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Accelerate business and network transformation with unified lifecycle management and application visibility.
Overview

Converged Simplified Lifecycle Management
• 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 provide 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. This may include new configuration or monitoring templates created in the design phase, software image updates, and support for user-initiated ad hoc changes and compliance updates. These highly scalable capabilities help accelerate service rollout and minimize chances for errors. In addition, Cisco Prime Infrastructure provides a simple set of guided and advance flows to bulk provision new devices (including the converged access switches on the network) or push an initial configuration to a device to bring it up within a few minutes, thereby drastically reducing IT operational expenses.
• Operate - Monitor the overall health of the network using predefined dashboards that provide up-to-date status. Simple one-click workflows and 360-degree views enhance troubleshooting and reduce the time to resolve network issues. Unified alarm display provides actionable information and links to automatically open service requests with the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC).
• Report - Access a wide variety of predefined reports for up-to-date network information, including detailed inventory, compliance, audit, capacity, end-of-sale, security vulnerabilities, and many more.
Improve Application Delivery and End-User Experience
Help Ensure Regulatory and Risk Compliance
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) auditing of the wireless network
• Network inventory auditing and reporting against Cisco advisories such as end-of-life and end-of-support for devices, OS versions and modules
• Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) notifications.
Reduce Operational Expenses
Features and Benefit Summary
Table 1. Summary of Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.0 Features and Benefits
Feature |
Benefits |
Global Platform |
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Operational efficiency |
• Flexible virtual machine or appliance-based deployment models promote easy setup for quick time to value in small to global enterprise-class networks
• Manage up to 13000 routers, switches, ASAs and access points, including the new Cisco Catalyst® 3850 Series Converged Access switch and new Cisco 5760 Wireless LAN Controller
• Streamlined workflows facilitate design, deployment, and operational lifecycle tasks that align with user roles
• Contextual dashboards and 360-degree User and Device views display only the most relevant information for fast and efficient troubleshooting and remediation
• For device support details, please refer to Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.0 Quick Start Guide
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Integrated Cisco best practices |
• Integration with Cisco knowledge base helps to ensure optimal service and support, product updates, best practices, and reports to improve network availability, including:
• Simplifying TAC interactions, notification and downloading software updates
• Network inventory end-of-life milestone (EoX) auditing
• Assessing Cisco Product Security Incident Report Team (PSIRT) exposure
• Ongoing support of new Cisco devices and software releases ensures device support parity within each device family, and is provided through Device Packs
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Improved operations |
• Built-in high availability maximizes uptime for services delivery and improves operational efficiency
• The Cisco Prime Infrastructure Mobile application for Apple iOS devices provides fingertip access to view, troubleshoot, and resolve network issues anywhere and anytime
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Administration |
• Role-based access control provides flexibility to segment the network into one or more virtual domains controlled by a single Cisco Prime Infrastructure platform. Virtual domains help network operators deploy both large, multisite networks and managed services
• Flexible authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) services allow for local, RADIUS, TACACS+, and single sign-on options
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Lifecycle |
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Converged management |
• Single pane-of-glass solution provides complete end-to-end infrastructure management, reducing the need for multiple tools and lowering operating expenses and training costs
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Complete lifecycle management |
• Extensive discovery protocol support helps improve accuracy and completeness, including ping, Cisco Discovery Protocol, Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP), Address Resolution Protocol (ARP), Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), and route table lookups
• Flexible grouping and site profiles help to manage large networks by associating network elements to user definable groups or to a hierarchical campus, building, and floor model
• Device Work Center simplifies access to the tools and features necessary to easily manage the network inventory, including discovery, configuration, manual and bulk import, and software image management
• Customizable predefined Cisco best practices and validated design configuration templates help enable quick and easy device and service deployment
• Composite templates allow greater flexibility and packaging of individual templates into larger, reusable, purpose-built configurations for more consistent and quicker network designs
• A model-based simplified workflow allows operators to assess the network for Cisco TrustSec® 802.1x readiness and facilitates the deployment of network technologies and solutions, such as one-click AVC Configuration from Device Work Center, Cisco TrustSec® 802.1x and Zone-Based Firewall (ZBF)
• Flexible plug and play functionality simplifies the rollout of new devices and sites, accelerating service availability
