How to use Cisco PI 1.3 to manage switches and routers?

[brobinb]

Hi there,

I have a client is using Cisco PI 1.3 with LifeCycle licensing and trying to manage Cisco switches and routers in the network. The client is able to add switches to PI and get the CPU memory utilization sort of status, but that's all. What the client is looking for is to use PI to grap the config of a switch and use it as template to deploy to another switch. I have done this on WLC's and it worked well. So anyone knows what else licensing this client needs to have to make it work?

Many thanks.

Robin                  

[Rollin Kibbe]

Hi Robin:

The Lifecycle licensing is all that's needed to manage supported devices, all there is left is managing NAMs and NetFlow devices and that's enabled by installing an Assurance license. 

Unfortunately, at this point in history, creating and applying templates is all that's currently supported for non-wireless devices in Prime Infrastructure.  Config archive is also supported, but there's not currently a way to copy the archived IOS configuration from one device and apply it to a different device.  There's also not any method of template discovery from non-wireless devices, like there is for the wireless LAN controllers. 

My suggestion would be to contact your upstream sales resources, and see which of these features is on the product roadmap, and what releases they're targeted to be included.

If you don't have the new Update-1 patch for Prime Infrastructure 1.3.0.20 installed (filename PI_1.3.0.20_Update_1-12.tar.gz) installed, I'd suggest you get it.  While it's not going to specifically address this issue, there are a lot of really good fixes in it.

[Marvin Rhoads]

Right now (and even after PI 2.0 comes out next month), your client would have much more complete management of wired devices using Prime LMS 4.2. A license for LMS is included with PI 1.2 (or 1.3). It would need to be on its own VM but it offers the complete set of management features for the wired devices.