A. Cisco Multicast Manager is a web-based network management application that simplifies the monitoring and troubleshooting of multicast networks.
Q. Who should deploy Cisco Multicast Manager?
A. Cisco Multicast Manager is applicable to enterprise customers that employ multicast for financial market data, to multiple system operators (MSOs) that utilize multicast to transport video over IP, or to service providers that need to manage their Multicast VPN (MVPN) environment.
Q. What benefits can customers expect from deploying Cisco Multicast Manager Release 2.4?
A. Cisco Multicast Manager Release 2.4 provides the following customer benefits:
• Video operations solution: Provides monitoring support for video probes to proactively detect poor quality video by means of the Media Delivery Index (MDI) as defined in RFC 4445
• Enhanced address management database: Provides an indication of which video channels are being affected when problems with specific multicast groups are detected
• Multicast VPNs: Provides proactive monitoring and diagnostics for MVPNs
• Additional licensing options: allows customers with small or medium-sized networks to purchase scaled-down versions of Cisco Multicast Manager based on number of devices
• Support for using one-time passwords with TACACS
• Support for the Carrier Routing System (CRS) platform
Q. What major features are provided in Cisco Multicast Manager?
A. Table 1 lists the major features of Cisco Multicast Manager.
Table 1. Features of Cisco Multicast Manager
Feature
Benefit
Automated multicast discovery
Discovers complete multicast topology from a single seed device, along with the MVPN provider and provider edge devices and Virtual Route Forwarding (VRF) tables they support
Proactive polling engine
Highly scalable polling engine to detect multicast anomalies before they become critical problems
Alerts and reports
Any exceptions detected by the polling engine are sent as Small Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps and logged for reporting purposes. Reports are available for Rendezvous Points (RPs), Source,Group (S,G) packet per second (pps) rates, tree changes, interface bandwidth, Layer 2 port pps rates
Show all groups
Provides complete list of active S,Gs
IGMP diagnostics
Displays all devices that have seen an Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) join for a particular group
MSDP status
Shows the status of all MSDP-enabled devices and their peers, including Source-Active cache information
Layer 2 diagnostics
Shows which multicast groups are being forwarded on a particular Layer 2 switch port
Health check
Provides on-demand checking of forwarding trees, RPs, and existence of specific S,Gs can also be scheduled to run automatically
6500/7600 troubleshooting
Provides the equivalent of an IOS command line "show tech" for multicast, along with LTL checking and pps rates taken from the Route Processor, Switch Processor, or Distributed Forwarding Card. Output can be e-mailed directly to the Technical Assistance Center for further analysis.
Q. What equipment does Cisco Multicast Manager manage?
A. All multicast-enabled devices running Cisco IOS® Software, including Layer 2 switches, as well as the CRS platform running Cisco IOS XR Software, can be monitored by Cisco Multicast Manager.
Product Licensing and Platform Requirements
Q. How is Cisco Multicast Manager software licensed?
A. The software is licensed on a per server basis. The customer must purchase (1) a basic software license (either a Solaris version license or a Linux license) that covers the right to use Cisco Multicast Manager and (2) a one-year minimum Cisco Software Application Support (SAS) contract. Please refer to the Cisco Multicast Manager ordering guide for part numbers and pricing.
Q. What hardware platform is required to run Cisco Multicast Manager?
A. Table 2 lists the hardware platform required for Cisco Multicast Manager.
Table 2. Table 2. Hardware Requirements for Cisco Multicast Manager
Component
Description
Disk space
2 GB or more free space for Cisco Multicast Manager application and data
Hardware
Linux
• Dual AMD Opteron Processor 250 2.4 GHz 64 Bit for Large Enterprise (more than 500 devices)
• Dual 2.8 GHz Intel Pentium IV or dual 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon processor for Large Enterprise (more than 500 devices)
• 2.8 GHz Intel Pentium IV or 2.8 GHz Intel Xeon processor
Solaris
• Sun Fire v440 Up to four 1.593-GHz UltraSPARC IIIi processors for Large Enterprise (more than 500 devices)
• Sun Fire v240 One 1.34 GHz or two 1.5 GHz UltraSPARC processors
Memory
• 2 GB
• 4 GB for Large Enterprise (more than 500 devices)
Software
Linux
• Redhat Enterprise Linux ES/AS 3
• Redhat Enterprise Linux ES/AS 4
Solaris
• Solaris 8
• Solaris 9
• Solaris 10
Note: Solaris x86 is not supported
Browser
• Firefox 1.5 or greater
• Internet Explorer 6
• Netscape 7.0
• Mozilla 1.7
• Safari 2.0
Q. What previous releases of Cisco Multicast Manager can a customer upgrade from?
A. Customers running Cisco Manager 2.3 or greater can upgrade to 2.4.
