Good Associates Say Goodbye as Prime Infrastructure Sunsets

April 2, 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 newest 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 methods (NMS).

The rise of Intent-Primarily based 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 Heart.

Cisco DNA Heart

Cisco DNA Heart is the next-generation platform and continues to boost the bar on what community administration must be. Cisco DNA Heart gives 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 Heart Pillars

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

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

Automation and Orchestration engine: Cisco DNA Heart presents many automation workflows from machine upgrades to configuration compliance, automated machine onboarding, and troubleshooting. With Cisco DNA Heart automation, clients have been capable of achieve effectivity, consistency, and scalability.

Software program Outlined Community (SDN): Cisco DNA heart permits clients to deploy the Software program Outlined Entry (SDA) with a fabric-based answer enabling an entire 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 Heart gives superior capabilities to establish 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 Answer with Cisco DNA Heart
Cloud SaaS Managed answer 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 Heart, now could be the time to begin your migration to the brand new platform. Cisco gives the power to run Cisco DNA Heart in 3 kind components:

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

Migration Instruments

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

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

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

PDMT – Prime to DNA Migration Tool, this device will automate the migration course of by migrating your hierarchy, gadgets, maps, AP areas, and numerous different knowledge components to speed up the migration from Prime to Cisco DNA Heart and allow the shoppers to start leveraging the worth and superior capabilities of Cisco DNA Heart rapidly.

Migration Companies

Cisco presents 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 group.