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Table Of Contents
Release Notes for Cisco Prime Infrastructure, Release 1.2
Virtual Appliance - Hardware Requirements
Upgrading Cisco Prime Infrastructure
Prime Infrastructure Feedback Tool
Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2 Supported Devices
The Virtual Wireless Controller
Increased Scale for Cisco Flex 7500 Series Controllers
Automatic Hierarchy to Create Maps
Redundancy on Primary and Secondary Controllers
Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request
Release Notes for Cisco Prime Infrastructure, Release 1.2
Last Updated: August 29, 2012OL-27652-01These release notes contain the following sections:
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Virtual Appliance - Hardware Requirements
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Upgrading Cisco Prime Infrastructure
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Prime Infrastructure Feedback Tool
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Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2 Supported Devices
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New Features and Enhancements
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Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request
Introduction
The Cisco Prime Infrastructure is a network management tool that supports lifecycle management of your entire network infrastructure from one graphical interface. Prime Infrastructure provides network administrators with a single solution for provisioning, monitoring, optimizing, and troubleshooting both wired and wireless devices. Robust graphical interfaces make device deployments and operations simple and cost-effective.
Prime Infrastructure provides two different graphical user interfaces (from which you can switch back and forth by clicking the downward arrow next to your login name):
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Lifecycle view, which is organized according to home, design, deploy, operate, report and administer menus.
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Classic view, which closely corresponds to the graphical user interface in Cisco Prime Network Control System 1.1 or Cisco Wireless Control System (WCS).
For more information on the Lifecycle view of the Cisco Prime Infrastructure features, see the following URL:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/net_mgmt/prime/infrastructure/1.2/user/guide/prime_infra_ug.html
For more information on the Classic view of the Cisco Prime Infrastructure features, see the following URL:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/wireless/prime_infrastructure/1.2/configuration/guide/pi_12_cg.html
For more information on prerequisites, system requirements, and installation, see the following URL:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/net_mgmt/prime/infrastructure/1.2/quickstart/guide/cpi_qsg.html
Virtual Appliance - Hardware Requirements
Table 1 lists the hardware requirements for the virtual appliance based on wired/wireless scale. For information about the number and type of devices supported by each virtual appliance size, see the Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2 data sheet at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps12239/products_data_sheets_list.html.
Browser Support
Prime Infrastructure supports the following browsers:
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Google Chrome—19.0 build
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Mozilla Firefox— ESR 10.x, 13.0 and 14.0
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Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 or 9.0 with Chrome plug-in. Native Internet Explorer is not supported.
Note
We recommend a minimum screen resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels.
Supported Software Versions
Table 2 lists the wireless devices and their software versions that are supported by Prime Infrastructure 1.2.
For a complete list of supported WLCs and detailed information on the software compatibility for the Cisco wireless devices, see the following URL:
For detailed information on the supported device types and software versions, see the following URL:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps12239/products_device_support_tables_list.html
Installation Guidelines
For detailed information about the installation guidelines, see the following URL:
Upgrading Cisco Prime Infrastructure
Note
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Install a patch to the existing system before performing the upgrade.
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Ensure that you perform a backup before attempting to upgrade.
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Use a console connection when you upgrade, to avoid Telnet/SSH terminal timeouts.
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Remove high availability before performing the upgrade.
The following are the NCS versions that you can upgrade from or backup/restore to Prime Infrastructure Release 1.2.0.103.
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NCS 1.0.2.29
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NCS 1.1.0.58
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NCS 1.1.1.24
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NCS/PA-WAN 1.1 (1.1.0.1114)
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NCS-WAN/PA 1.1.1 (1.1.0.1116)
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NCS 1.2.0.70 (Beta release)
For detailed information about the application upgrade, see the following URL:
Prime Infrastructure Feedback Tool
There is an automated feedback tool that can be configured to send periodic information to Cisco about the features that are being used on a given server. The feedback tool feature is disabled by default. You must enable this feature to identify the most frequently used features in Prime Infrastructure. You must configure the e-mail server and then enable data collection to configure the feedback tool.
To configure the feedback tool, follow these steps:
Step 1
Choose Administration > System Settings > Mail Server Configuration.
Step 2
In the Mail Server Configuration page, enter the mail server details.
Step 3
Click Save to save the configuration settings.
Step 4
Choose Help > Help Us Improve Cisco Products.
Step 5
In the Help Us Improve Cisco Products page, select the Yes, collect data periodically option.
Step 6
Click OK.
Submitting Feedback
To obtain support assistance and deliver feedback, use the following link to communicate with the Cisco support team:
https://www.ciscofeedback.vovici.com/se.ashx?s=6A5348A76B189D9B
Prime Infrastructure License
For detailed information on the Prime Infrastructure Licensing, see the following URL:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps12239/products_data_sheets_list.html
Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2 Supported Devices
For detailed information on the supported device types, see the following URL:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps12239/products_device_support_tables_list.html
New Features and Enhancements
The following topics describe new features and enhancements in Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2:
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The Virtual Wireless Controller
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Cisco 8500 Series Controllers
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Increased Scale for Cisco Flex 7500 Series Controllers
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Automatic Hierarchy to Create Maps
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Support for New Access Points
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Redundancy on Primary and Secondary Controllers
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Automated Deployment Profiles
Lifecycle Management
The Cisco Prime Infrastructure supports lifecycle management of all your entire network infrastructure from one graphical interface. Prime Infrastructure provides network administrators with a single solution for provisioning, monitoring, optimizing, and troubleshooting both wired and wireless devices. Robust graphical interfaces make device deployments and operations simple and cost-effective.
Prime Infrastructure provides two different graphical user interfaces (from which you can switch back and forth by clicking the downward arrow next to your login name):
•
Lifecycle view, which is organized according to home, design, deploy, operate, report and administration menus.
•
Classic view, which closely corresponds to the graphical user interface in Cisco Prime Network Control System (NCS) or Cisco Wireless Control System (WCS).
The Virtual Wireless Controller
The virtual wireless LAN controller is a software that can run on hardware that is compliant with an industry standard virtualization infrastructure. Virtual wireless LAN controllers provide flexibility for users to select the hardware based on their requirement.
We recommend that you have the following hardware to host a virtual controller:
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Cisco UCS R210-2121605W Rack Mount Server (2 RU)
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IBM x3550 M3 server
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ISR G2 Services Ready Engine (SRE) using UCS Express
Cisco 8500 Series Controllers
Cisco 8500 Series Controllers are introduced with support for local mode, FlexConnect, and mesh modes. The Cisco 8500 Series Controllers support 6000 APs, 64,000 clients, 2000 FlexConnect groups, 6000 AP groups, 100 APs per FlexConnect group, and up to 4094 dynamic VLANs. A Cisco 8500 Series Controller can support up to 24,000 rogue APs and 32,000 rogue clients.
Increased Scale for Cisco Flex 7500 Series Controllers
Increased scale for Cisco Flex 7500 Series Controllers to support 6000 APs, 64000 clients, 2000 FlexConnect groups, 6000 AP groups, 100 APs per FlexConnect group, and up to 4094 dynamic VLANs.
Next Generation Maps
In addition to the features of the legacy maps, Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2 enables you to use the features of the Next Generation Maps. The Next Generation Maps feature is enabled by default. Use the Administration > User Preferences page to disable or enable this feature.
The Next Generation Maps feature provides you the following benefits:
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Displays large amount of information on map. When you have numerous clients, interferers and access points, these may clutter the display on Prime Infrastructure map pages. Also, pages load slowly. Prime Infrastructure 1.2 introduces clustering and layering of information. Information clustering reduces clutter at the high level and reveals more information when you click an object.
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Simplifies and accelerates the process of adding APs to the map. In the legacy maps, the process of adding access points to maps is manual and tedious. With Prime Infrastructure 1.2, you can use automated hierarchy creation to add and name access points.
