Cisco Prime Infra vs Cisco DNAC

[Asfandyar70754]

Hello everyone,

One of my client has asked me for feasibility of Cisco Prime Infra in his environment. Personally I don't have any experience on Cisco Prime Infra but what I have read it seems like Cisco Prime Infra is a bit older version of Cisco DNAC.

Can you guys please confirm if my assumption is correct and secondly should I suggest my client for Cisco Prime Infra, will it go end of support/life anytime soon?

I know DNAC is a costly solution but I have researched a bit and DNAC seems to be a better/advanced solution, Can someone please confirm my assumption.

[balaji.bandi]

Just want to give clarity personally i do not believe DNAC can replace 100% features of PRIME ( by saying that depends what feature you using in Prime is the question) - some deployment have replaced DNAC, some more rely still on PRIME for some features,

some compare :

https://www.thenetworkdna.com/2021/01/cisco-prime-infrastructure-vs-cisco-dna.html

community discussion :

https://community.cisco.com/t5/cisco-digital-network/cisco-prime-vs-cisco-dna-center/td-p/3733931

if you have cisco Live presentation access look one of the sessions : BRKNMS-2573

[Preston Chilcote]

I think it would be a big mistake to choose Prime over Cisco DNA Center for a new deployment.  The feature parity is not quite 100% yet, but Cisco DNA is the future of Cisco network management.  The Assurance (network monitoring and troubleshooting) features that Cisco DNA provides are far superior to Prime and are very popular.  The network automation piece works differently, but have been designed to save you tons of time deploying new devices or new features with Cisco DNA.

[apogeenet]

It's probably important to also state, DNA adds much to the Prime and APIC-EM legacy, but those were the skeleton it was built on. Any issue you run into on DNA likely also exists in Prime unless it is a feature that isn't available in Prime - many shared microservices and other architecture under the hood (use of their APIs exposes much of that).  DNA-C is the future, so if it is a new rollout, go that route.  I am an early adopter who rolled it out in April 2018, so have seen it grow up in a sense.  If I knew what I know now, I would have said wait until 2020. It took Cisco a couple years to get it right, but it's there now.  Enjoy! 

[AdamF1 · Accepted solution]

One great benefit of the current licensing structure needed for dna center is that it includes the license for prime at no cost due to the systems not having the same features. It’s still not a direct replacement as others have mentioned. If your environment is still mostly running 3850s and aireos then prime is still the way to go in my opinion. I have to run both versions in my environment due to templates for wireless changes/upgrades can only be done from prime as they will not bake that feature into DNA center since iOS-xe wireless performs the upgrades differently.