Upgrading from ciscoworks 2.6

[cbhawking]

I have been asked to take over our network management application. We have been using 2.6 (although nobody has used it in the last 14 months). In the process of learning the software i am doing some investigating as to whether or not we should upgrade to the current 3.1 version. We have between 1.5K and 5K devices.

My Question is - what are the benefits of upgrading to the new version?

[tedreese]

Funny you ask this I'm researching the same information as well. We are a little under 1000 devices. Other than 2.6 being end of sale/life I'm not seeing the advantages just yet.

[cbhawking]

Apart from the new "fancy" interface - and a few minor issues i cannot see any significant improvements. Its also still cumbersome to use in my opinion.

[Joe Clarke]

* SNMPv3 authPriv support

* Default and secondary (i.e. fallback) credential support

* Multi-protocol (ping sweep, ARP, HSRP, OSPF, etc.) discovery

* Configurable CiscoWorks homepage

* Dynamic (think: near real time) User Tracking updates

* Ability to acquire end hosts on trunk ports in User Tracking

* PSIRT/EOL inventory reporting

* Better switchport capacity tracking

* More voice quality features in IPM

* Reports can be emailed as attachments

* Support for the Health and Utilization Monitor add-on integration

* FTP support for SWIM

* VSS and modular IOS support

[cbhawking]

Thank you for the quick reply....

Is there a presentation or comparison document anywhere on this where it goes into detail at all?

The feature that interests me most is possibly the EOL - we lease alot of equipment and inventory management becomes very difficult.

Again i appreciate the response

[Joe Clarke]

You can get the list of features from the release notes at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/cscowork/ps2425/prod_release_notes_list.html . I don't know of any publicly available presentation detailing these features, but you can always download a demo from http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/cscowork/ps2425/index.html .

[cbhawking]

I have asked our cisco service partners for some kind of a comparison and they sent me the links to the release notes - which i could find on my own. The issue i am having is trying to justify 50K on an upgrade.

[Joe Clarke]

That's why the eval may be helpful for you. You can install a fully-functional LMS 3.1 server for 90 days, and test it out on up to 100 devices. If you like the new features, you can purchase the license.

Any marketing material provided to you will only show you how it should work. The eval will tell you how it will work in your environment.