Cisco Prime™ Collaboration Manager (CM) provides a powerful web-based user experience for managing and quickly troubleshooting end-to-end video collaboration over a borderless network.1 Troubleshooting, managing, and helping to ensure video quality in point-to-point and multipoint video sessions can be challenging. Collaboration Manager takes the guesswork out of video collaboration management by providing service and network operators with a real-time unified view of all Cisco TelePresence® sessions in progress and immediate visibility into each session's associated media paths, quickly isolating the source of problems. When Medianet-capable devices are deployed in the network, Collaboration Manager provides even deeper network path visibility, down to the granularity of video flow statistics.
Collaboration Manager helps to ensure a superior end-user experience by:
• Supporting timely end-to-end visibility and isolation of video-related issues for sessions, endpoints, and the network
• Reducing time to troubleshoot and recover from service-affecting problems
• Providing detailed analysis of the media path with critical fault and performance statistics that support quick isolation of network devices causing service degradation
• Efficiently validating large-scale deployments through comprehensive inventory, health, and status of Cisco TelePresence endpoints as well as service and network infrastructure devices
• Delivering reports that allow operators to track usage and problem history
About Cisco Prime
Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager is a product of the Cisco Prime network management portfolio.
The Cisco Prime portfolio of enterprise and service provider management offerings supports integrated lifecycle management of Cisco architectures and technologies based on a service-centric framework. Built on an intuitive workflow-oriented user experience, Cisco Prime products help increase IT productivity and reduce operations costs through innovative management solutions for the network services, infrastructure, and endpoints.
Simplified Management of Cisco TelePresence
Improve operational efficiencies with rapid problem resolution
Cisco TelePresence service operators need to manage large service deployments and monitor many concurrent sessions. Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager provides operators with the ability to visualize the service status and topology of all sessions currently in progress. Operators can quickly pinpoint critical sessions as well as locate and address sessions with problems (Figure 1). This built-in visibility helps operators optimize video delivery and reduce operational costs across the organization.
Figure 1. Session Monitoring Dashboard
End-to-end visibility and fault isolation for improved troubleshooting
Cisco TelePresence service operators need to quickly isolate the source of any service degradation in the network for all point-to-point and multipoint video sessions in an enterprise. Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager provides a detailed analysis of the end-to-end media path, including specifics about endpoint, service infrastructure, and network-related issues. Its ability to provide detailed visibility into the media path and critical fault and performance statistics facilitates faster isolation and resolution of video problems (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Media Path Visualization
Integrated troubleshooting with Cisco Medianet
In conjunction with Cisco Medianet, Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager delivers richer end-to-end information that helps operators more easily identify and isolate video issues. Collaboration Manager uses Cisco Medianet to provide enhanced path computation, statistics collection, and synthetic traffic generation.
When network devices are Medianet-enabled, Collaboration Manager provides
• Deeper, flow-related information along the video path using Mediatrace (Figure 3)
• The ability to use synthetic video traffic from network devices to assess video performance on a network. This uses Medianet IP service-level agreement (IP SLA) video operations
Figure 3. Network Flow-Based Information Using Mediatrace
Table 1. Features, Functions, and Benefits
Feature
Function
Benefit
Video Collaboration Summary Dashboard
• Dynamic dashboard provides current status of sessions, endpoint inventory, and service infrastructure device health and status
• Substantially decreases time and effort required to obtain a complete overview of any problems affecting sessions in progress, endpoints, and service infrastructure devices
Session monitoring
• Visualizes the topology and status of all sessions - in progress, recently completed, and scheduled
• Provides critical fault and performance metrics for Cisco TelePresence sessions (scheduled, ad hoc, and static) and endpoints
• Significantly reduces operational costs of session monitoring and troubleshooting
• Easily pinpoints very important sessions and sessions with the most critical issues
• Rapidly determines whether the issues are in endpoints or in the network
Endpoint and network diagnostics
• Media path visualization produces unique end-to-end views including details of endpoint, infrastructure, and network nodes, and highlights where impairments may exist
• Acquire even deeper network path visibility, down to the granularity of video flow statistics, wherever Medianet capable devices are deployed in the network
• Simplifies troubleshooting, reducing time to identify root causes impacting video quality of experience
• Reduces mean-time-to-repair video related issues
Endpoint Dashboard
• Track alarms, health statistics and scheduling status of Cisco TelePresence endpoints, whether the endpoints are currently in a session or not
