active node comes back up, the Administrative node starts collecting the monitoring data again from the resumed active node.
-
During the time that the active monitoring node is down, if you want to promote the standby monitoring node to active status, you must de-register the existing active monitoring node. When you de-register the existing active monitoring node, the standby node becomes the active monitoring node and the Administrative PAP automatically starts pointing to the newly promoted active node.
-
In an active-standby pair, if you choose to de-register the standby monitoring node from the deployment or if the standby monitoring node goes down, the existing active monitoring node still retains the active node status. The Administrative PAP points to the existing active node for data collection.
-
If there is only one monitoring node in the ISE deployment, then that node acts as the active monitoring node that provides monitoring data to the Administrative PAP. However, when you register a new monitoring node and make it the active node in the deployment, the existing active monitoring node automatically becomes the standby node. The Administrative PAP begins to point to the newly registered active monitoring node for collecting monitoring data.
Cisco pxGrid Services
You can use Cisco pxGrid to share the context-sensitive information from Cisco ISE session directory with other network systems such as ISE Eco system partner systems and other Cisco platforms.. The pxGrid framework can also be used to exchange policy and configuration data between nodes like sharing tags and policy objects between Cisco ISE and third party vendors, and for other information exchanges. pxGrid also allows 3rd party systems to invoke adaptive network control actions (EPS) to quarantine users/devices in response to a network or security event. The TrustSec information like tag definition, value, and description can be passed from Cisco ISE via TrustSec topic to other networks. The endpoint profiles with Fully Qualified Names (FQNs) can be passed from Cisco ISE to other networks through a endpoint profile meta topic. Cisco pxGrid also supports bulk download of tags and endpoint profiles.
In a high-availability configuration, Cisco pxGrid servers replicate information between the nodes through primary Administration node. When the primary Administration node goes down, pxGrid server stops handling the client registration and subscription. You need to manually promote the primary Administration node for the pxGrid server to become active.
pxGrid Client and Capability Management
Clients connected to Cisco ISE need to register for utilizing the pxGrid services. pxGrid clients should adopt the pxGrid Client Library available from Cisco through the pxGrid SDK to become the clients. Cisco pxGrid clients need an approved account to participate in pxGrid services. Cisco ISE supports both auto and manual approvals. A client can log in to pxGrid using unique name and using certificate-based mutual authentication. Similar to AAA setting on a switch, clients can connect to either configured pxGrid server host-name or IP Address.
Capabilities are information topics or channels created on pxGrid for clients to publish and subscribe. In Cisco ISE, only capabilities such as Identity, adaptive network control, and SGA are supported. You can enable or disable the capabilities. If disabled, the client is unsubscribed. Capability information is available from the publisher through publish, directed query, or bulk download query.
Enable Clients and Capabilities
Enable the pxGrid persona to view the requests from the Cisco pxGrid clients.
Cisco pxGrid Live Logs
The Live Logs page displays all the pxGrid management events. Both the client and capability names along with the event types and timestamp are displayed.
Navigate to to view the list of events. You can also clear the logs and resynchronize or refresh the list.
Cisco pxGrid Identity Mapping
Cisco pxGrid Identity Mapping requires that CDA is installed on a Linux server. For more information, refer to Installation and Configuration Guide for Context Directory Agent.
The pxGrid Identity Mapping option enables you to monitor users that are authenticated by a Domain Controller (DC) and not by Cisco ISE. In networks where Cisco ISE does not actively authenticate users for network access, it is possible to use Identity Mapping to collect user authentication information from the active directory (AD) Domain Controller. The Identity Mapping connects to Windows system using the MS WMI interface and queries logs from the Windows event messaging. Once a user logs into the network and is authenticated with an Active Directory, the DC generates a event log that includes the user name and IP address allocated for the user.
Identity mapping can also be activated even if Cisco ISE plays an active role for authentication. In such cases, the same session may be identified twice. The operational data has a session attribute that indicates the source. You can go to Operations > Authentications and click Show Live Sessions to check the Session Source.