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Provides high-quality map images with easy navigation and zoom/pan controls. In the legacy maps, the map image quality is low and navigating, zooming, and panning is slow. With Prime Infrastructure 1.2, you can use the next-generation `tile-aware' map engine to load maps faster and zoom/pan easily. Also, Next Generation Maps enables administrators to load high-resolution maps faster and navigate around the map.
Automatic Hierarchy to Create Maps
Automatic Hierarchy Creation is a way for you to quickly create maps and assign access points to maps in Prime Infrastructure. You can use Automatic Hierarchy Creation to create maps once you have added wireless LAN controllers to Prime Infrastructure and named your access points. Also, you can use it after adding access points to your network to assign access points to maps in Prime Infrastructure.
FlexConnect-related Features
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Split tunneling allows the traffic sent by a client to be classified based on the packet contents. The matching packets are locally switched and the rest of the traffic is centrally switched. The traffic that is sent by the client that matches the IP address of the device present in the local site can be classified as locally switched traffic and the rest of the traffic as centrally switched.
This feature is supported on the AP1040, AP1140, AP1260, AP3500, and AP3600 access points.
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Support to configure Network Address Translation (NAT) and Port Address Translation (PAT) on FlexConnect locally switched WLANs is added. You must enable Central DHCP Processing to enable NAT and PAT.
This feature is supported on the AP1040, AP1140, AP1260, AP3500, and AP3600 access points.
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This release extends support for 802.11u in FlexConnect mode.
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802.11r Fast Transition is now supported on FlexConnect APs in central and locally switched
WLANs.
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VLAN-based local and central switching is supported. The AAA server returns a VLAN configured for a client. If the VLAN is configured on the local IEEE 802.1Q link, the AP bridges the traffic locally. If the VLAN is not configured on the AP uplink, the AP tunnels the traffic back to the controller. The controller bridges the traffic into the corresponding VLAN from where the traffic is transported toward the next routing instance for further processing.
HotSpot 2.0
This release extends support for HotSpot 2.0 specifications, where APs in mesh mode and APs in FlexConnect mode in locally switched WLANs are also supported.
Auto-Switch Port Tracing
This feature provides the ability to automatically identify the Cisco switch and port information for a rogue AP connected to the Cisco switch, which allows quickly identifying and mitigating the threat posed by a rogue AP.
Third Party Support
Ability to discover and monitor third-party (non-Cisco) switches that support RFC 1213 and wireless controllers/access points from Aruba Networks.
Proxy Mobile IPv6
Proxy Mobile IPv6 is a network-based mobility management protocol that supports a mobile node by acting as the proxy for the mobile node in any IP mobility-related signaling. The mobility entities in the network track the movements of the mobile node, initiate the mobility signaling, and set up the required routing state.
The main functional entities are the Local Mobility Anchor (LMA) and Mobile Access Gateway (MAG). The LMA maintains the reachability state of the mobile node and is the topological anchor point for the IP address of the mobile node. The MAG performs the mobility management on behalf of a mobile node. The MAG resides on the access link where the mobile node is anchored. The controller implements the MAG functionality.
Note
PMIPv6 MAG functionality is supported only on Cisco 5500 series controllers, Cisco 8500 series controllers, and Cisco WiSM2.
VLAN Tagging
VLAN tagging on Ethernet interfaces is supported. You can configure VLAN tagging on the Ethernet interface either directly from the AP console or through the controller and Cisco Prime Infrastructure. You must save the configuration in flash, and all CAPWAP packets should use the VLAN tag as configured along with all the locally switched traffic, which is not mapped to a VLAN. When enabled, the CAPWAP packets from the AP are forwarded through the trunk VLAN. If it fails, the AP falls back to the untagged mode.
Support for New Access Points
This release introduces two new AP1552 models:
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AP1552CU
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AP1552EU
Support is added to the following features on the AP1552 models to be on par with the indoor APs:
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Local, FlexConnect, Monitor, Rogue Detector, and Sniffer modes
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VideoStream in Local mode
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HotSpot 2.0 in Local mode
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VoWLAN
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Band Select
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DTLS
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CleanAir of 5-GHz radio
Redundancy on Primary and Secondary Controllers
The term Redundancy in Prime Infrastructure refers to the high availability (HA) framework in controllers. Redundancy in wireless networks allows you to reduce the network downtime. In a redundancy architecture, one controller is in the Active state and a second controller is in the Standby state, which continuously monitors the health of the controller in the Active state through a redundant port. Both controllers share the same configurations including the IP address of the management interface.
