Cisco ISE

Hi guys

My employeer wants me to learn Cisco ISE in order to deploy ISE Solutions for our customers.
They are willing to pay for a course in the future, but i'd rather not attend a course without knowing anything at all.. And to be quite honest i prefer self studying and labbing it in my own pace.

Does anyone out there work with ISE? What training material can you recommend? As far as i know CBT Nuggets, INE etc. has no specific videoes focused on ISE yet.. Are there any video series worth watching or books you would recommend?

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MitM

I don't work with ISE yet, but on my list for this year. We'll also probably be deploying it

INE's CCNP class for 300-208 covers ISE, same with CBT Nuggets. You can also check out LabMinutes (Lab Minutes). Lots of ISE material on there

joelsfood

LOTS of ISE on the blog here

Blog

ninjaturtle

I'm starting to dig in deep with ISE. I'm new to ISE, and at my new job we heavily rely on ISE and are in the process of upgrading our ISE infrastructure. So I've been looking hard for study resources, and building out a lab at home. I'm looking to attend training from Global Knowledge very soon, as they just recently released there ISE 2.1 class.

The study resources I've been using for ISE:

INE - Security Bootcamp V1.0 w/ Cristian Mitei. He does a decent job of explaining how ISE works.
Network-node.com/blog -- This is an awesome blog that joelsfood recommended. I used this blog heavily to build out my ISE lab at home.
LabMinutes -- Excellent resource to watch ISE videos of various labs. He does a great job explaining the lab steps.
Book -- https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Deployment-Identity-Services-Engine/dp/0128044578 -- I would grab this book too.

Cheers,

ccie14023

I'm slightly embarrassed to say, but I work at Cisco and I used the LabMinutes stuff when I had to do some ISE work for a project. (Despite the CCIE Security, I was at Juniper for a while and never touched ISE there, of course.) He has great step-by-step instructions. I couldn't get my AD integration to work until I found his stuff.

Iristheangel

joelsfood wrote: »

LOTS of ISE on the blog here

Blog

I don't trust the author. She's too blonde :P

Iristheangel

Labminutes + my blog are good places to start. Metha (creator of Labminutes) keeps it very straightforward and labs it all out - but be aware that he's not trying to explain theory or what's going on in the background to you so if you run into any issues and don't understand things like RADIUS, profiling, etc, you might be SOL.

If you want to learn ISE, here's what I would suggest:
1) Read this 300 page book: https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Deployment-Identity-Services-Engine/dp/0128044578/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483736798&sr=8-1-fkmr2&keywords=deploying+cisco+identity+services+engine

It's not a painful read at all and it covers the common use cases and theory for those common use cases.

2) Set up a lab. Use my blog + Metha's videos to get you through the common use cases as well. There's a LOT ISE case do - Start with the basics which both Metha and I go through and then work your way up to what you see yourself deploying.

3) Use ISE 2.0 or above if you can. ISE 2.1 is real purtty and there's a lot of stuff you can really do with it. They give you step-by-step instructions on how to do a lot of this stuff.

4) When in doubt, check the ISE communities page: https://communities.cisco.com/community/technology/security/pa/ise
I know the TME and he's been pretty awesome about making sure the guides there are up to date and adding documentation on there. I also know that the experts check the questions asked on here so you tend to get a response when you're having an issue.

If you still feel like you need formal training, I really liked Micronics' Z2H class but it's a long class and not ISE-specific for the whole time so that's up to you if you want to go that deep. The Cisco Learning Partners also released ISE 2.1 formal training but if you go any time soon, you'll probably be going in the first round of the class so no one can tell you whether it'll be good or not. If you work at a Cisco partner, you can play around with the 10-20 labs on Gold Labs/Sales Connect.

nb-

Iristheangel wrote: »

Labminutes + my blog are good places to start. Metha (creator of Labminutes) keeps it very straightforward and labs it all out - but be aware that he's not trying to explain theory or what's going on in the background to you so if you run into any issues and don't understand things like RADIUS, profiling, etc, you might be SOL.

If you want to learn ISE, here's what I would suggest:
1) Read this 300 page book: https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Deployment-Identity-Services-Engine/dp/0128044578/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483736798&sr=8-1-fkmr2&keywords=deploying+cisco+identity+services+engine

It's not a painful read at all and it covers the common use cases and theory for those common use cases.

2) Set up a lab. Use my blog + Metha's videos to get you through the common use cases as well. There's a LOT ISE case do - Start with the basics which both Metha and I go through and then work your way up to what you see yourself deploying.

3) Use ISE 2.0 or above if you can. ISE 2.1 is real purtty and there's a lot of stuff you can really do with it. They give you step-by-step instructions on how to do a lot of this stuff.

4) When in doubt, check the ISE communities page: https://communities.cisco.com/community/technology/security/pa/ise
I know the TME and he's been pretty awesome about making sure the guides there are up to date and adding documentation on there. I also know that the experts check the questions asked on here so you tend to get a response when you're having an issue.

If you still feel like you need formal training, I really liked Micronics' Z2H class but it's a long class and not ISE-specific for the whole time so that's up to you if you want to go that deep. The Cisco Learning Partners also released ISE 2.1 formal training but if you go any time soon, you'll probably be going in the first round of the class so no one can tell you whether it'll be good or not. If you work at a Cisco partner, you can play around with the 10-20 labs on Gold Labs/Sales Connect.

Thank you very much for your detailed answer. - I work for a Cisco gold partner company so might look into the salesconnect videos.. I will definately use the Labminutes series, i completely forgot they had the ISE Series aswell.. I also do FirePOWER deployments and all ive used for training was their Firepower training series.. They do an awesome job on those series.

I will buy the book, and use your blog as you suggested aswell.. Would you recommend me to read the book before diving into the labs and video series or wait till after ive done that?
Also the Labminutes video series starts at ISE version 1.1 and alot of the stuff covered are on old ISE platforms like 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 are there any major changes in these releases compared to version 2.0 or 2.1? Will i still be able to pick up on stuff covered on version 1.1 even though my lab is running version 2.0 or 2.1?
What would you recommend for the lab? Version 2.0 or 2.1?

MitM

Pretty sure the LabMinutes stuff for version 2.0 and > only cover the changes in those versions. If starting from the beginning, you'll want to start with their 1.1 videos