The Identity Mapping component retrieves the user logins from the Domain Controller and imports them into the Cisco ISE session directory. So users authenticated with Active Directory (AD) are shown in the Cisco ISE live sessions view, and can be queried from the session directory using Cisco pxGrid interface by third-party applications. The known information is the user name, IP address, and the AD DC host name and the AD DC NetBios name.
The Cisco ISE plays only a passive role and does not perform the authentication. When Identity Mapping is active, Cisco ISE collects the login information from the AD and includes the data into the session directory.
For the Active Directory requirements for successful connection with Identity Mapping, refer to Installation and Configuration Guide for Context Directory Agent.
Key Features
- Identity Mapping is
configured from the Cisco ISE administration console. The configuration
includes the following settings:
- Definition of all the DCs from which Identity Mapping is to collect user authentication information. This also includes import and export of the DC list using *.csv files
- DC connection characteristics such as authentication security protocol (NTLMv1 or NTLMv2) and user session aging time
- Connection testing, to verify the DC is set correctly to initialize valid connection with Identity Mapping
- Identity Mapping report. This report provides information about the Identity Mapping component for troubleshooting
- Identity Mapping debug logs
- Cisco ISE session directory maintains the collected user information, so that customers can view it from the Live Sessions and query it from the pxGrid interface
- Using the CLI command show application status provides the health status of nodes that use Identity Mapping
- Supports High Availability
Configure Identity Mapping
ISE must establish a connection with an AD Domain Controller (DC).
Enable pxGrid services to configure Identity Mapping. Choose to enable pxGrid services.
To add a new Domain Controller (DC) for Identity Mapping, you need the login credentials of that DC.
Filter Identity Mapping
Inline Posture Node
An Inline Posture node is a gatekeeping node that is positioned behind network access devices such as Wireless LAN Controllers (WLC) and VPN concentrators on the network. The Inline Posture node enforces access policies after a user has been authenticated and granted access, and handles change of authorization (CoA) requests that a WLC or VPN are unable to accommodate. Cisco ISE allows you to have two Inline Posture nodes that can take on primary or secondary roles for high availability.
The Inline Posture node must be a dedicated node. It must be dedicated solely for inline posture service, and cannot operate concurrently with other Cisco ISE services. Likewise, due to the specialized nature of its service, an Inline Posture node cannot assume any persona. For example, it cannot act as an Administration node that offers administration service, or a Policy Service node that offers network access, posture, profile, and guest services, or a Monitoring node that offers monitoring and troubleshooting services for a Cisco ISE network.
The Inline Posture persona is not supported on the Cisco ISE 3495 platform. Ensure that you install the Inline Posture persona on any one of the following supported platforms: Cisco ISE 3315, Cisco ISE 3355, Cisco ISE 3395, or Cisco ISE 3415.
You cannot access the web-based user interface of the Inline Posture nodes. You can configure them only from the primary Administration node.
Inline Posture Node Installation
You must download the Inline Posture ISO image from Cisco.com and install it on any of the supported platforms. You must then configure certificates through the command-line interface (CLI). You can then register this node from the Admin portal.
 Note | There is no separate Inline Posture ISO image for Release 1.3. Use the 1.2 ISO image to install and set up an inline posture node. |
After you install and set up the Inline Posture application, you must configure certificates before you can register the Inline Posture nodes. See the Cisco Identity Services Engine Hardware Installation Guide, Release 1.2 for more information.
Cisco ISE Distributed Deployment
A deployment that has more than one Cisco ISE node is called a distributed deployment. To support failover and to improve performance, you can set up your deployment with multiple Cisco ISE nodes in a distributed fashion. In Cisco ISE distributed deployment, administration and monitoring activities are centralized, and processing is distributed across the Policy Service nodes. Depending on your performance needs, you can scale your deployment. Each Cisco ISE node in a deployment can assume any of the following personas: Administration, Policy Service, and Monitoring. The Inline Posture node cannot assume any other persona, due to its specialized nature. The Inline Posture node must be a dedicated node.
