The Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) offers a network-based approach for adaptable, trusted access everywhere, based on context. It gives the user intelligent, integrated protection through intent-based policy and compliance solutions.
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Salt
Score 6.5 out of 10
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Built on Python, Salt is an event-driven automation tool and framework to deploy, configure, and manage complex IT systems. Salt is used to automate common infrastructure administration tasks and ensure that all the components of infrastructure are operating in a consistent desired state.
One scenario I already mentioned is authentication integration. So that works well. We haven't run any situation where it is not suited, so we haven't run into that situation. So I am not really sure that would it work or not. But right now, so far so good.
SaltStack is a very well architected toolset and framework for reliably managing distributed systems' complexity at varied scale. If the diversity of kind or number of assets is low, or the dependencies are bounded and simple, it might be overkill. Realization that you need SaltStack might come in the form of other tools, scripts, or jobs whose code has become difficult, unreliable, or unmaintainable. Rather than a native from-scratch SaltStack design, be aware that SaltStack can be added on to tools like Docker or Chef and optionally factor those tools out or other tools into the mix.
The most beneficial thing that I love about it, there are tons of things that I love about ISE and that it does well, but the most fascinating that I feel about is its integration with DNA center or Catalyst Center using PX Grid as the protocol wherein ISE acts as a policy server for the entire campus hand in hand with Catalyst Center to make sure that the policy policy follows the user and also in the background hand in hand with DNA Center or Catalyst Center makes sure microsegmentation is implemented so that east west traffic is blocked and takes care of the campus.
Targeting is easy and yet extremely granular - I can target machines by name, role, operating system, init system, distro, regex, or any combination of the above.
Abstraction of OS, package manager and package details is far advanced beyond any other CRM I have seen. The ability to set one configuration for a package across multiple distros, and have it apply correctly no matter the distrospecific naming convention or package installation procedure, is amazing.
Abstraction of environments is similarly valuable - I can set a firewall rule to allow ssh from "management", and have that be defined as a specific IP range per dev, test, and prod.
I guess the user experience itself, it's sometimes a little bit slow, but this is also dependent on the platform and the scale of the deployment of course. But actually functionality-wise it's really, really good. But yeah, it could sometimes be a little quicker to react on the good front.
For us the solution is very easily useable on its own. Perhaps that has to do because we started using ISE in the 1.2 days and have seen it grow during the years. Policy creation, etc. is all very visible and thus easy to use. Deployment of multiple nodes is also incredibly easy and flexible. You can easily add or remove nodes as you wish.
We do have to occasionally reboot the servers when they get low on memory, but we're also a few versions behind. Availability has generally been pretty good though with no major outages in the time that we've had it implemented.
Cisco support is second to none, both in terms of how you access support but also the knowledge of the individual support teams. If you focus on one technology and provide "manufacturer support" then you can rest assured that you are accessing Cisco's top individuals. I feel like this is a USP for Cisco support.
We haven't had to spend a lot of time talking to support, and we've only had one issue, which, when dealing with other vendors is actually not that bad of an experience.
I did participate in the implementation of Cisco ISE and while there were times when it was confusing and we had a lot of trial and error, overall the experience was fine.
In our case, the entire core of our network is based on Cisco technologies as well as user access. For this reason it was the simplest choice given that both by integration and by knowledge of the platform it was the solution with the least complexity and the best adoption curve offered us. At the level of capabilities, they seemed really similar to us, each option having some point where it surpassed the others and others where it was surpassed.
We moved to SaltStack from Puppet about 3 years ago. Puppet just has too much of a learning curve and we inherited it from an old IT regime. We wanted something we could start fresh with. Our team has never looked back. SaltStack is so much easier for us to use and maintain.
It's fully customised and comprehensive. only thing is you need to know what you want. Proper research and planning would save lots of time and effort .
Cisco ISE is fairly expensive, but I feel that the time it saves our team is well worth it.
We have been able to roll this our to all of our teams, and they can each manage their own device and it is really convenient to have each team mange their own devices
Once it is deployed and configured, it seems like there isn't much upkeep, so we don't have to hire someone to manage it we do it by committee.
We manage two complex highly available self-healing (all infrastructure and systems) environments using SaltStack. Only one person is needed to run SaltStack. That is a HUGE return on investment.
Building tooling on top of SaltStack has allowed us to share administrative abilities by role - e.g. employee X can deploy software Y. No need to call a sysadmin and etc.
Recovery from problems, or time to stand-up new systems is now counted in minutes (usually under eight) rather than hours. This is a strategic advantage for rolling out new services.
