Good Mates Say Goodbye as Prime Infrastructure Sunsets

April 1, 2023

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It’s with nice gratitude and appreciation that we wave goodbye to Cisco Prime Infrastructure. Prime Infrastructure has been serving to clients handle their enterprise networks for greater than a decade. The primary Prime Infrastructure launch was in 2011, and the most recent and final model of Prime Infrastructure 3.10 was launched in September of 2021. On March 31, 2023, Cisco is saying the Finish of Life (EoL) for Prime Infrastructure.

Figure 1 - Prime Infrastructure EoL timeline — Determine 1 – Prime Infrastructure EoL timeline

Cisco Prime Infrastructure offered complete administration of wired/wi-fi entry, campus, and department networks, in addition to wealthy visibility into end-user connection and assurance of software efficiency. Prime Infrastructure was the primary enterprise product to mix the community administration of each wired and wi-fi below a single administration software. Cisco Prime Infrastructure additionally set and raised an {industry} bar for compliance and reporting features for community administration programs (NMS).

The rise of Intent-Based mostly Networking (IBN), Software program Outlined Networking (SDN), automation, AI/ML (AIOps), and the necessity for visibility into consumer expertise and software expertise has given rise to Cisco DNA Middle.

Cisco DNA Middle

Cisco DNA Middle is the next-generation platform and continues to lift the bar on what community administration must be. Cisco DNA Middle offers the community administration capabilities beforehand delivered by Prime Infrastructure however delivers a variety of latest and extra capabilities:

Figure 2 - Cisco DNA Center Pillars — Determine 2 – Cisco DNA Middle Pillars

Full community administration system: Cisco DNA Middle offers a full vary of community visibility and monitoring capabilities full with discovery, hierarchy, topology, and a complete reporting engine. Moreover, Cisco DNA Middle offers a complete assortment of “360 views” providing insightful views into general community well being, gadget well being, consumer well being, and software well being.

AI/ML analytics platform: Cisco DNA Middle leverages Cisco’s industry-leading AI community analytics engine, which brings collectively machine studying, clustering, machine reasoning, visible analytics, and a long time of Cisco networking experience. This leads to the power to ship Dynamic Baselining, Personalised Anomaly Detection, Tendencies, Insights, Comparative Analytics, and Predictive Analytics. This energy mixture places Cisco DNA Middle on the forefront of AIOps with unparalleled assurance capabilities.

Automation and Orchestration engine: Cisco DNA Middle affords many automation workflows from gadget upgrades to configuration compliance, automated gadget onboarding, and troubleshooting. With Cisco DNA Middle automation, clients have been capable of acquire effectivity, consistency, and scalability.

Software program Outlined Community (SDN): Cisco DNA middle allows clients to deploy the Software program Outlined Entry (SDA) with a fabric-based resolution enabling a whole zero belief mannequin with macro or micro-segmentation and eliminating many Layer2 limitations and dependencies typically seen in legacy networks.

Endpoint identification engine, Cisco DNA Middle offers superior capabilities to determine and profile endpoints on the community offering next-generation endpoint visibility with AI-driven analytics and network-driven deep packet inspection.

Migration Choices

Prime Infrastructure clients have two migration paths:

Buyer Managed Resolution with Cisco DNA Middle
Cloud SaaS Managed resolution with the Cisco Meraki Dashboard

Figure 3 - Cisco Network Management Options — Determine 3 – Cisco Community Administration Choices

For Prime Infrastructure clients who haven’t migrated to Cisco DNA Middle, now could be the time to begin your migration to the brand new platform. Cisco offers the power to run Cisco DNA Middle in 3 type components:

Bodily Equipment
Digital Equipment hosted on AWS public cloud
Digital Equipment hosted on a personal cloud utilizing VMware/ESXi

Migration Instruments

Cisco has made out there a number of instruments to ease the migration course of:

PDART – Prime to DNA Assessment Readiness Tool, you may run this software in your Prime Infrastructure to verify your migration readiness based mostly in your particular Prime utilization.

Figure 4 - Cisco PDART Report Example — Determine 4 – Cisco PDART Report Instance

PDMT – Prime to DNA Migration Tool, this software will automate the migration course of by migrating your hierarchy, units, maps, AP places, and varied different knowledge components to speed up the migration from Prime to Cisco DNA Middle and allow the purchasers to start leveraging the worth and superior capabilities of Cisco DNA Middle rapidly.

Migration Companies

Cisco affords a spread of companies to help clients with the Prime Infrastructure to Cisco DNA migration; for extra details about migration companies, please contact your account crew.