• Centralized health and event monitoring of branch, campus, and WLAN access networks helps assure robust performance and an optimal access connectivity experience
• Integration with Cisco ISE and Cisco Secure Access Control Server (ACS) View provides a simple way to collect and analyze data relevant to endpoints
• Integration with Cisco Mobility Services Engine (MSE) provides location-based tracking services for discovered endpoints
• Integrated workflows and tools allow IT administrators to quickly assess service disruptions, receive notices about performance degradation, research resolutions, and take remedial action
• Feature configuration templates support AVC, Zone-Based Firewall, Easy VPN (EzVPN), dynamic multipoint VPN (DMVPN), Group Encrypted Transport VPN (GETVPN), access control lists (ACLs), and ScanSafe deployment and management
• Device-level support is provided for ACLs, Enhanced Interior Gateway Protocol (EIGRP), Routing Information Protocol (RIP), OSPF, static routes, Ethernet interfaces, and Network Address Translation (NAT) configuration
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Assurance |
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Simplified instrumentation configuration |
• Streamlined templates ease the configuration of embedded performance instrumentation (for example, AVC, NetFlow, NBAR2) to reduce data collection complexity and accelerate time to value
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Powerful network-wide monitoring |
• A multi-dimensional approach to network and application monitoring across the network brings together traps, statistics, logs, NetFlow, and more and presents application performance in the full context of network infrastructure activity, health, and changes:
• Network availability and device performance monitoring allow operators to improve network operations
• NetFlow monitoring provides valuable insights into who is using the network, what applications are being used, and how much bandwidth the applications are using
• AVC monitoring helps to rapidly identify potential issues that can affect committed service levels and the user experience
• Medianet monitoring accelerates troubleshooting of video and voice applications in the network
• QoS monitoring using CBQoS MIB provides key information about defined QoS policies applied to interfaces and class-based traffic patterns
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Automated baselining |
• Trend information for key network and application performance indicators automatically builds a baseline to facilitate planning and operations tasks
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Rapid service level restoration |
• Close integration of device provisioning and configuration permits network changes to be made quickly to provide a superior end user experience
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Wireless |
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Complete lifecycle management |
• Converged solution delivers wireless management capabilities, including RF management, user access visibility, reporting, and troubleshooting - along with network infrastructure lifecycle functions such as discovery, inventory, configuration and image management, compliance reporting, integrated best practices, and reporting
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Support for Wireless LAN Controller (WLC) Release 7.4 |
• Prime Infrastructure supports the new hardware and software features introduced in WLC Release 7.4. This includes WLC 5760 controller, 3850 switch, virtual WLC platforms, AP 2600, AP 1550 with EPON interface, High Availability (HA) with sub-second failover, Proxy Mobile IPv6, and other features
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Next-generation maps |
• A maps engine supports high-resolution images with pan and zoom controls. Search within maps is also supported. Maps combined with search offers a fast and smooth navigation experience with quick access to information
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Automatic hierarchy creation |
• IT can automatically create maps and assign access points to maps using regular expressions. This automates the tedious work of creating campus, building, and floor hierarchies and assigning access points to the floor
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Automatic switch port tracing |
• Automatically identify the Cisco switch and port information for a rogue access point connected to the Cisco switch for quick mitigation of threats
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Third-party support |
• Discover and monitor third-party (non-Cisco) switches that support RFC 1213 and wireless controllers/access points from Aruba Networks
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Product Specifications
Table 2. Product Specifications for Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.0
Note: Existing customers using Small or Medium OVA that intend to manage the same number of devices with Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.0 without turning on new features in their network, can migrate to the Express OVA. No increase in resource pool for the OVA is required in this case.
Table 3. Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.0 Scalability
An Integrated Solution
• Lifecycle management - Simplifies the day-to-day operational tasks associated with managing the network infrastructure across all lifecycle phases (design, deploy, operation and report) for Cisco devices including routers, switches, access points, and more.
• Assurance management - Provides application performance visibility using device instrumentation as a source of rich performance data to help assure consistent application delivery and an optimal end-user experience.
• Plug-and-Play Gateway - This optional feature complements the plug-and-play functionality available through lifecycle management. It enables the remote plug-and-play functionality for large-scale environments and DMZ implementations.
Ordering and Licensing Information
Note: Cisco Prime Infrastructure version 1.4 and later cannot be upgraded to version 2.0; upgrade will be available for a future 2.x release.
Technical Service Options
For More Information