Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.10 Quick Start Guide

The documentation set for this product strives to use bias-free language. For the purposes of this documentation set, bias-free is defined as language that does not imply discrimination based on age, disability, gender, racial identity, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and intersectionality. Exceptions may be present in the documentation due to language that is hardcoded in the user interfaces of the product software, language used based on RFP documentation, or language that is used by a referenced third-party product. Learn more about how Cisco is using Inclusive Language.

About This Guide

This guide describes how to install Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.10 as an OVA on VMware, Cisco Prime Infrastructure as an ISO on Hyper-V Virtual Machine.Prime Infrastructure is also available as a hardware appliance. For information on how to install the appliance, see the latest Cisco Prime Infrastructure Appliance Hardware Installation Guide. This guide also describes about the migration from the supported previous release Cisco Prime Infrastructure versions to Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.10. For information about configuring and managing this product, see the Cisco Prime Infrastructure Administrator Guide and the Cisco Prime Infrastructure User Guide .

Product Overview

About Cisco Prime Infrastructure Licensing

Prime Infrastructure licenses control the features that you can use and the number of devices you can manage using those features. For more information about:

Before You Install

Complete the tasks in the following sections before installing Prime Infrastructure.

Cisco ADE (Application Deployment Engine) OS Release 4.1 is supported till EOL of Prime Infrastructure.

Understand System Requirements

Prime Infrastructure comes in two main forms:

Virtual Appliance Options

During installation, you can choose one of four deployment configuration options. The following table summarizes the minimum server requirements for each option.

ESXi 6.0, 6.5, 6.7, or 7.0

ESXi 6.0, 6.5, 6.7, or 7.0

ESXi 6.0, 6.5, 6.7, or 7.0

ESXi 6.0, 6.5, 6.7, or 7.0

Throughput (Disk IOPS)

Minimum CPU Speed

1 You can configure any combination of sockets and cores, the product of which must equal the number of virtual CPUs required. For example, if 16 virtual CPUs are required, you can configure 4 sockets with 4 cores, or 2 sockets with 8 cores, etc.

You can install any of the Prime Infrastructure options as an Open Virtual Appliance (OVA), running under VMWare ESXi, on your own hardware. If you choose this implementation, the server that you supply must meet or exceed the requirements shown in the table for the option that you select.

Physical Appliance Options

Prime Infrastructure is available on the Prime Infrstructure Physical Appliance and Digital Network Architecture Center (DNAC) Appliance. Prime Infrastructure 3.10 not supported on the PRIME-NCS-APL-K9 (also known as “Gen 1”). Prime Infrastructure 3.10 is supported on PI-UCS-APL-K9 (also known as the Gen 2 appliance), PI-UCSM5-APL-K9 and PI-UCSM5-APL-U-K9 (also known as Gen 3 appliance) and DN1-HW-APL and DN2-HW-APL known as DNAC Appliance). The physical appliance specifications are as follows:

SSD - 4 x 900 GB

RAID Level RAID

1, 1, 10 (446(bootable), 1787, 3574 in GB)

1, 1, 10 (446(bootable), 1787, 5361 in GB)

Concurrent GUI clients

Concurrent API clients

Prime Infrastructure uses the 10G port as eth0 for Cisco DNA Center Appliance. You must perform the following steps to use the 1G port.

  1. Navigate to Compute > BIOS .
  2. Select the Conifgure BIOS tab and then the Advanced tab.
  3. Expand the LOM and PCle Slots configuration link.
  4. Select the Disabled option from PCle Slot:MLOM OptionROM and PCle Slot:MLOM Link Speed drop-down lists.
  5. Perform reboot operation.
  6. Install Prime Infrastrucure.

Gen-3 Appliance is supported from Prime Infrastructure 3.4.1.

While installing Prime Infrastructure on physical appliances, make sure network management IP address should be configured to Gigabit Ethernet 0 interface for all network management traffic (eg. netconf, telemetry, snmp etc).

Prime Infrastructure is also available pre-installed on Cisco-supplied hardware as a physical appliance. See the latest Cisco Prime Infrastructure Appliance Hardware Installation Guide for more information.

For maximum management capacities for each installation option, see How to Scale Prime Infrastructure

How to Improve the Performance of Appliances

For better performance on the Prime Infrastructure Appliance (Gen 2 & Gen 3) or DNAC Appliance, make sure you configure the virtual drive Write Policy to Write Back Good BBU. To configure the virtual drive Write Policy, follow these steps:

Procedure

Launch the CIMC web interface (see the section How to Set Up the Appliance in the latest Cisco Prime Infrastructure Appliance Hardware Installation Guide ).

Click the Storage tab, click on the Modular RAID Controller name, click the Virtual Drive tab. .

Select the Virtual Drive, then click Edit Virtual Drive .

Click OK on the dialog box that appears.

In the Write Policy field, select Write Back Good BBU , then click Save Changes .

If you are running ESX on custom hardware that has a RAID controller, we recommend you configure the following RAID settings to optimize Prime Infrastructure performance and redundancy:

Web Client Requirements

Prime Infrastructure users access the product using a web browser client. Web client requirements are: