Ask the Expert: Cisco Prime Infrastructure - Implementation and Deployment

[Lisa Latour]

Welcome to the Cisco Support Community Ask the Expert conversation.

This Ask The expert Session will cover questions spanning Cisco Prime Infrastructure on Implementation and Deployment on Wired and Wireless. This will be more specific to Customer’s and Partners questions product covering PI on configuration, Features and Menu, Network Monitoring, Maps, Implementation, High Availability and Maintenance and t/s parts.

Monday, February 2nd, 2015 to Friday, February 13th, 2015

Dhiresh Yadav is a customer support engineer in High-Touch Technical Services (HTTS)  handling supporting Wireless and Network Management based Cisco products and is based in Bangalore. His areas of expertise include Cisco Prime Infrastructure and Cisco Wireless products. He has over 7 years of industry experience working with large enterprise and service provider networks. He also holds CCNP (RS) and CCIE (DC) certifications.
 
Afroz Ahmad is a customer support engineer in High-Touch Technical Services (HTTS)  handling supporting Wireless and Network Management based Cisco products and is based in Bangalore. His areas of expertise include Cisco NMS products like Prime Infrastructure, LMS, IP SLA and SNMP etc. He has over 7 years of industry experience working with large enterprise and service provider networks. He also holds CCNP (RS),CCIE (DC), and SCJP (Sun Certified Java Professional )
 
Vinod Kumar Arya is a customer support engineer in High-Touch Technical Services (HTTS)  handling supporting Wireless and Network Management based Cisco products and is based in Bangalore. His areas of expertise include Cisco NMS products like Prime Infrastructure, LMS, IP SLA and SNMP etc. He has over 8 years of industry experience working with large enterprise and service provider networks. He also holds VCP 5 and RHCE certifications.
 

** Remember to use the rating system to let the experts know you have received an adequate response.**

Because of the volume expected during this event, the experts might not be able to answer every question. Remember that you can continue the conversation in the Network Infrastructure community, > Network Management, shortly after the event. This event lasts through February 13th 2015. Visit this forum often to view responses to your questions and those of other Cisco Support Community members.

[Vinod Arya]

David,

Currently PI 2.2 has introduced the Network Topology Map feature with the most basic feature and options.

Unfortunately it doesn't have an option to configure itself in a way that it shows links with desired colors. 

But, this seems to be a very nice enhancement we can look for. We'l look internally if development has some similar plans or we can suggest.

-Thanks

Vinod 

[DMBC ICT]

Many Thanks

One more issue I have is that when selecting a switch/router in Inventory>network devices under summary there is no live picture of the device but when i do the same and select a WLC there is a picture?  I am guessing it cant be the browser I am using as i can WLC live picture.  I believe this function was called CiscoView is LMS.

Thanks again

[AFROJ AHMAD]

Hi David,

Yes , you are right , LMS has this feature called "Cisco View" which show you the Chassis view of the hardware  ,unfortunately this is not available as of now in PI.

however you can used the 360 Degree view ,which provide a lot of information from single point.

Thanks-

Afroz

[DMBC ICT]

Thanks for all you help

[Vinod Arya]

David,

Sorry to rush through, seems we have a feature comparison for LMS 4.2 and Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2 as well, documented here :

Cisco Prime LMS 4.2 and Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2 Functional Comparison

It says the CiscoView is targeted for the future release, and I hope we should see the feature really soon.

HTH

-Thanks

Vinod

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[Marvin Rhoads]

Vinod and all,

Please note that PI has some "lite" CiscoView type of functionality for some devices already.

Here's a screenshot of a Catalyst 3850 2-switch stack showing the feature (taken from a PI 2.2 server, open in new window to see more clearly). If you hover over an interface it will indicate interface number and clicking on an interface it will take you to interface details:

[Vinod Arya]

Marvin,

Thanks is little word to appreciate your knowledge and time on CSC.

On my previous post, thats what I mentioned, it is mostly for Wireless Devices now and not for the wired. 

3850 too is a wireless controller switch.

-Thanks

Vinod 

[Vinod Arya]

Hello David,

As Prime Infrastructure is composed of NCS and LMS, it has 100% of WCS/NCS features incorporated and not all the features of CiscoWorks LMS has been inherited as of now.

WCS/NCS had this function where they already had all the chassis view details and hence most of the wireless devices shows chassis details.

The Cisco View feature is yet not migrated to PI and hence other wired devices doesn't show any live chassis details.

This is definately in radar for BU to include CiscoView shortly. For more details you can check this document which shares Cisco Prime Infrastructure-LMS Functional Comparison with Prime Infrastructure 2.0. A little old though, but covers our future endeavours :

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/cloud-systems-management/prime-infrastructure/guide_c07-729089.html

-Thanks

Vinod

[Marvin Rhoads]

David,

I have PI 2.2 setup in the manner Afroj suggests and it works properly. I get very few emails - only when a device is unreachable.

PI 2.2 is nice enough to also tell me the device is SNMP reachable but can be reached by ping (as sometimes happens when the device is too busy to reply to SNMP before it times out).

[tiwari20]

Hi Cisco,

We are planning to deploy PI in our environment and looking to manage our DC devices from it. Need details on how much are they supported?

[Dhiresh Yadav]

Hi,

Thanks for asking the question.

Management of Cisco devices and its support is kick starting from PI 2.2 version. Although at this point , the support is for few feature/devices like Cisco UCS platform/nexus platform but it can be expected to ramp up in the future releases.

Regards

Dhiresh

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[Vinod Arya]

I reckon Dhiresh on the DC Devices support, which has just started from PI 2.2.

PI 2.2 Support for Cisco UCS B and C Series Servers extends FCAPS management into the data center. Though the support is limited in both the servers, it also has started supporting Nexus 9500 Series switches in Standalone mode.

As we have just forayed into the Data Centre devices management using PI, future releases are expected to bring more features and devices support in this segment.

-Thanks

Vinod

[AFROJ AHMAD]

Hi ,

Adding to Dhiresh and Vinod responses. here are more details on Data Center device and feature support::

Device Family	Inventory	Config Archive	Image Management	Performance Polling (CPU, MEMORY, INTERFACE)
UCS B Series	YES	NO	NO	YES
UCS C Series	YES	NO	NO	YES
Nexus 9500 in standalone mode	YES	YES	YES	YES

Thanks-

Afroz

[jmandersson]

Hi again Experts!

I have a question regarding Endpoint Association (Services/Endpoint Association).

When you create a new row, my understanding s that not all information is mandatory. But what are the benefits of providing information about Data Source and Vlan? Or other way around, what do I miss if I don't provide information about Data Source and Vlan?

And one more thing: Isn't possible to create these Endpoint Associations in bulk? Upload a csv or something? It's nearly impossible to manage thousands of subnets when you have to create them one by one.

[AFROJ AHMAD]

Hello,

Thanks for joining this event.

I did not find much detailed information on your query ,however let me share what I got\found::

Regarding your query on  "Use of Data source and Vlan in Endpoint Associations"

Data sources will help in Selecting  the edge router or NAM monitoring traffic to and from the devices in the specified subnetwork.

VLAN:

You can enter the VLAN ID of the subnetwork  that will help allows you to specify multiple rules for the same subnet.

As of only way to add\create the EndPoint Association is Manually  :(

There are customer who have raised this concerned before to have this done in Bulk mode ,however as of now this feature is not available , hoping to see in coming release.

Thanks-

Afroz

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