Connect. Secure. Manage.
Cisco ISE High Availability
Plan resilient Cisco ISE services, node roles and failure testing so authentication dependencies and recovery responsibilities are understood.
Devices supported
across the UK
Client locations
supported
Traffic handled
at peak time
Average
response time
Average response is not a resolution time or a contractual guarantee. Support scope and response commitments are agreed for each engagement.
Cisco ISE high availability plans how access decisions will continue during agreed faults and maintenance. We review node roles, network-device behaviour and outside services that ISE relies on. The design then links those needs to tests your team can follow. Two servers alone do not prove that users can still connect after a failure.
Defined trust
Make access boundaries explicit rather than relying on an assumed internal network.
Controlled access
Connect identity, policy and network enforcement to the services people actually use.
Evidence for change
Test the intended security outcome and retain useful operational records.
Define which service must remain available
ISE administration, policy processing and monitoring serve different purposes. Losing the admin interface is not the same as losing authentication, and losing reporting can have consequences even while users still connect. We agree the required availability for each function and the time within which the customer expects to recover it.
The design also distinguishes new authentications from established sessions. A user already online may continue working while a newly arriving user cannot connect. That difference matters for incident communication and testing. The project records the actual service aim instead of using a broad high-availability label that obscures which activities remain possible during a failure.
Standards & partnerships
Confidence in the team behind your network.
Cisco Partner
Cisco Meraki
Cyber Essentials
Cyber Essentials PlusMCI Network Services is operated by Proxar Ltd. Certifications apply to the certified legal entity and the scope of its certificates. View accreditation information
Place nodes across meaningful failure domains
We review the supported node arrangement for the chosen ISE release and the expected authentication load. Virtual machines on different hosts may still depend on the same storage, power, network or admin control. Where the availability aim requires site separation, those dependencies are considered alongside latency and network access between the locations.
Capacity is assessed in the degraded state. A rollout that has enough resources only when every policy-service node is healthy may become unstable during maintenance. We establish the expected remaining load, any site affinity and the limits that need monitoring. The result should explain whether the service can tolerate the failure being claimed without relying on optimistic average usage.
A useful starting point
Not sure where to start?
Bring the requirement. We will help you define the engineering work.
Verify how network devices select a server
Switches, controllers and other access devices must know which policy services to use and how to react when one is unavailable. We review server definitions, timeout behaviour and the supported recovery process on each relevant platform. A resilient ISE topology does not help a switch configured to contact only a failed node.
We test the difference between a rejected authentication and an unreachable server. Those conditions should not automatically produce the same fallback. A valid denial must not become permission to try an unrestricted alternative. The intended behaviour is documented with representative client sessions so that the security decision remains clear during an outage.
Different environments. The same care.
Built around the work
your network supports.
Finance, banking and the wider private sector. We start with the systems and people that depend on your connections.
Finance & banking
Market-data paths, routing and provider coordination on clients’ behalf.
Financial-market services ↗Offices & multi-site teams
Reliable access between people, workplaces and business applications.
Office network design ↗Data centres & cloud
Network boundaries, workload connections and operational ownership.
Data centre networks ↗Remove hidden single dependencies
DNS, time synchronisation, certificate services, directories and required network paths can all affect authentication. We map those dependencies and identify whether they have their own resilience. Two ISE nodes relying on one unreachable directory service do not create two independent authentication paths.
Certificates and trust changes are included in operational planning. A simultaneous expiry or incorrectly distributed trust chain can affect every node regardless of physical redundancy. We assign ownership of renewals and test the transition process. High availability should reduce predictable operational failure, not focus exclusively on hardware power loss.
Plan maintenance as a failure scenario
Upgrades and patching need a supported sequence that preserves the agreed service where possible. We check version compatibility, backup needs and the consequences of a node remaining unavailable longer than expected. A maintenance plan should state when to pause, when to recover a node and when to abandon the change.
Recovery of administration or monitoring services may involve different procedures from policy-service recovery. We document those distinctions and the credentials, backups and external access needed. A backup is useful only when the team knows what it contains, where it can be restored and which separate certificate or key material also needs protection.
Test faults and restoration safely
An acceptance programme may include loss of a policy-service node, interruption of an agreed network path and restoration after maintenance. We observe new logins, relevant session changes and the information available to support staff. Tests are authorised and staged so that proving resilience does not become an uncontrolled production outage.
Results identify the tested device types and conditions. We record the interruption, remaining capacity and any manual action required. The report also makes untested scenarios visible. It should not convert a successful single-node shutdown into a claim that the entire identity service can withstand every site, directory or certificate failure.
Give operations a clear recovery model
MCI supplies role diagrams, dependency records, monitoring needs and recovery procedures tied to the agreed service aim. This work can accompany Cisco ISE upgrade services or a review of a current rollout. The customer receives a practical explanation of what remains available, what becomes degraded and who must act when a specific part of the access-control service fails.
Technical references
- Cisco ISE deployment — Cisco / Cisco Meraki
- Cisco ISE performance and scalability — Cisco / Cisco Meraki
Talk to a specialist
What does your network need next?
Tell us what you are planning, changing or trying to improve. We will help define a practical next step and the engineering scope.
+44 203 196 6566Choose option 1
sales@proxar.co.ukUK-wide service.
Most of our engineers are based in Kent, with a focus on London, Sussex, Essex and Berkshire.
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