Readme for Data Center Technology Package 1.0.0 for Prime Infrastructure 2.2.1

Before You Begin Installing the Data Center Technology Package

Caution Once you install this package, you cannot uninstall or remove it.

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Since the package is not removable, it is important to have a way to revert your system to the original version in case hardware or software problems cause the package installation to fail.

To ensure you can do this, take a backup of your system before downloading and installing this UBF package.

To revert to the original Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2.1 Maintenance Release installation, follow these steps:

1. Reinstall Prime Infrastructure 2.2 from an OVA or ISO distribution and install Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2.1 Maintenance Release.

2. Restore the data from the backup that you made before applying the package.

Similarly, if you are running Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2.1 Maintenance Release in a Virtual Machine (VM) and your organization permits taking VM snapshots, use the VMware client to take a VM snapshot before applying this package. You can store the snapshot in an external storage repository, and restore from the snapshot if the package is unsuccessful.

If you are installing the package as part of a High Availability (HA) implementation, you have to ensure that the network links between the two servers provide maximum bandwidth and low latency for the package installation to be successful. For more information, see Troubleshooting Package Installation in High Availability Implementations section.

Installing the Data Center Technology Package from Cisco Site

Step 1 Log in to the Prime Infrastructure 2.2.1 server.

Step 2 Choose Administration > Software Update.

Step 3 Click Download.

Step 4 Log in with your cisco.com credentials and click Show Details in Prime Add-Ons pane to view the updates.

Step 5 Click Download corresponding to the data center technology package 1.0.0 file name Datacenter_Technology_Pack-1.0.39.ubf.

Step 6 Click Install to install the technology package.

Step 7 Restart the Cisco Prime Infrastructure server as explained in Restarting Prime Infrastructure in Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2 Administration Guide to complete the installation process.

Step 8 You can verify the package installation from Prime Infrastructure Login page under Prime Add-Ons by hovering your mouse over the version and also by logging into the server and choosing Administration > Software Update. You should see a listing for the package in the Updates tab, with “Installed” in the Status column.

Installing the Data Center Technology Package from Local Storage

Step 1 Download the Data Center Technology Package Datacenter_Technology_Pack-1.0.39.ubf from Home > Products > Cloud and Systems Management > Routing and Switching Management > Network Management Solutions > Prime Infrastructure > Prime Infrastructure 2.2 > Prime Infrastructure Add-ons and save the package file in your local storage.

Step 2 Log in to Prime Infrastructure 2.2.1 server.

Step 3 Choose Administration > Software Update.

Step 4 Click Upload and browse to the location where you have saved the package file. Click OK to upload the file.

Step 5 In the Status of Updates pane, click the Files tab and check whether Datacenter_Technology_Pack-1.0.39.ubf is listed under FileName column.

Step 6 In the Prime Add-Ons pane, click Install. You will see a popup message indicating the manual restart of Prime Infrastructure. Click Yes for successful installation.

Step 7 Restart the server by first executing the ncs stop command and then the ncs start command, as explained in Restarting Prime Infrastructure in Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2 Administration Guide.

Step 8 You can verify the package installation from Prime Infrastructure Login page under Prime Add-Ons in the Installed Updates popup by hovering your mouse over the version and also by logging into the server and choosing Administration > Software Update. You should see a listing for the package in the Updates tab, with “Installed” in the Status column.

Installing the Technology Package in High Availability Mode

Download the Data Center Technology Package Datacenter_Technology_Pack-1.0.39.ubf from Home > Products > Cloud and Systems Management > Routing and Switching Management > Network Management Solutions > Prime Infrastructure > Prime Infrastructure 2.2 > Prime Infrastructure Add-ons and save the package file in your local storage.

To install the downloaded Data Center Technology Package Datacenter_Technology_Pack-1.0.39.ubf in High Availability mode follow the below steps:

• Make sure you have completed the recommended preparation steps given in Before You Begin Installing the Data Center Technology Package.
• If your current Prime Infrastructure implementation has High Availability (HA) servers that are not at the same patch level, see Patching Paired High Availability Servers in Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2 Administration Guide.
• If you are setting up a new Prime Infrastructure High Availability implementation and your new servers are not at the same patch level, see Patching New High Availability Servers in Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2 Administration Guide.

