Personas Deployment Guide

Introduction

Once all ISE nodes have been deployed to AWS, we can use Ansible to build a multi-node ISE cluster with distinct ISE personas, such as Policy Administration nodes (PAN), Monitoring and Troubleshooting nodes (MNT), and Policy Services nodes (PSN).

Note: This role assumes the nodes have already been deployed to the AWS platform using the AWS Deployment role included in this collection. However, the role can be easily modified to suit any other needs, such as an on-prem deployment.

Goal

The goals of this guide are:

Install the Ansible ISE collection
Configure the Personas Deployment role
Build a cluster and assign the correspondent personas to each node

Pre-requisites

It is recommended that you review the following guides before starting this one:

Role information

The Personas Deployment Ansible role acomplishes the following tasks:

Checks whether or not all the nodes are in standalone mode. If not, the playbook exits with an error message.
Exports into the primary node the certificates of all the other nodes
Assigns the Primary PAN persona to one of the nodes
Assigns the corresponding personas to the rest of the nodes

Deployment types

This role supports the following deployment types:

Small: Two nodes fulfilling the following roles:
- Node 1: PPAN, MNT-ACTIVE and PSN
- Node 2: SPAN, MNT-STANDBY and PSN
Medium: Up to seven nodes fulfilling the following roles:
- Node 1: PPAN and MNT-ACTIVE
- Node 2: SPAN and MNT-STANDBY
- Node 3 through Node 7: PSN
Large: Up to 54 nodes fulfilling the following roles:
- Node 1: PPAN
- Node 2: SPAN
- Node 3: MNT-ACTIVE
- Node 4: MNT-STANDBY
- Node 5 to Node 54: PSN

Variables

Depending on the deployment type, the variables that need to be set are different. It is assumed that all nodes share the same credentials, as this is the default behavior of the AWS Deployment role. There are no default values for IP addresses, so all IP address variables must be specified.

Variables common to all deployment types

ise_deployment_type: Could be small, medium or large. Default: small
ise_username: Username for the nodes. Default: admin
ise_password: Password for the nodes. Default: C1sco12345
ise_domain: Domain name. Default: example.com
ise_base_hostname: The base hostname for the nodes. Default: ISE
pan1_ip: Public IP address for the Primary PAN node.
pan2_ip: Public IP address for the Secondary PAN node.

Additional variables for medium or large deployments

psn1_ip: Public IP address for the first PSN node
psn2_ip: Public IP address for the second PSN node
psnN_ip: Public IP address for the Nth PSN node

Additional variables specific for large deployments

mnt1_ip: Public IP address for the Active Monitoring node
mnt2_ip: Public IP address for the Standby Monitoring node

Role usage

Create a playbook that contains all the pertinent variables required by this role:

# playbooks/personas_deployment.yml
# Example for a small deployment
---
- name: ISE Personas Deployment Playbook
  hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  vars:
    ise_deployment: small
    ise_username: admin
    ise_password: C1sco123
    ise_domain: example.com
    pan1_ip: 1.1.1.1
    pan2_ip: 2.2.2.2

  roles:
    - cisco.ise.personas_deployment

Run the Ansible playbook:

ansible-playbook -i hosts playbooks/personas_deployment.yml

Sample playbooks for medium and large deployments

# playbooks/personas_deployment.yml
# Example for a medium deployment
---
- name: ISE Personas Deployment Playbook
  hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  vars:
    ise_deployment: medium
    ise_username: admin
    ise_password: C1sco123
    ise_domain: example.com
    pan1_ip: 1.1.1.1
    pan2_ip: 2.2.2.2
    psn1_ip: 3.3.3.3
    psn2_ip: 4.4.4.4

  roles:
    - cisco.ise.personas_deployment

# playbooks/personas_deployment.yml
# Example for a large deployment
---
- name: ISE Personas Deployment Playbook
  hosts: localhost
  connection: local
  vars:
    ise_deployment: large
    ise_username: admin
    ise_password: C1sco123
    ise_domain: example.com
    pan1_ip: 1.1.1.1
    pan2_ip: 2.2.2.2
    psn1_ip: 3.3.3.3
    psn2_ip: 4.4.4.4
    mnt1_ip: 5.5.5.5
    mnt2_ip: 6.6.6.6

  roles:
    - cisco.ise.personas_deployment