Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2: Simplify Network Management At-a-Glance

Overview

Effective network management is more than uptime percentages. It’s about intelligence and speed: making smart, real-time decisions and responding quickly to changing conditions. To do that, you need a solution that simplifies the management of your network, end to end and all in one.

Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2 is the One Management platform from Cisco (Figure 1). It provides lifecycle management and network service assurance network wide, from the wireless user in the branch office, across the WAN, through the access layer, and now to the data center. With it, you can speed the deployment of network devices and services and find problems sooner and troubleshoot them faster. You can help employees work their own way on their own devices, at any time, and work better with each other, from anywhere. Cisco Prime Infrastructure lets you manage your network more efficiently and effectively so you can achieve the highest levels of wireless and wired network performance, service assurance, and end-user experience.

Spotlight on What’s New in Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2

Inside Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2, we’ve distilled what we’ve learned about lifecycle management and service assurance and packed it underneath an integrated, easy-to-use user interface. We’ve automated workflows and templates for efficient deployment, enhanced monitoring for rapid troubleshooting and resolution, and hardened security with Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 140 certification. Cisco Prime Infrastructure uses Cisco best practices and validated designs to help you reduce the time you spend running the network so you can focus on delivering new, innovative services to your end users.

With Version 2.2 and the introduction of technology packs (TechPacks) over 2.2.1, we’ve added and enhanced Cisco Prime Infrastructure in several areas such as converged access, Meraki® support, and data center (Expected availability in Q2CY15 for data center).

●     Converged access: Wireless TechPack brings in powerful capabilities and easy of deployment for converged access. All of the wired and wireless best practices for distributed wireless are embedded into the template-directed workflows. With this workflow, you can quickly enable four WLANs (including one guest), recommended security and wireless best practices, as well as application visibility. Convergedaccess workflow drastically reduces the time and complexity in deploying converged-access technology for Cisco Catalyst® 2900, Catalyst 3800, and Cisco IOS® XE Software-based controllers such as the Cisco 5760 Wireless LAN Controllers.

●     Meraki integration: Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2.1 can now support management of Meraki devices through the wireless technology pack. You can now manage a Meraki device in Cisco Prime Infrastructure natively, and can cross-launch into the Meraki Dashboard right from within the device work center.

●     Data center: Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2 extends management into the data center. A single view and point of control lets you reap the benefits of One Management across both network and compute.

The all-new compute work center offers fault, performance management, and 360-degree views of Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®) B-Series blade servers and C-Series rack servers, along with visibility of virtual infrastructure from VMware (Figure 2) so you can correlate your physical and virtual server environments from a single-pane-of-glass view. This release also adds support for Cisco Nexus® 9300 Series switches alongside existing support for other Cisco Nexus switches. The TechPack release (Q2CY15 availability) adds visibility of virtual overlay over the physical network by bringing the virtual port channel inventory support for the Cisco Nexus platforms.

●     Intelligent WAN: Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2 radically simplifies the deployment and management of Cisco Intelligent WAN (IWAN) devices and services with guided workflows based on Cisco validated designs and best practices. It speeds provisioning for services such as Dynamic Multipoint VPN (DMVPN) and Performance Routing (PfR) and simplifies quality-of-service (QoS) configuration and monitoring. The new Application Visibility and Control (AVC) Work Center discovers and classifies application-visibility readiness in network device hardware and software. Now it’s easier and faster to deploy Cisco IWAN devices and services in branch offices and to automatically monitor and manage them.

●     Operations center: Large or global organizations often distribute network management by domain, region, or country. Cisco Prime Infrastructure Operations Center lets you visualize up to 10 Cisco Prime Infrastructure instances, scaling your network management infrastructure while maintaining central visibility and control.

●     Cisco Prime Infrastructure Platform: The platform adds new capabilities that put the user experience first, including:

◦     Visual topology mapping (Figure 3): Mapping makes management more intuitive with graphical representations of devices and links with visualization of alarms.

◦     Credential profiles and bulk device editing: You can create credential profiles and associate them with one or more devices; bulk device editing allows you to select multiple devices and edit credentials or other user-defined fields on all devices at once.

◦     IPv6 support: You can configure and manage IPv6 devices with a full suite of protocols and services.

Cisco Prime 2.2 Infrastructure enhances existing capabilities such as:

●     Monitoring policies: You can activate or deactivate monitoring policies through an easier, more intuitive workflow and push changes to devices without disrupting service; these policies replace monitoring templates.

●     Unified menu: Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2 converges wireless and wired menus of previous versions into a single menu structure for accessing tasks and operations.

●     Ready-to-use high availability: This feature enables faster failover to standby platforms.

Why Cisco?

Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2 has everything you need to simplify and automate management tasks while taking advantage of the intelligence and rich capabilities of your Cisco® networks. Now it’s easier and faster to manage your Cisco networks from mobile user devices in campus and branch offices through the access layer, across the IWAN, all the way into the data center.

No other single platform does what Cisco Prime Infrastructure does. Managing everything from one place gives you greater visibility and control over your network services, with faster deployments and troubleshooting. It’s the framework that enables true business agility throughout your Cisco IT infrastructure.

For More Information

For more information please visit: Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2