CiscoLive 2012 – Day 2

Note to self – don’t forget your badge.  I was walking out the door of the hotel to catch the shuttle to the convention center when I realized that my badge was back in my room.  That would have been bad – no session access (bad) and no breakfast (worse.)  Thankfully, I remembered before leaving.

As I said in my last post, one of the awesome pieces of CiscoLive is meeting new people.  This morning at breakfast was no exception.  I had a great discussion with an engineer from Montreal and another from West Point.  Though it was mostly on wireless, they made an interesting point about being the “expert” for a technology since they had installed that technology once.  It is interesting that in the world of networking, if you’ve done it, you’re the expert (at least in the eyes of some.)

My first session was BRKSEC-2022, “Demystifying TrustSec, Identity, NAC, and ISE” by Aaron Woland.  I highly recommend any sessions that he does, as he is a very engaging and knowledgeable speaker.  And, he busts on Cisco from time to time, which is good to see.  Though most of the sessions was review, having taken the ISE class, it was good to have some concepts reaffirmed.  A couple of key points from this session were:

1. For TrustSec (which is the former name of “Secure Group Access” or SGA – thanks Cisco for reusing a term that now includes the former use plus more!),identity means the Who, What, Where, When and How of access.  With that, most of the work of ISE is in the Authorization piece.  While Authentication is good, it is not nearly enough.

2. At least for Wired 802.1X, deploy in Monitor Mode to begin with.  That way you don’t cause yourself a DoS when you bring it up.  There are too many variables involved that can cause clients to not connect properly to begin with.  With this, make sure that the network device and the backend server (ISE in this case) are set up properly for logging what is going on.  That way you can see what is going on.  Also, make sure URL Redirect is not part of the Authorization policy being tested, unless you really want them to be redirected to begin with.

3. Most supplicants don’t have sufficient logging for troubleshooting issues.  Cisco provides the AnyConnect Network Access Manager as a no-cost licensed product for as many clients as needed for those that have ASA5500s, ACS, ISE, Cisco switches, or anything with which AnyConnect could interconnect as long as that component is under Cisco SmartNet.  What that “no-cost” license does is allows for TAC access.  AnyConnect also provides DART.

My second session, vearing from the mobility/security side was “Nexus 7000 Hardware Architecture.”  I’ve worked with these a little bit, so I wanted to better understand what was going on under the hood.  I found that you almost need a PhD in Nexusology to understand how things can be grouped or not-grouped or whatever.  Also, the way that queueing is performed has forced me to rethink the N7K QoS configs I’ve done.  This is due to mostly ingress queueing, before traffic is placed on the fabric.  There is some egress queueing, but the arbiter has already done most of that work prior to placing it on the output interface.

The third session brought me back to ISE.  Another terrific session delivered by Aaron Woland.  Note to self: book sessions with him whenever possible!  He brought a lot of terrific tips and hints that you wouldn’t automatically think of when implementing ISE.  A few key ones for me were:

1. When running ISE install wizard, use lower-case for the hostname.  That will alleviate issues later.

2. All ISE nodes must be resolvable by their FQDN.  Also, a DNS A Record should also have accompanying Pointer Record.  Otherwise, you will not get the redirects that you are wanting.

3. Related to #2, there is a way of creating the certificate such that it allows for the use of multiple host names (such as one for administering ISE, another for sponsors, another for guests, etc.) by the use of Subject Alternate Names.  That requires some OpenSSL magic.  They should have something about this in an upcoming guide.

4. Time Zone = UTC is best practice for a distributed deployment.  Also, remember that if you change the time zone on an ISE, the database is deleted!  So, set this during initial setup.  BTW, for the Eastern Time Zone in the United States, use EST5EDT in order to allow for Daylight Saving Time.

5. Always use the RADIUS probe, and usually the DHCP probe.  Use as few as required to get the information you need.

While all these were great, the highlight of the day was going to dinner at Jakes’s Del Mar in Del Mar, CA with Pat Goessling, Annese Account Manager, and several customers.  We were right on the ocean and had a terrific time talking and laughing.