The Standby or Active state of a controller is based on the redundancy stock keeping unit (SKU), which is a manufacturing ordered unique device identification (UDI). A controller with redundancy SKU UDI is in the Standby state for the first time when it boots and pairs with a controller that runs a permanent count license. For controllers that have permanent count licenses, you can manually configure whether the controller is in the Active state or the Standby state.
In this release, a stateful switchover of access points (AP SSO) is supported. An AP SSO ensures that the AP sessions are intact even after a switchover.
Note
The stateful switchover of clients is not supported, which means that all clients, with the exception of clients on locally switched WLANs on access points in FlexConnect mode, are deauthenticated and forced to reassociate with the new controller in the Active state.
Automated Deployment Profiles
The Prime Infrastructure Automated Deployment feature allows you to create templates that can be hosted on the Automated Deployment Gateway. Network devices (for example, ISR G2, Catalyst switches) with Cisco Networking Services (CNS) agents can call home to the Automated Deployment Gateway to pull their configuration templates down. After provisioning, the management of those devices follows the regular Prime Infrastructure process.
ScanSafe
ScanSafe Web Security is a cloud-based SaaS (Security as a Service) that allows you to scan the content of the HTTP and HTTPS traffic. When the ScanSafe Web Security is integrated with a router, selected HTTP and HTTPS traffic is redirected to the ScanSafe cloud for content scanning and malware detection.
Important Notes
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The Cisco 12.2EWA IOS Image for Catalyst 4948 does not work properly. Cisco Prime Infrastructure supports IOS Image 12.2SG for Catalyst 4948 series. This is because of different sysOId's returned by Cisco IOS Images.
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For the TACACS+/RADIUS user authentication, the custom attributes related to the new features are required to be added/appended to the existing set of attributes in AAA server to access certain pages/views. For example, Monitor Media Stream page, Virtual Domain List (to view the list of virtual domains from the Create Report page), and so on. For RADIUS authentication and authorization in Prime Infrastructure 1.2, there is an alternate method available for the AAA users. Only the user role and virtual domain attributes can be configured in AAA server (instead of copying the complete custom attribute task list from NCS to the AAA server).
Open Caveats
Table 3 lists the Open Caveats in Cisco Prime Infrastructure Release 1.2.
Click the identifier to view the impact and workaround for the caveat. This information is displayed in the Bug Toolkit. You can track the status of the open caveats using the Bug Toolkit.
Resolved Caveats
Table 4 lists the Resolved Caveats in Cisco Prime Infrastructure Release 1.2.
Click the identifier to view the details of the caveat. This information is displayed in the Bug Toolkit. You can track the status of the resolved caveats, using the Bug Toolkit.
Related Documentation
You can access the following additional Cisco Prime Infrastructure documentation on Cisco.com:
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Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2 Quick Start Guide
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Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2 User Guide
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Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2 Configuration Guide
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Open Source Used In Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2
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Cisco Prime Infrastructure 1.2 Supported Devices
Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request
For information on obtaining documentation, submitting a service request, and gathering additional information, see the monthly What's New in Cisco Product Documentation, which also lists all new and revised Cisco technical documentation, at:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/general/whatsnew/whatsnew.html
Subscribe to the What's New in Cisco Product Documentation as an RSS feed and set content to be delivered directly to your desktop using a reader application. The RSS feeds are a free service. Cisco currently supports RSS Version 2.0.
This document is to be used in conjunction with the documents listed in the "Related Documentation" section.
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Any Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and phone numbers used in this document are not intended to be actual addresses and phone numbers. Any examples, command display output, network topology diagrams, and other figures included in the document are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any use of actual IP addresses or phone numbers in illustrative content is unintentional and coincidental.
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