- Cisco ISE Deployment Setup
- Data Replication from Primary to Secondary ISE Nodes
- Cisco ISE Node Deregistration
- Automatic Restart of the Cisco ISE Application Server
- Guidelines for Setting Up a Distributed Deployment
- Menu Options Available on Primary and Secondary Nodes
Cisco ISE Deployment Setup
After you install Cisco ISE on all your nodes, as described in the Cisco Identity Services Engine Hardware Installation Guide, the nodes come up in a standalone state. You must then define one node as your primary Administration node. While defining your primary Administration node, you must enable the Administration and Monitoring personas on that node. You can optionally enable the Policy Service persona on the primary Administration node. After you complete the task of defining personas on the primary Administration node, you can then register other secondary nodes to the primary Administration node and define personas for the secondary nodes.
All Cisco ISE system and functionality-related configurations should be done only on the primary Administration node. The configuration changes that you perform on the primary Administration node are replicated to all the secondary nodes in your deployment.
There must be at least one Monitoring node in a distributed deployment. At the time of configuring your primary Administration node, you must enable the Monitoring persona. After you register a secondary Monitoring node in your deployment, you can edit the primary Administration node and disable the Monitoring persona, if required.
Data Replication from Primary to Secondary ISE Nodes
When you register an Cisco ISE node as a secondary node, Cisco ISE immediately creates a database link from the primary to the secondary node and begins the process of replication. Replication is the process of sharing Cisco ISE configuration data from the primary to the secondary nodes. Replication ensures consistency among the configuration data present in all Cisco ISE nodes that are part of your deployment.
A full replication typically occurs when you first register an ISE node as a secondary node. Incremental replication occurs after a full replication and ensures that any new changes such as additions, modifications, or deletions to the configuration data in the primary Administration node are reflected in the secondary nodes. The process of replication ensures that all Cisco ISE nodes in a deployment are in sync. You can view the status of replication in the Node Status column from the deployment pages of the Cisco ISE Admin portal. When you register a Cisco ISE node as a secondary node or perform a manual synchronization with the primary Administration node, the node status shows an orange icon indicating that the requested action is in progress. Once it is complete, the node status turns green indicating that the secondary node is synchronized with the primary Administration node. After the node status turns green, it takes about five minutes for the Cisco ISE application server to restart and run to complete the secondary ISE node configuration.
Cisco ISE Node Deregistration
To remove a node from a deployment, you must deregister it. When you deregister a secondary node from the primary Administration node, the status of the deregistered node changes to standalone and the connection between the primary and the secondary node will be lost. Replication updates are no longer sent to the deregistered standalone node.
Note | You cannot deregister a primary Administration node. |
Automatic Restart of the Cisco ISE Application Server
The application server in an Cisco ISE node restarts which causes a delay when you make any of the following changes:
Change a primary node to Standalone (if no other nodes are registered with it; Primary to Standalone)
Change the personas (when you assign or remove the Policy Service or Monitoring persona from a node)
Modify the services in the Policy Service node (enable or disable the session and profiler services)
Restore a backup on the primary and a sync up operation is triggered to replicate data from primary to secondary nodes
Guidelines for Setting Up a Distributed Deployment
Read the following statements carefully before you set up Cisco ISE in a distributed environment.
-
Choose a node type, ISE node or Inline Posture node. For Administration, Policy Service, and Monitoring capabilities, you must choose an ISE node. For Inline Posture service, you must choose the Inline Posture node.
-
Choose the same Network Time Protocol (NTP) server for all the nodes. To avoid timezone issues among the nodes, you must provide the same NTP server name during the setup of each node. This setting ensures that the reports and logs from the various nodes in your deployment are always synchronized with timestamps.
-
Configure the Cisco ISE Admin password when you install Cisco ISE. The previous Cisco ISE Admin default login credentials (admin/cisco) are no longer valid. Use the username and password that was created during the initial setup or the current password if it was changed later.