Troubleshooting Package Installation in High Availability Implementations

Users who apply this package in a High Availability (HA) implementation may experience difficulties if the network links between the two servers offer low bandwidth and high latency. In particular, this kind of low throughput can cause the post-package restart and re-registration to take far longer than normal. In most cases, simply waiting longer will fix the problem with no intervention. In few cases, continued or intermittent throughput problems can cause complete failure. If you believe this has occurred, contact Cisco TAC.

If you are unable to verify that the package has been applied to a server, or one or both of the servers fail to restart properly after the package installation, you may need to re-image the server as explained in Before You Begin Installing the Data Center Technology Package.

In all cases, you can use the backup-logs command on one or both servers to get information on the source of the failure. For more information, see backup-logs in Command Reference Guide for Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2.

Managing Compute Resources

You can add, delete, edit, sync, and bulk import Vcenter servers and also view the complete inventory of compute resources like data center, cluster, hosts and VMs.

Prerequisite for Inventory Collection

You must add Data Center Hypervisor license for collecting the inventory of Vcenter server. For adding Data Center Hypervisor license, see Adding a License to Access Features in Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2 User Guide.

Adding Vcenter Server

You can manage a Vcenter server by manually adding a Vcenter server. Before adding a Vcenter server, you must satisfy the prerequisites (see Prerequisite for Inventory Collection).

To add a Vcenter Server:

Step 1 Choose Inventory > Compute Devices > Discovery Sources.

Step 2 Click Add Device.

Step 3 Enter the following parameters in the Add Discovery Source page.

• Protocol—HTTP/HTTPS.
• Server—Host Name/IP address of Vcenter.
• Port—443 for HTTPS; 80 for HTTP.
• User Name/Password—Vcenter credentials.

Step 4 (optional) Click Verify Credentials to confirm the Vcenter credentials before adding Vcenter.

Step 5 Click Add.

You can view the inventory collection status of the manually added Vcenter server in the Discovery Sources page. Add the Data Center Vcenter license, if the Virtual Inventory Collection Status shows “No License”.

CSV File Requirements for Importing Vcenter

If you want to use a CSV file to import Vcenter from another source into Prime Infrastructure, you can download a sample template by choosing Inventory > Compute Devices > Discover Sources, then clicking Bulk Import. Click the link to download a bulk virtual discovery sample template.

For full inventory collection in Prime Infrastructure, you must provide the following values in the CSV file:

• Discovery Source
• Discovery Source Password
• Discovery Source Port
• Discovery Source User Name
• Protocol

Viewing Compute Devices

Compute Devices provide a consolidated view of all devices that provide compute capability within a Data Center. From the Compute Devices page, you can view the List View and Detailed View of the compute devices managed by Prime Infrastructure as described in Table 1 .

Monitoring Performance of Compute Resources

Prime Infrastructure supports periodic polling of a predefined set of key performance indicators (KPIs) related to CPU, memory, disk and network for monitoring the health of the virtual elements. Prime Infrastructure does not poll the VM directly, but it gets the data periodically from the Vcenter via the application programming interfaces (APIs). The default polling interval is 5 minutes. You can change the polling interval as described below.

To set the polling interval:

Step 1 Choose Administration > System Settings > Datacenter Settings.

Step 2 Choose the Polling Interval from the drop-down list.

Step 3 Click Save.

Polling can be enabled/disabled on data center, cluster and host. The children of the entity selected for polling would be automatically selected for polling. For example, if polling is enabled on a cluster, then all the hosts and VM belonging to that host would be automatically selected for polling. Click the Start Monitoring button on Data Center, Cluster and Hosts list view in Compute Device screen to enable polling.

To monitor a cluster:

Step 1 Choose Inventory > Device Management > Compute Devices.

Step 2 Click Clusters in the Compute Resources pane.

