Cisco Prime™ Central provides centralized access to all components of the Cisco Prime Carrier Management suite of applications, to help service providers simplify the lifecycle management of evolved programmable networks (EPNs) and services. Tight integration between the domain managers helps operators to seamlessly and efficiently execute lifecycle tasks - including design, fulfillment, assurance, and analysis. (Refer to Figure 1.) The comprehensive and integrated approach to management helps enable service providers to accelerate time to market of revenue-generating services and provide outstanding quality of service (QoS) to help minimize customer churn. Cisco Prime Central offers unified management of the entire network - from access to the data center, greatly improving operational efficiencies and lowering costs.
Figure 1. Cisco Prime Central Helps Enable Seamless and Efficient Execution of Service Lifecycle Tasks Through an Integrated Approach to Management
Features and Benefits
Features
• Out-of-the-box integration with Cisco Prime Carrier Management suite components, including Cisco Prime Provisioning, Cisco Prime Performance Manager, Cisco Prime Network, and Cisco Prime Optical - with flexible rate of adoption
• Single sign-on access to cross-domain operator workflows with point-and-click provisioning, troubleshooting, and performance analysis
• Secure administrative management and control
• Data center dashboard and interface that facilitates customer and service impact analyses
• Automatic failover for local hardware and software faults
• Support for standards-based northbound interfaces (NBIs) and integration "probes"
Benefits
• Ease of operations through unified management of access, transport, and data center networks
• Redirected assets for operating expenses (OpEx) to strategy and planning for new revenue streams
• Increased business efficiencies through workflow consistencies and centralized management
• Enhanced business continuity through operational redundancy
• Reduced overhead and time for integration with BSSs/OSSs and other third-party products
Table 1 outlines more detailed features and benefits of Cisco Prime Central.
Table 1. Features and Benefits
Feature
Details
Benefit
Architecture
Web-based interface
• Consistent "look-and-feel" across workflow, processes, and tools
• Support for both traditional three-tier and Reach Internet Application (RIA) architectures
• Support for most popular web/application servers (including Apache Tomcat)
• Eliminates the need to install client applications and manage upgrades on multiple client machines
• Provides quick and easy access to components of the suite and the lifecycle service management tasks
Hardware platform
• Certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating systems
• Ability to run on both virtualized (tested on the VMware ESXi hypervisor) and bare-metal (nonvirtualized) machines for large-scale deployments
• Offers deployment flexibility
Secure User Management and Administration
Single sign-on access to fully integrated cross-domain operator workflows
• Seamless access to the management components upon user authentication through a portal
• Point-and-click provisioning and centralized execution of service lifecycle management tasks
• No requirement for further authorization to access the different applications that are part of the Cisco Prime Carrier Management suite
• Integration with external authentication servers, supporting Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), TACACS+, and RADIUS plug-ins
• Integration with Cisco InTracer, a high-performance troubleshooting tool that provides critical session and application information, utilizing the data collection capabilities of the ASR 5000 mobile multimedia gateway platform
• Provides simplified security through a central point of access for authentication and authorization control
• Increases operational efficiencies
• Accelerates deployment of services
• Helps improve mobile service performance and meet stringent service-level agreements (SLAs)
Common user management services with role-based access control (RBAC)
• Assignment of user and group rights as well as association of roles/access rights to different components of the suite from a central location
• Robust mechanisms for authentication and password management
• Tracking and monitoring of executed tasks through audit logs
• Supports efficient rollout of role-based assignments for the entire suite
• Enhances security and facilitates compliance checks
Common suite administration and monitoring
• Central administrative interface for all components installed as part of the Cisco Prime Carrier Management solution
• Seamless addition of new Cisco Prime Carrier Management components; does not require reinstall of Cisco Prime Central
• Offers operational simplification through centralized monitoring of the Cisco Prime Carrier Management components
• Reduces time-to-adoption of new components
Inventory Management
Common inventory management
• A single inventory view of the entire network
• Role-based user navigation of physical inventory - all the way down to the domain manager that is managing the specific device
• Information on available/unused chassis slots and port line rates
• Advanced filtering and sorting capabilities
• Alarm information associated to inventory information
• Provides easy access to a single, detailed inventory view and the ability to use information shared by domain managers