-
Configure the Domain Name System (DNS) server. Enter the IP addresses and fully qualified domain names (FQDNs) of all the Cisco ISE nodes that are part of your distributed deployment in the DNS server. Otherwise, node registration will fail.
- Configure the Reverse DNS lookup for all Cisco ISE nodes in your distributed deployment in the DNS server. Otherwise, you may run into deployment related issues when registering Cisco ISE nodes, and restarting Cisco ISE nodes.
-
(Optional) Deregister a secondary Cisco ISE node from the primary Administration node to uninstall Cisco ISE from it.
-
Back up the primary Monitoring node, and restore the data to the new secondary Monitoring node. This ensures that the history of the primary Monitoring node is in sync with the new secondary node as new changes are replicated.
-
Ensure that the primary Administration node and the standalone node that you are about to register as a secondary node are running the same version of Cisco ISE.
-
Ensure that the database passwords of the primary and secondary nodes are the same. If these passwords are set differently during node installation, you can modify them using the following commands:
Menu Options Available on Primary and Secondary Nodes
Cisco ISE nodes provide you an Admin portal that you can use to perform your tasks. The menu options available in Cisco ISE nodes that are part of a distributed deployment depend on the personas that are enabled on them. You must perform all administration and monitoring activities through the primary Administration node. For some tasks, you must use the secondary nodes. Therefore, the user interface of the secondary nodes provides limited menu options based on the personas that are enabled on them.
If a node assumes more than one persona, for example, the Policy Service persona, and a Monitoring persona with an Active role, then the menu options listed for Policy Service nodes and Active Monitoring node will be available on that node.
The following table lists the menu options that are available on Cisco ISE nodes that assume different personas.
|
|||
Option to join, leave, and test Active Directory connection. Each Policy Service node must be separately joined to the Active Directory domain. You must first define the domain information and join the primary Administration node to the Active Directory domain. Then, join the other Policy Service nodes to the Active Directory domain individually. |
|||
Option to promote the secondary Administration node to become the primary Administration node.
|
Configure a Cisco ISE Node
After you install a Cisco ISE node, all the default services provided by the Administration, Policy Service, and Monitoring personas run on it. This node will be in a standalone state. You must log in to the Admin portal of the Cisco ISE node to configure it. You cannot edit the personas or services of a standalone Cisco ISE node. You can, however, edit the personas and services of the primary and secondary Cisco ISE nodes. You must first configure a primary ISE node and then register secondary ISE nodes to the primary ISE node.
If you are logging in to the node for the first time, you must change the default administrator password and install a valid license.
It is recommended not to change the host name and the domain name on Cisco ISE that have been configured or in production. If it is required, then reimage the appliance, make changes, and configure the details during the initial deployment.
You should have a basic understanding of how distributed deployments are set up in Cisco ISE. Read the guidelines for setting up a distributed deployment.
Configure a Primary Administration Node
To set up a distributed deployment, you must first configure a Cisco ISE node as your primary Administration node.
| Step 1 | Choose
.
The Register button will be disabled initially. To enable this button, you must configure a primary Administration node. |
| Step 2 | Check the check box next to the current node, and click Edit. |
| Step 3 | Click Make Primary to configure your primary Administration node. |
| Step 4 | Enter data on the General Settings tab. |
| Step 5 | Click Save to save the node configuration. |
What to Do Next
Register a Secondary Cisco ISE Node
After you register the secondary node, the configuration of the secondary node is added to the database of the primary node and the application server on the secondary node is restarted. After the restart is complete, the secondary node will be running the personas and services that you have enabled on it. You can view all the configuration changes that you make from the Deployment page of the primary Administration node. However, expect a delay of 5 minutes for your changes to take effect and appear on the Deployment page.
Ensure that the primary node’s Certificate Trust List (CTL) has the appropriate certificate authority (CA) certificates to validate the HTTPS certificate of the secondary node that you are going to register. When you import the secondary node's certificate in to the CTL, check the Trust for authentication within ISE check box for the primary Administration node to validate the secondary node's certificate.
The certificates that you import into the CTL of the primary Administration node are replicated to the secondary nodes.
