DNA Center as a Network Management Platform - Cisco Prime Infrastructure - DNA Licensing

[nicolas.steinbusch]

Hi Cisco Community, 

I am new to all DNA stuffs. I've purchased a bunch of C9200L-E (with the mandatory DNA Licence of 3 years for each) to add to my current architecture composed mainly of 2960X.

As these new switches integrate an existing architecture with non-SDA switches, I use them as "traditional" switches, meaning I do not run SDA on these. Nevertheless, I'm interested in purchasing a professional Network Management Platform. 

From what I read, Cisco DNA Center (as a Network Management Platform, not as a SDA Controller) is becoming the new Cisco Prime Infrastructure. What would be the pros and cons of chosing DNAC over PI as a Network Management Platform?

DNAC appliance are expensive, so is it worth it buying one to do only Network Management, and not get benefits from its SDA Controller capabilities?

Final question, if I use the DNAC only as a Network Management Platform, will I need to renew the DNA License on my switches when it expired, or is this DNA license only mandatory when using DNAC as SDA Controller? Furthermore, can I integrate 2960X on the DNAC Network Management Platform (as they are incompatible with SDA, I prefer asking)?

Thanks a lot for your help !

[Preston Chilcote · Accepted solution]

This is a great question for your sales team, but I'll present a few highlights of what Cisco DNA Center can do for non-SDA networks

- Automate device deployment ("day-0 provisioning").  This could come in handy for your cat9k deployment.

- Automate legacy configs ("day-N provisioning").  Even your existing devices need config updates once in awhile.  With day-N provisioning templates, you can easily make sure that all the devices get configured the same way, and at the same time.  Saves time and headaches.

- Software upgrades.  Cisco DNA can do pre and post checks to make sure your devices are ready for upgrades.  You can declare which image should be running on each type of device so consistency across the network can be easily maintained.

-License management can keep track of your legacy and DNA licenses.

-Network Assurance - goes above and beyond what Prime or third-party NMS can do.  Lets you analyze the health of your network from Core network devices down to the user and application level.   Even allows you to pinpoint a time in the past two weeks and see what was going on at that time.  Very helpful for troubleshooting intermittent issue.

Here are a couple of other resources that may help you see what Cisco DNA can do:

Ask The Expert webinars happening every week: https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/s/cisco-dna-ask-the-experts

Getting started trainings: https://www.cisco.com/c/m/en_us/products/cloud-systems-management/dna-center/getting-started.html

[nicolas.steinbusch]

Hi Preston,

Thanks a lot for your inputs, much clearer now ! 

Actually, I am the Network Engineer and the Sales Person for the moment at my company (we do not really have a Sales Team yet), that's why I asked more precision about capabilities of DNAC. 

Best regards,

Nicolas.

[Arne Bier · Accepted solution]

I get this question a lot and customers no longer purchase Cisco Prime - DNA is becoming the standard in the Bill of Materials. I have to say that DNAC has some amazing features, but as of version 1.3 it does not have feature parity with Prime. If a customer doesn't want to go SDA route (or cannot go there yet) then Prime is probably a better choice, because it's so mature and has native support for many Cisco products. I think DNA will eventually get there, but it lacks many basic features. And Cisco will tell you that to use the API for some things ... to which I will say "yeha, but Prime has that in the GUI - most users don't want to spend time to write a python script to DNA API for something that Prime does out of the box"- the example I am referring to is the basic feature of device config backup (Prime logs into devices and does a "copy running-config ftp://.<prime.>" - and another basic thing is HA. To make DNA HA requires a lot of $$$ (3 servers) - this puts off most customers to go that way. DNA is a whole other philosophy - it's such a massive hardware platform and in my opinion is ideal in cases where SDA is required. If you have a small network (50 switches, handful of routers and 100 APs) then it's bizarre to me why you would deploy DNAC. It would be nice to have a DNAC-lite for smaller customers. 

[nicolas.steinbusch]

Hi Arne,

Thanks a lot for your input, I see clearer now. For my mid-size customers, I often go with C9200L as access switch to replace their C2960X. So it is often the case that my customer do not invest in DNAC, and so do not have any use of the mandatory DNA licence that comes with the switch. Nevertheless, as new C9200 + DNA lic. 3Y has a lower price than C2960X, I just tell them to not worry about this license, that they won't use it and there is no need to renew it. This mandatory DNA license is really confusing for my customers as they do not understand they have to invest way more if they want to get any benefits from it (purchase a physical appliance to either go full SDA infrastructure or only use it as Network Management Platform if it is a non-SDA infrastructure).