Step 3 Choose the clusters and click Start Monitoring.

If monitoring is enabled from parent (data center or cluster) then it cannot be stopped from child (host or cluster). But you can stop the monitoring enabled from child (host, cluster) by clicking Stop Monitoring from parent (data center, cluster).

Root Cause and Impact analysis of Physical and Virtual Data Center Components

The physical servers shows the list of UCS B-Series and C-series servers that are managed by Prime Infrastructure. With application of this tech pack, it would also show the Host/Hypervisor running on it, only if the corresponding Vcenter is added.

The Cisco UCS Server Schematic is enhanced to shows the complete architecture of the UCS device. The Schematic tab shows a graph that can be expanded to show different elements of UCS device such as chassis and blades. You can view quick summary of the element by hovering your mouse over the operational status icon next to the chassis or blade. In addition, clicking on the operational status icon, which symbolizes each unique element (chassis or blade), would show the subsequent connection. With this technology package clicking on operational status icon would now show the connection to host and its VM if managed by Prime Infrastructure. The schematic view also shows the operational status of the data center components and the associated alarms using which you can trace the root cause of an application delivery failure to a UCS hardware problem of Cisco UCS device.

A new IO Modules tab is introduced in Inventory > Compute Resources > Cisco UCS Servers, to show the operational status of backplane ports and fabric ports. These details are useful for troubleshooting the UCS device.

Data Center Fault Support

With the integration of the data center VMware virtualization, Prime Infrastructure also supports specific set of VMware events related to Host, VM and Cluster. The alarm and event information is integrated into existing alarm browser in Prime Infrastructure.and displayed in List and Detail Page along with the inventory information. These alarms and events are similar to any other alarms and events in Prime Infrastructure and supports operations such as Acknowledge, Force Clear and Annotate except Troubleshoot. Troubleshoot is not applicable for Vcenter related alarms.

UCS Fault Support

The Data Center technology package supports several additional critical and major traps related to UCS B-series. These traps manifest themselves as Alarms and Events and show up in Alarm Browser just like any other alarm in Prime Infrastructure.

Data Center Dashboard

A new Data Center dashboard is introduced in this technology package. The following table shows the dashlets that are shown in the Compute and Host tabs in the Data Center dashboard.

Table 2 Dashlets shown in Data Center Dashboard

Virtual Domain Support for Data Center

The Virtual domain screen is enhanced to support Virtual Elements. The data center, cluster, and host entities can be added to any existing virtual domain or a new virtual domain. Once a virtual entity is assigned to a virtual domain, all its child entities get automatically added to the same virtual domain. If Virtual domain users can view only the virtual entities that have been assigned to that virtual domain.

Inventory details of any discovery sources added by virtual domain users can be viewed by them only if the virtual elements of that discovery source are added to that specific virtual domain accessible by the users.

Grouping Integration with Data Center

In addition to the out-of-box groups for data center and cluster, you can create multiple user-defined groups for VMs and hosts.

To create user defined Hosts and VMs groups, follow these steps:

Step 1 Choose Inventory > Compute Devices > User Defined Hosts and VMs.

Step 2 Hover your mouse over the expand icon and click Add SubGroup.

Step 3 Enter the group name and group description, and select a parent group, if applicable.

Step 4 In the Add Devices Dynamically pane, specify the rules that you want to apply to the devices in the group.

Step 5 In the Add Devices Manually pane, choose the devices that you want to assign to the group.

Step 6 Click Preview to view the devices that are automatically added to the group based on the specified rule and the manually added devices.

Step 7 Click Save to add the device group with the settings that you specified.

Virtual Port Channel inventory on Nexus 9K Platform

The data center technology package provides Virtual Port Channel (vPC) Inventory support for Nexus 9300 device. In the device details page, you can see vPC details like domain, role, role priority, system priority, vPC status, vPC setting, and vPC Peer Link Status. These details are used to quickly verify the vPC domain and the interfaces that are participating in that vPC domain and monitor the health of the links in data center.

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