Also, after you register the secondary node to the primary node, if you change the HTTPS certificate on the secondary node, you must import the appropriate CA certificates into the CTL of the primary node.
We recommend that you decide on the type of node (Cisco ISE or Inline Posture) at the time of registration. If you want to change the node type later, you have to deregister the node from the deployment, restart Cisco ISE on the standalone node, and then reregister it.
If you plan to deploy two Administration nodes for high availability, register the secondary Administration node before you register the other secondary nodes. If you register the nodes in this sequence, you do not have to restart the secondary ISE nodes after you promote the secondary Administration node as your primary.
If you plan to deploy multiple Policy Service nodes running Session services with mutual failover among these nodes, place the Policy Service nodes in a node group. You must create the node group before you register the nodes.
| Step 1 | Log in to the primary Administration node. |
| Step 2 | Choose . |
| Step 3 | Choose to register a secondary Cisco ISE node. |
| Step 4 | Enter a DNS-resolvable
hostname or IP address of the secondary Cisco ISE node.
If you are using the hostname while registering the Cisco ISE node, the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the standalone node that you are going to register, for example, abc.xyz.com, must be DNS-resolvable from the primary Administration node. Otherwise, node registration fails. You must have previously defined the IP address and the FQDN of the secondary node in the DNS server. |
| Step 5 | Enter a UI-based administrator credential for the standalone node in the Username and Password fields. |
| Step 6 | Click
Next.
Cisco ISE contacts the secondary node, obtains some basic information such as the hostname, default gateway, and so on, and displays it. If you have chosen to register a secondary Cisco ISE node, you can edit the configuration of the secondary node. If you have chosen to register a secondary Inline Posture node, no additional configuration needs to be performed at this point. |
| Step 7 | Click Save. |
After a secondary node is registered successfully, you will receive an alarm on your primary Administration node that confirms a successful node registration. If the secondary node fails to register with the primary Administration node, the alarm is not generated. When a node is registered, the application server on that node is restarted. After successful registration and database synchronization, enter the credentials of the primary administrative node to log in to the user interface of the secondary node.
Note | In addition to the existing Primary node in the deployment, when you successfully register a new node, no alarm corresponding to the newly registered node is displayed. The Configuration Changed alarms reflect information corresponding to the newly registered nodes. You can use this information to ascertain the successful registration of the new node. |
For time-sensitive tasks such as time profiles, guest user access and authorization, logging, and so on, ensure that the system time on your nodes are synchronized.
Register an Inline Posture Node
We recommend that you decide on the type of node (Cisco ISE or Inline Posture) at the time of registration. If you want to change the node type later, you have to deregister the node from the deployment, restart Cisco ISE on the standalone node, and then reregister it.
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Ensure that the primary node’s Certificate Trust List (CTL) has the appropriate certificate authority (CA) certificates to validate the HTTPS certificate of the secondary node that you are going to register.
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After you register the secondary node to the primary node, if you change the HTTPS certificate on the secondary node, you must import the appropriate CA certificates into the CTL of the primary node.
View Nodes in a Deployment
In the Deployment Nodes page, you can view all the Cisco ISE nodes, primary and secondary, that are part of your deployment.
Synchronize Primary and Secondary Cisco ISE Nodes
You can make configuration changes to Cisco ISE only through the primary Administration node. The configuration changes get replicated to all the secondary Cisco ISE Nodes. If, for some reason, this replication does not occur properly, you can manually synchronize the secondary Administration nodes with the primary Administration node.
You must click the Syncup button to force a full replication if the Sync Status is set to Out of Sync or if the Replication Status is Failed or Disabled.
Create a Policy Service Node Group
You can deploy more than one Policy Service node for load balancing to distribute requests evenly. To detect node failure and to reset sessions in a pending state on the failed node, two or more Policy Service nodes can be placed in the same node group. You must create a node group before you can add a node to it.
You can create, edit, and delete Policy Service node groups from the Deployment pages of the Cisco ISE Admin portal.
Node group members can communicate over TCP/7800 and TCP/7802.
