Cisco Prime Reaches End of Life (EOL): What's Next?

United Kingdom, Sep 22, 2023

As with all technology, there comes a time when we must say goodbye to the tools and platforms we've come to rely on. In the world of networking, Cisco Prime Infrastructure has been an essential tool for many professionals. On March 31 2023, Cisco announced the End of Life (EOL) for Cisco Prime. For many enterprises, this signifies a time of change and adaptation.

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The key milestones are:

  • End of Software Maintenance Support on 28th September 2024
  • Last date of Support on 28th September 2028

With one year left for the end of software maintenance and a five-year window until the last date of support, there's no immediate cause for panic. However, now is the time to start your migration to ensure a seamless transition to the new platform.

Cisco DNA Center is the next-generation platform that provides the network management capabilities previously delivered by Prime Infrastructure but delivers a wide range of new and additional capabilities.

Cisco offers the ability to run Cisco DNA Center through physical appliances or two virtualised options:

  •     AWS public cloud
  •     Private cloud using VMware/ESXi

Both virtualised form factors mirror the medium DNA Center appliance for the scale and have feature parity with the physical appliance (with a few caveats). The Cisco DNA Center virtual appliances come at no direct cost, though there is optional TAC support for each virtual appliance. You are still required to license the network devices with a DNA subscription license.

 

Migration Path

 

For Prime Infrastructure customers, there are several tools and services available to help migrate your network infrastructure from Prime Infrastructure to Cisco DNA Center (physical or virtual).

The recommended approach to Prime migration include a preparation and assessment phase before the actual migration:

 
  1. Understanding DNA Center

Learn about DNAC Capabilities, extent of Prime Parity and differentiated use cases compared to Prime.  Reach out to your Logicalis account team for more information on DNAC.

  1. Assess Prime usage and DNA Center compatibility

Cisco has made the PDART Tool available (Prime to DNA Assessment Readiness Tool). You can run this tool on your Prime Infrastructure to check your Prime Usage, DNAC compatibility of network devices and other relevant detail.

Follow the recommendations from PDART report and If required, upgrade Prime, optimize network hierarchy, onboard DNAC appliance etc

  1. Perform migration

Migration can be done gradually or in one operation. In a gradual migration you can run Cisco DNA Center and Prime together in the network and use DNA Center for Automation or Assurance or both for some parts of the network.

Use PDMT (Prime to DNA Migration Tool) from within Prime to easily and securely port your network from Prime to DNAC. The tool will migrating your hierarchy, devices, maps, AP locations, and various other elements.

  1. Adopt DNA Center

DNAC offers superior automation, vastly greater visibility, complete with AI driven analytics that help keep your network healthy and reduce your operational expenditure.

 

Logicalis work with our customers to deliver state of the art networking solutions, and in addition to this offer a comprehensive set of services that can be tailored to meet the specific needs of individual customers.

If you’d like to learn more about Logicalis’ Network Managed Services portfolio please contact us.

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