Accelerate business and network transformation with unified lifecycle management and application visibility.
Overview
Business and network transformation brings new challenges to traditional IT network management. The proliferation of mobile devices and pervasive voice and video collaboration, along with cloud and data center virtualization, is driving the need for higher levels of service and improved quality of experience across the network infrastructure. These new services and applications require network managers to have improved visibility to quickly and proactively troubleshoot and resolve problems before they affect services and end-user experience.
Cisco Prime™ Infrastructure addresses these challenges by providing a single integrated solution for comprehensive lifecycle management of the wired/wireless access, campus, and branch networks, and rich visibility into end-user connectivity and application performance assurance issues.
Cisco Prime Infrastructure accelerates the rollout of new services and provides secure access and management of mobile devices, making “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) a reality for corporate IT. Tightly coupling client awareness with application performance visibility and network control, Cisco Prime Infrastructure helps ensure uncompromised end-user quality of experience. Deep integration with the Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) further extends this visibility across security and policy-related problems, presenting a complete view of client access issues with a clear path to solving them.
Converged Simplified Lifecycle Management
Combining the wireless functionality of Cisco Prime Network Control System (NCS) with the wired functionality of Cisco Prime LAN Management Solution (LMS),[1] Cisco Prime Infrastructure simplifies and automates many of the day-to-day tasks associated with maintaining and managing the end-to-end network infrastructure from a single pane of glass. The new converged solution delivers all of the existing wireless capabilities for RF management, user access visibility, reporting, and troubleshooting along with wired lifecycle functions such as discovery, inventory, configuration and image management, automated deployment, compliance reporting, integrated best practices, and reporting.
A new operational model based on lifecycle processes (Figure 1) aligns the product functionality with the way network operators do their jobs:
● Design - Assess, plan, and create configurations required to roll out new network services and technologies. Create templates used for monitoring key network resources, devices, and attributes. Default templates and best practice designs are provided for quick out-of-the-box implementation automating the work required to use Cisco validated designs and best practices.
● Deploy - Schedule the rollout and implementation of network changes. Changes may include published templates created in the design phase, software image updates, and support for user-initiated ad hoc changes and compliance updates. This accelerates service rollout, minimizes chances for errors, and is highly scalable.
● Operate - Predefined dashboards provide up-to-date status monitoring on the overall health of the network. Simple one-click workflows and 360-degree device views enhance troubleshooting and reduce the time to resolve network issues. Unified alarm displays with detailed forensics provide actionable information and the ability to automatically open service requests with the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC).
● Report - Provides a wide variety of predefined reports for up-to-date information on the network including detailed inventory, configuration, compliance, audit, capacity, end-of-sale, security vulnerabilities, and many more.
● Administer - Provides an easy-to-use set of workflows that help to maintain the health of the application and keep devices, users, and the software up to date, allowing the IT staff to focus on other important activities.
Improve Application Delivery and End-User Experience
By converging lifecycle management and assurance, Cisco Prime Infrastructure empowers network managers to more effectively manage their network as well as the services their network delivers. Bringing device management capabilities into operational monitoring workflows provides a holistic, multidimensional view of the user, application, and network. This powerful combination of application awareness and network savvy helps network managers realize operational efficiencies that include improved responsiveness to business needs, faster problem identification and remediation, and lower incident and problem rates.
Cisco Prime Infrastructure enables embedded Cisco instrumentation and industry-standard technologies, such as NetFlow, Network Based Application Recognition (NBAR), Medianet, Performance Agent, and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), to deliver network wide application-aware visibility. It provides operations monitoring and quality of experience workflows that reduce instrumentation configuration and data collection complexity to quickly and easily gain insight into network and application performance. It also integrates with Cisco Prime Network Analysis Module (NAM) to permit the collection and correlation of granular flow- and packet-based data from one NAM or many, helping to enable deeper analysis and troubleshooting to rapidly solve challenging application and network problems.
Reduce Operational Expenses
Cisco Prime Infrastructure’s scalable single-pane-of-glass solution significantly reduces operational costs by reducing the number of required management solutions. Cisco Prime Infrastructure scales to manage thousands of routers and switches, and hundreds of Cisco wireless controllers, which in turn can manage up to 15,000 Cisco Aironet® access points. Through the Day 1 support program, new Cisco devices are supported the day they ship, thus eliminating gaps in your management operations, especially when it comes to service availability and troubleshooting.
Cisco Prime Infrastructure offers both physical appliance and virtual appliance options for deployment flexibility without sacrificing scalability, ease of installation and setup, or serviceability and sustainability.
Features and Benefit Summary
Table 1 provides a summary of the features and benefits of Cisco Prime Infrastructure.
Table 1. Summary of Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2 Features and Benefits
Product Specifications
Table 2 provides product specifications for Cisco Prime Infrastructure.
Table 2. Product Specifications for Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2
Table 3 presents the scalability limits for Cisco Prime Infrastructure based on the virtual appliance size: small, medium, large, or extra large. The Cisco Prime Appliance corresponds to a large virtual appliance. The scalability limits and applicability also depend on the feature sets enabled: Lifecycle only, Assurance only, or Lifecycle and Assurance. Use of the Assurance feature set requires either a large or extra large virtual appliance.
Table 3. Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2 Scalability
An Integrated Solution
Cisco Prime Infrastructure is now a single installable software package[2] with tiered licensing options to expand and grow functionality and coverage as needed. Simply install the base software license and one or more of the following feature set options:
● Lifecycle management - Simplifies the day-to-day operational tasks associated with managing the network infrastructure for all Cisco devices including; routers, switches, access points and more.
● Assurance management - Delivers application-level visibility through the normalization and correlation of rich performance instrumentation data to help ensure application delivery and an optimal end-user experience.
● Automated Deployment Gateway - This optional feature complements the built-in automated deployment functionality available through lifecycle management. It enables remote automated deployment for large-scale environments and DMZ implementations.
Ordering and Licensing Information
Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2 is available for new customers and upgrade options are available for existing Cisco Prime Infrastructure, Cisco Network Control System, Cisco Wireless Control System (WCS), and LMS customers. For details refer to the Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2 Ordering and Licensing Guide. Information is also provided in the guide regarding obtaining an evaluation copy of Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2.
Technical Service Options
Cisco Prime Infrastructure software products come with the Cisco 90-day software warranty. Purchasing a Cisco Software Application Support plus Upgrades (SASU) service provides benefits not available with the warranty, including access to maintenance releases, minor and major upgrades, online resources, and Technical Assistance Center support services.
The Cisco Prime Appliance option comes with a Cisco 90-day hardware warranty. Adding a contract for a technical service offering, such as Cisco SMARTnet® Service, to your device coverage provides access to the Cisco Technical Assistance Center and can provide a variety of hardware replacement options to meet critical business needs, updates for licensed operating system software, and registered access to the extensive Cisco.com knowledge base and support tools.
For more information about Cisco warranties, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/warranty.
For information about Cisco Technical Services, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/ts.
For More Information
For more information about Cisco Prime Infrastructure, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/primeinfrastructure, or send an email to ask-prime-infrastructure@cisco.com.
For more information about Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), visit http://www.cisco.com/go/ise.
For more information about the Cisco Unified Wireless Network, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/wireless.
For more information about the Cisco Network Analysis Module (NAM), visit http://www.cisco.com/go/nam.
For more information about the Cisco NetFlow Generation Appliance (NGA), visit http://www.cisco.com/go/nga.