After you save the node group, it should appear in the navigation pane on the left. If you do not see the node group in the left pane, it may be hidden. Click the Expand button on the navigation pane to view the hidden objects.
What to Do Next
Add a node to a node group. Edit the node by choosing the node group from the Member of Node Group drop-down list.
Deploy Cisco pxGrid Services
- You need Plus license to enable the Cisco pxGrid services.
- Cisco pxGrid services run on Cisco ISE SNS 3415/3495 Appliance or VMWare.
- Cisco pxGrid services do not run on FIPS-enabled Cisco ISE appliance, as the XCP server that is used to integrate Cisco pxGrid with Cisco ISE is not FIPS compliant.
- When the Administrator node and the pxGrid node are the same, they are configured to use the same self signed certificate. In other deployments, the pxGrid node should be configured with a root certificate. Any client that connects to the pxGrid node should present the same root certificate or a certificate signed by the Administrator.
- If you are using a distributed deployment or upgrading from Cisco ISE 1.2 to 1.3, then you need to enable the pxGrid services in the certificates. To enable the pxGrid services, go to . Choose the certificate being used in the deployment and click Edit. Check the pxGrid: use certificate for the pxGrid Controller checkbox.
| Step 1 | Choose . |
| Step 2 | In the Deployment Nodes page, check the check box next to the node to which you want to enable the pxGrid services, and click Edit. |
| Step 3 | Click the General Settings tab and check the pxGrid checkbox. |
| Step 4 | Click
Save.
When you upgrade from the previous version, the Save option might be disabled. This happens when the browser cache refers to the old files from the previous version of Cisco ISE. Clear the browser cache to enable the Save option. |
Change Node Personas and Services
You can edit the Cisco ISE node configuration to change the personas and services that run on the node.
When you enable or disable any of the services that run on a Policy Service node or make any changes to a Policy Service node, you will be restarting the application server processes on which these services run. Expect a delay while these services restart.
| Step 1 | Log in to the primary Administration node. |
| Step 2 | Choose . |
| Step 3 | Check the check box next to the node whose personas or services you want to change, and then click Edit. |
| Step 4 | Choose the personas and services that you want. |
| Step 5 | Click Save. |
| Step 6 | Verify receipt of an alarm on your primary Administration node to confirm the persona or service change. If the persona or service change is not saved successfully, an alarm is not generated. |
Promote Secondary Administration Node To Primary
If the primary Administration node fails, you must manually promote the secondary Administration node to become the new primary node.
Ensure that you have a second Cisco ISE node configured with the Administration persona to promote as your primary Administration node.
| Step 1 | Log in to the user interface of the secondary Administration node. |
| Step 2 | Choose . |
| Step 3 | In the Edit Node
page, click
Promote to
Primary.
You can only promote a secondary Administration node to become a primary Administration node. Cisco ISE nodes that assume only the Policy Service or Monitoring persona, or both, cannot be promoted to a primary Administration node. |
| Step 4 | Click Save. |
| Step 5 | Restart the
secondary Cisco ISE nodes that were registered with the original primary
Administration node before you registered the secondary Administration node.
For example, if you registered a secondary Administration node (the new primary) after you registered secondary Cisco ISE Policy Service and Monitoring nodes, then you must restart the secondary Cisco ISE nodes that were registered before the secondary Administration node was registered. |
What to Do Next
After you promote your secondary Administration node to become the primary Administration node, you must reconfigure your scheduled Cisco ISE backups in the newly promoted primary Administration node because scheduled backups are not replicated from the primary to secondary Administration node.
If the node that was originally the primary Administration node comes back up, it will become a secondary Administration node. In the Edit Node page of a secondary node, you cannot modify the personas or services because the options are disabled. You have to log in to the Admin portal to make changes.
Configure Monitoring Nodes for Automatic Failover
If you have two Monitoring nodes in a deployment, you can configure a primary-secondary pair for automatic failover to avoid downtime in the Cisco ISE Monitoring service. A primary-secondary pair ensures that a secondary Monitoring node automatically provides monitoring should the primary node fail.