• Reduces time needed to assess which endpoints have the most critical problems to address
• Endpoint scheduling status helps service operators prioritize issues to resolve before they affect upcoming sessions
Inventory
• Discover and inventory all deployed Cisco TelePresence endpoints, as well as pertinent service and network infrastructure devices
• Identify software versions and status of all devices
• Reduces operations team resources needed to verify software upgrades quickly and accurately
• Provides immediate manageability and comprehensive inventory details for large-scale video collaboration deployments
Reporting
• Produce reports on endpoint and network diagnostics during troubleshooting
• Export detailed endpoint utilization as well as problem history data through comma-separated value (CSV) files for creating customized reports
• Helps to analyze detailed data and corresponding trends to prevent future disruptions
• Enables improved planning for deploying new endpoints based on detailed assessment of endpoint usage history
Service and Network Infrastructure Device Support Requirements
Table 2. Service and Network Infrastructure Device Support Requirements
Device Type
Devices
Software Version
Service infrastructure
Cisco TelePresence endpoints
CTS 500 Series
CTS 1000
CTS 1100
CTS 1300 Series
CTS 3000 Series
CTS 3200 Series
1.6.4 or later
Call processors
Cisco Unified CM
System version: 7.1.3.11001-7 or later
Application managers
CTS Manager
1.6.4 or later
Multipoint switches
CTMS
1.6.3 or later
Network infrastructure
Routers
1800, 2800, 3800
1900, 2900, 3900
ASR 1K
7200, 7400, 7600
IOS 12.2 or later
IOS 12.2 or later
IOS 12.4 or later
IOS 12.4 or later
Switches
Cat 2K
Cat 3K
Cat 4K
Cat 6K
IOS 12.2 or later
IOS 12.2 or later
IOS 12.2 or later
IOS 12.2 or later
System Requirements
Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager 1.0 is available as a virtual appliance. A single downloadable open virtual appliance (OVA) image, which contains the Collaboration Manager virtual machine (VM), is provided for installation onto a VMware server with a virtual machine environment matching or exceeding the virtual machine template described below.
A virtual machine template defines the configuration of the virtual machine that includes CPU, memory, disk, and network resources. The configuration of a Collaboration Manager virtual machine must match or exceed the supported virtual machine template defined in Table 3.
Table 3. Virtual Machine Templates
VM Template
vCPU
Memory
vDisk
vNIC
Recommended
2
8 GB
90 GB
1 GB NIC
Table 4 outlines the minimum system requirements for the VMware server onto which the Collaboration Manager OVA image will be installed.
Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) is recommended, but other servers can also be used.
Software
VMware ESXi 4.0 or later
Table 5 outlines the minimum system requirements for client systems.
Table 5. System Requirements: Client
Description
Specifications
Browser
Mozilla Firefox 3.6.x
Flash Plug-in
Adobe Flash Player 10.0 or later
Resolution
1024 x 768 minimum
Licensing and Ordering Information
Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager licensing is based on the scale of Cisco TelePresence deployment and allows customers to add incremental codec2 licenses as they grow their video deployment. For specific details, contact your local Cisco account representative.
Table 6 presents the specifications for each license type based on the variables described below.
Table 6. Licensing
License Type
Network Devices Supported
Codecs Supported
Base License
Up to 10,000
10
Incremental Codec License Pack
N/A
25 per pack
Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager 1.0 is available for purchase through regular Cisco sales and distribution channels worldwide. To download software, visit the Cisco Software Center. Table 7 presents ordering information. To order the software license, visit the Cisco Ordering Homepage. The license will be available by eDelivery only.
To purchase physical media of the software, an evaluation copy is available at Cisco Marketplace. Note: Installing a downloaded base license file on an evaluation system will overwrite the evaluation status and enable the full feature set of Collaboration Manager 1.0.
Table 7. Ordering Information
Product Name
Part Number (SKU)
Cisco Prime CM Base License, includes 10 codecs
L-PCM-1.0-LG-K9=
Cisco Prime CM Incremental Codec License, 25-codec pack
L-PCM-1.0-LIC-25=
Services from Cisco and Our Partners
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Warranty Coverage and Technical Service Options
Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager comes with the Cisco 90-day software warranty. Purchasing an application support service provides benefits not available with warranty including access to maintenance and minor updates, online resources, and Technical Assistance Center (TAC) support services. Table 8 shows the technical services available for Collaboration Manager 1.0.
1Phase 1 is to include support for Cisco TelePresence. Support for additional video collaboration endpoints will be added in subsequent releases.
2A codec is the "brain" of the CTS. The primary codec connects with the network and Cisco Unified Communications Manager to perform call management functions for the system. The secondary codec performs processing for the system elements that are attached to them. The optional presentation codec supports the document camera (if present), auxiliary displays, and works with an auxiliary control unit and audio extension unit for additional audio/video applications. The number and type of codecs your system uses depends on which CTS device you are using.