• Prevents errors and unintended changes through role-based access and management
• Facilitates capacity planning
Grouping
• Ability to associate resource inventory to a group statically or dynamically
• Fault information reported at grouping level
• Enables user to slice and dice resources and group them in a way that is meaningful to the specific task the user is assigned to
Event/Alarm Management
Common event/alarm management
• Cross-domain event management, correlation, and de-duplication
• Single dashboard view and management of full alarm/event lifecycle without the need to access the specific domain manager
• Ability to navigate to the source domain manager for advanced troubleshooting
• Predefined reports and historical statistics, allowing operators to define user-customized reports
• Complete alarm lifecycle mapped from Cisco Prime Central to the source management application
• Drastically reduces troubleshooting time through cross-domain event management, correlation, and de-duplication, and a single dashboard view that provides detailed information on the faulty situation across all network layers of the transport network
Operational redundancy
• Automatic failover for local hardware and software faults, utilizing two dual node clusters
• Minimum disruption to the end user by allowing clusters to maintain their floating-point IP addresses
• Facilitates business continuity
Data Center
Customer and resource management
• Ability to populate customer information through the UI or northbound system
• Ability to associate customer to physical or virtual compute resources as well as to services
• Customer 360 view, which provides meaningful information associated with a customer such as performance and alarms
• Assists in applications and services assurance to help meet SLAs
Customer and service impact analysis
• Service inventory model aware alarm processing for compute, network, and storage
• Customer tagging for impact alarms
• Ability to navigate from customer/service impact alarm to root-cause analysis/symptom events
• Assists in applications and services assurance to help meet SLAs
Data center dashboard
• Prebuilt dashboard for compute, network, and storage list and detailed views
• Ships with an integral SNMP gateway; simple plug-and-play integration for IBM Tivoli Netcool ("Netcool ready")
• Cross-domain correlation engine for forwarded traps
• Simplifies integration with external OSSs by reducing the flood of alarms
• Decreased time to resolution of network/service issues
System Requirements
Table 2 lists the system requirements for Cisco Prime Central.
Table 2. Hardware, OS, Database, and Web Client Requirements
System Requirements
Description
Hardware
Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®) B-series blade or C-series rack-mountable server, or equivalent third-party vendor hardware platform
Virtualization
VMware ESXi 4.1/5.0
Operating system platform
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8 with x86 (64 bit)
Database
Oracle 11g R2 database (external and embedded options)
Web client operating system
Windows XP (32 and 64 bit) and Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit)
Web client browser
Windows XP: Mozilla Firefox 17 Extended Support Edition (ESR) or 20 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 8
Windows 7: Mozilla Firefox 17 ESR or 20 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 or 9
About Cisco Prime
The Cisco Prime portfolio of IT and service provider management offerings empowers organizations to more effectively manage their networks and the services they deliver. Built on a service-centered foundation, the Cisco Prime portfolio of products supports integrated lifecycle management through an intuitive workflow-oriented user experience- providing A-to-Z management for EPNs, mobility, video, and managed services.
Services and Support
Cisco offers a wide range of services programs to accelerate customer success. These innovative services programs are delivered through a unique combination of people, processes, tools, and partners, resulting in high levels of customer satisfaction. Cisco services help you to protect your network investment, optimize network operations, and prepare the network for new applications to extend network intelligence and the power of your business. Please visit the Cisco Services page on Cisco.com for more information.
Cisco Prime Central is available for purchase through regular Cisco sales and distribution channels worldwide. Part numbers are listed in Table 3. To place an order, visit the Cisco Ordering Homepage.
Table 3. Ordering Information
Product Name
Part Number
Cisco Prime Central 1.x (eDelivery Option)
R-PRIME1CENTRAL-K9
Cisco Prime Central 1.x (DCT Top Level Ordering Use Only)
PRIME-1-CENTRAL-K9
Cisco Prime Central 1.2 - Base Application
CENTRAL-1.2-K9
Cisco Prime Central 1.2 - Standby Entitlement (Redundancy Only)
CENTRAL-1.-SBY
Cisco Prime Central 1.2 - Lab Application (Not for Production Use)
CENTRAL-1.2-LAB-K9
Cisco Prime Central 1.x - Tier 1 DSA
CENTRAL-1-T1-DSA
Cisco Prime Central 1.x -s Tier 1 Gateway
CENTRAL-1-T1-GWY
Cisco Prime Central 1.x MTOSI Northbound Interface
CENTRAL-1-MTOSI
Cisco Prime Central 1.x Domain Manager Probe
CENTRAL-1-DM-PROBE
Cisco Prime Central 1.x Tier 2 Gateway
CENTRAL-1-T2-GWY
Cisco Prime Central 1.x Tier 3 DSA
CENTRAL-1-T3-DSA
For More Information
For more information about Cisco Prime Central, contact your local account representative or visit www.cisco.com/go/primecentral.