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Before you can configure Monitoring nodes for automatic failover, they must be registered as Cisco ISE nodes.
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Configure monitoring roles and services on both nodes and name them for their primary and secondary roles, as appropriate.
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Configure repositories for backup and data purging on both the primary and secondary Monitoring nodes. For the backup and purging features to work properly, use the same repositories for both the nodes. Purging takes place on both the primary and secondary nodes of a redundant pair. For example, if the primary Monitoring node uses two repositories for backup and purging, you must specify the same repositories for the secondary node.
Configure a data repository for a Monitoring node using the repository command in the system CLI.
Caution
For scheduled backup and purge to work properly on the nodes of a Monitoring redundant pair, configure the same repository, or repositories, on both the primary and secondary nodes using the CLI. The repositories are not automatically synced between the two nodes.
From the Cisco ISE dashboard, verify that the Monitoring nodes are ready. The System Summary dashlet shows the Monitoring nodes with a green check mark to the left when their services are ready.
| Step 1 | Choose . |
| Step 2 | In the Deployment Nodes page, check the check box next to the Monitoring node that you want to specify as active, and click Edit. |
| Step 3 | Click the
General Settings
tab and choose
Primary from the
Role drop-down
list.
When you choose a Monitoring node as primary, the other Monitoring node automatically becomes secondary. In the case of a standalone deployment, primary and secondary role configuration is disabled. |
| Step 4 | Click Save. The active and standby nodes restart. |
Remove a Node from Deployment
To remove a node from a deployment, you must deregister it. The deregistered node becomes a standalone Cisco ISE node. It retains the last configuration that it received from the primary Administration node and assumes the default personas of a standalone node that are Administration, Policy Service, and Monitoring. If you deregister a Monitoring node, this node will no longer be a syslog target.
You can view these changes from the Deployment page of the primary Administration node. However, expect a delay of 5 minutes for the changes to take effect and appear on the Deployment page.
Before you remove any secondary node from a deployment, perform a backup of Cisco ISE configuration, which you can then restore later on, if needed.
| Step 1 | Choose . |
| Step 2 | Check the check box next to the secondary node that you want to remove, and then click Deregister. |
| Step 3 | Click OK. |
| Step 4 | Verify receipt of an alarm on your primary Administration node to confirm that the secondary node is deregistered successfully. If the secondary node fails to deregister from the primary Administration node, the alarm is not generated. |
Change the Hostname or IP Address of a Standalone Cisco ISE Node
You can change the hostname, IP address, or domain name of standalone Cisco ISE nodes. You cannot use "localhost" as the hostname for a node.
If the Cisco ISE node is part of a distributed deployment, you must remove it from the deployment and ensure that it is a standalone node.
| Step 1 | Change the hostname or IP address of the Cisco ISE node using the hostname, ip address, or ip domain-name command from the Cisco ISE CLI. | ||
| Step 2 | Reset the Cisco ISE application configuration using the application stop ise command from the Cisco ISE CLI to restart all the services. | ||
| Step 3 | Register the Cisco ISE node
to the primary Administration node if it part of a distributed deployment.
After you register the Cisco ISE node as a secondary node, the primary Administration node replicates the change in the IP address, hostname, or domain name to the other Cisco ISE nodes in your deployment. |
Replace the Cisco ISE Appliance Hardware
You should replace the Cisco ISE appliance hardware only if there is an issue with the hardware. For any software issues, you can reimage the appliance and reinstall the Cisco ISE software.
| Step 1 | Re-image or re-install the Cisco ISE software on the new nodes. |
| Step 2 | Obtain a license with the UDI for the primary and secondary administration nodes and install it on the primary administration node. |
| Step 3 | Restore the backup on the replace primary administration node The restore script will try to sync the data on the secondary administration node, but the secondary administration node is now a standalone node and the sync will fail. Data is set to the time the backup was taken on the primary administration node. |
| Step 4 | Register the new node as a secondary server with the primary Administration node. |
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