Prime LMS 4.2 Vs Prime Infrastructure 2

Sankar Aniyan · ‎10-31-2013

Hi All,

I am working on a project and was looking for a better solution for doing the monitoring of their Cisco network. The environment comprises of around 350+ Wired devices and couple of AP and wireless controllers. They currently use Cisco Wireless CS solution.

While analysing, i saw that cisco is coming up with Infra 2.0 and it is projected as replacement solution for LMS going forward.

Is it better to go with infrastructure 2.0 instead of LMS 4.2 considering that this project may last for another 3+ years ?

I am looking for some expert openion from the experts in this forum..

Skr.

Marvin Rhoads · ‎10-31-2013

Have a look at the comparison guide posted here.

Right now, there are still a couple of things you cannot do with PI 2.0 that you can with LMS 4.2. Cisco projects more things will be rolled into PI 2.1, but then that remains to be seen. Early 2014 is the latest projection I've heard for that.

One upside is the license for LMS is still included with new PI purchases based on this feature gap. So you can cover your bets and use PI 2.0 for wireless management (getting all the heritage and capability of WCS / NCS) while using LMS (with the CiscoWorks functionality and large knowledge base and documentation set built-in) for wired management. It's a bit messy to run two systems and they have do be on separate hosts (or VMs) but that gives you the broadest functionality right now.

Going forward, PI is where the Cisco developers will be working - i.e. we won't see an LMS 5.0 (or maybe even 4.3, TBD). All the new features will be developed for PI; so there's that to consider as well.

The problem I see is that even if PI 2.1 closes the feature gap completely, there's still not going to be the knowledge base for a while getting all the tips and tricks figured out. The PI 2.0 documentation, for example, while an improvement over 1.x, still falls way short of that provided for LMS - by an order of magnitude in my estimation.

Sankar Aniyan · ‎10-31-2013

Thanks Marwin for the quick response. This helps a lot and appreciate your knowldge and foresight.

I have one query here.

Will Prime infra 2.0 support management functionality like paching, IOS updates, Configuration management, inventory etc.. similar to LMS ? or is it deprecated ?

I see that they cover many of those functional part in comparison but not clear on the subcomponents.

Is there topology enebled in the application?

Also one of the advantage I see is that this supports HA by default instead of HA from Cisco Prime on Veritas. My environment is not virtualized still and i need to go with Hardeware appliance.

Skr

Marvin Rhoads · ‎10-31-2013

Yes the management functionality for the points you mention are similarly supported. It's not been documented as well just yet but it's mostly there with 2.0.

There is no Topology with 2.0. That was a big one that disappointed a lot of people.

I've heard Cisco is undertaking a major rewrite of that whole applet and it looks like it was more than they could get finished before 2.0 shipped. It's been the source of many a customer issue with its finicky Java dependencies so we're hopeful a rewrite will fix that up.

Hope this helps. Please rate helpful posts.

Sankar Aniyan · ‎11-01-2013

Great Knowledge Marwin

I am told to go ahead with Ciso LMS 4.2 for now and to upgrade to Infra 2.x version once it arrives with full features.

Now i was wondering on following points.

1) I have 70 Light Weight APs and its controllers

2) Couple of Firewalls

3) couple of IDS solutions.

I am not able to see any reference for LMS on monitoring/managing those devices. Are these supported in LMS 4.2 or shud i go for alternate solutions ??

Appreciate your response/help.

SKR.

Marvin Rhoads · ‎11-01-2013

Supported devices for LMS are all listed here.

WLCS specifically are generally supported, though not with the full suite of wireless management (RF coverage areas, floor plans etc.) that you get with WCS/NCS/PI. The link to supported WLCs specifically is here.

Firewalls (Pix, ASA and FWSM) have support; but it's a bit limited when compared to switches and routers due to the devices not generally supporting CDP and SNMP RW strings. You also won't get CiscoView for firewalls. Same thing with IDS, whether appliance or module-based.

Hope this helps. Please rate helpful posts.

Rob Johnson · ‎10-31-2013

That explains then Marvin why Licenses for Prime Infrastructure always ships with an LMS license...

that makes more sense!!!