What's the replacement of CiscoWorks Internetwork Performance Monitor (IPM)?

[lidan]

Hi There

I am using a quite old tool - Ciscoworks IPM 2.5 with CWRW-1.3 in my teaching lab installed in 2004. IPM is good tool for network lab working with Cisco 3700 routers.  Now I am trying to find latest IPM version to upgrade the lab. I find that latest IPM is version 4.2 with Ciscoworks LAN management Solution 3.2 only. But this production is also  end-of-sale and end-of -support  see the page -http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/cloud-systems-management/ciscoworks-lan-management-solution-3-2/model.html
   - End-of-Sale Date:    08-APR-2011 Details
   - End-of-Support Date:    30-APR-2014 Details

Now I have no idea how to upgrade IPM? Which tool from Cisco or a third party can be replacement of IPM?

 Dan Li,
 
Concordia University

[Marvin Rhoads]

Well the party  line answer would be the performance  monitoring function within Cisco Prime Infrastructure. Version 2.2 is the current release of that.

That said, you can do very basic monitoring of router interface performance with the free Cisco Configuration Professional.

There are also open source products such as Cacti which monitor performance just fine (it requires some Linux skills, though it's well documented).

[lidan]

Thanks Marvin!
The situation is I only need a monitoring tool for my network teaching lab(2 switches and 8 routers), which may like IPM component in CiscoWorks, Cisco Prime Infrastructure or Cisco prime LMS.  For teaching purpose if a tool can support Cisco IP SLAs and NetFlow, it might be good enough. I am wondering if I have to buy a whole package of Cisco Prime Infrastructure or Cisco prime LMS, then just use its small part of network monitoring.
I am also checking the tools of Solarwind, PRTG, OpenNMS, Zabbix, Cacti, no idea which one is better choice for my case.

Dan

[Marvin Rhoads]

Dan,

If you're teaching as a Cisco partner you can get Not for Resale versions of Prime Infrastructure and Prime LMS at no cost.

Cacti is quick and not too awful hard. It's free but you may have to invest more time wrestling it into doing what you need.

The PRTG product is probably the best least-cost paid option.

A bit more costly but more full-featured would be Solarwinds - you'd need both NPM and VNQM to add in the IP SLA bits. Though it is very slick with the latter, you have to pay extra for that. TANSATAAFL.  

[Vinod Arya]

Dan,

IPM and LMS 3.2 are EOS/EOL. But the features are still available in the latest version of LMS, aka, Cisco prime LMS 4.2.

Cisco Prime LMS 4.x onwards the module specific approach was re-structured to feature centric menu, and hence Cisco Prime LMS 4.2 has all the required + enhanced IPM features.

You can upgrade to LMS 4.2, however, we encourage everyone to move to Cisco Prime Infrastructure, which is more future proof, as Marvin recommended.

IPM feature in Cisco Prime LMS 4.2 is known as Performance Management.

For more details check :

Navigating Cisco Prime Internetwork Performance Monitor Tasks in LMS 4.2

Performance Management

Cisco Prime LMS 4.2 and Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2 Functional Comparison

-Thanks

Vinod

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