- Introduction to Administering Cisco Prime Infrastructure
- Administrator Setup Tasks
- Prime Infrastructure Server Settings
- Maintaining Prime Infrastructure Server Health
- Backing Up and Restoring Prime Infrastructure
- Maintaining Network Health
- Managing Data and Collection Retention
- Configuring Controller and AP Settings
- Configuring High Availability
- Configuring Wireless Redundancy
- Controlling User Access
- Advanced Monitoring
- Managing Licenses
- Managing Traffic Metrics
- Planning Network Capacity Changes
- Appendix A: Prime Infrastructure Internal SNMP Trap Generation
- Appendix B: Best Practices: Server Security Hardening
- Appendix C: Configuring the Plug and Play High Availability Feature
Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.0 Administrator Guide
Bias-Free Language
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.
- Updated:
- January 31, 2018
Chapter: Managing Data and Collection Retention
- Specifying Data Retention by Category
- Specifying Data Retention By Database Table
- About Performance Data Retention
- Specifying Client Data Retrieval and Retention
- About Historical Data Retention
- Enabling Data Deduplication
- Controlling Report Storage and Retention
- Specifying Inventory Collection After Receiving Events
- Controlling Configuration Deployment Behavior
- Controlling Data Collection Jobs
- Migrating Data from Cisco Prime LMS to Cisco Prime Infrastructure
Managing Data Collection and Retention
One of the roles of an administrator is to manage Cisco Prime Infrastructure’s network data collection and retention so that it:
- Scales to fit the real needs of the system’s users.
- Minimizes the burden on monitored devices, applications, and network bandwidth.
- Survives hardware failures.
The following topics explain how to achieve these goals and perform related data management tasks.
- Specifying Data Retention by Category
- Specifying Data Retention By Database Table
- About Performance Data Retention
- Specifying Client Data Retrieval and Retention
- About Historical Data Retention
- Enabling Data Deduplication
- Controlling Report Storage and Retention
- Specifying Inventory Collection After Receiving Events
- Controlling Configuration Deployment Behavior
- Controlling Data Collection Jobs
- Migrating Data from Cisco Prime LMS to Cisco Prime Infrastructure
Specifying Data Retention by Category
Administrators can use Prime Infrastructure’s Data Retention page to configure retention periods for the following data categories:
- Trend Data : Hourly, daily and weekly aggregated data.
- Device Health and System Health data: Hourly, daily and weekly data.
- Performance data: Short, medium and long-term data.
- Network Audit data.
Limiting the amount of data retained can help improve performance and disk storage characteristics. However, for the best interactive graph data views, Cisco recommends that keep the default values.
You can also specify data retention for individual database tables, using maximum age and record attributes. For details, see “Specifying Data Retention By Database Table” in Related Topics.
Step 1 Choose Administration > Settings > System Settings > General > Data Retention.
Step 2 Expand the data category for which you want to specify retention-period values.
Step 3 Enter the new values as needed.
Specifying Data Retention By Database Table
Administrators can use the “Other Data Retention Criteria” section of the Data Retention page to configure retention periods for specific Prime Infrastructure database tables. You specify the retention period using the following attributes:
- Age (in hours) : Specifies the maximum data retention period in hours for all records in the database.
- Max Records : Specifies the maximum number of records to retain in a particular database table. A Max Records value of NA means that the only retention criteria considered is the Age attribute.
The section is categorized into multiple subsections. Each subsection list each database table name, along with the current Age and Max Records used to determine whether an individual record in the table will be retained or discarded. The page also lists the table Age Attribute used to compute the age of the data in the table. The Optical Devices category is not applicable for Prime Infrastructure.
Cisco strongly recommends that you consult with Cisco Technical Assistance Center before changing the values for any of the tables in this section. Doing so without help may affect system performance negatively.
Step 1 Choose Administration > Settings > System Settings > General > Data Retention.
Step 2 Expand the Other Data Retention Criteria section.
Step 3 Expand the database table subsection for which you want to specify Age and Max Records values.
Step 4 Click on the database table listing and enter the new values as needed.
About Performance Data Retention
When you choose Administration > Settings > System Settings > General > Data Retention, you can modify the retention periods for performance data under Performance Data Retain Periods . The performance retention values you specify determine the information that is displayed in performance reports and performance dashboards.
For example, if you don’t need any historical data older than 7 days, you can modify the performance data retention values as follows:
- Short-term Data Retain Period—1 day
- Medium term Data Retain Period—3 days
- Long term Data Retain Period—7 days
If you specify these settings, all data displayed in performance reports and performance dashboards data will be for the previous 7 days only. When you generate a performance report (for example, Reports > Reports > Report Launch Pad > Device > Device Health ), even if you select a Reporting Period longer than the last 7 days, the report contains data from the last 7 days only because that is all the data you’ve selected to retain.
Similarly, if you view a performance dashboard (for example, Dashboard > Overview > General > Service Assurance ) and select a Time Frame longer than one week, the dashboard contains data from the last 7 days only because that is all the data you’ve selected to retain.
For device and interface performance data, Prime Infrastructure uses the values specified in the fields under Device Health Data Retain Periods .
Specifying Client Data Retrieval and Retention
Administrators can use Prime Infrastructure’s Client page to configure parameters affecting retention of data on network clients, including:
- Data on disassociated clients. The default is seven days, and this applies irrespective of whether the clients will ever attempt to associate again.
- Data on client session histories. You can also specify the maximum number of session entries to keep, specified as rows in the Prime Infrastructure database.
- Cached client host names retrieved from a DNS server.
In addition to these data-retention options, the page allows you to enable and disable options to:
- Automatically troubleshoot clients using a diagnostic channel when traps are received from these clients.
- Automatically retrieve client host names from a DNS server.
- Poll clients when traps or syslogs are received from these clients
- Save as Prime Infrastructure events routine client association and disassociation traps and syslogs. This option is disabled by default, to avoid Prime Infrastructure performance problems on large networks during periods (such as network setup) when these kinds of traps and syslogs may be numerous. You may want to enable this option at all other times.
- Save all 802.1x and 802.11 client authentication-failure traps as Prime Infrastructure events. This option is disabled by default, to avoid Prime Infrastructure performance problems on large networks during periods (such as network setup) when these kinds of traps and syslogs may be numerous. You may want to enable this option if your network is stable.
Step 1 Choose Administration > Settings > System Settings > Client and User > Client.
Step 2 Under Data Retention, modify the values as required.
About Historical Data Retention
Prime Infrastructure retains two types of historical data:
1. Non-aggregated historical data—Numeric data that cannot be gathered as a whole or aggregated. Client association history is one example of non-aggregated historical data.
You can define a retention period (and other settings) for each non-aggregated data collection task. For example, you can define the retention period for client association history in Administration > Settings > System Settings > Client . By default, the retention period for all non-aggregated historical data is 31 days or 1 million records. This retention period can be increased to 365 days.
2. Aggregated historical data—Numeric data that can be gathered as a whole and summarized as minimums, maximums, or averages. Client count is one example of aggregated historical data.
Types of aggregated historical data include:
– Trend: This includes wireless-related historical information such as client history, AP history, AP utilization, and client statistics.
– Device health: This includes SNMP polled data for wired and wireless devices, such as device availability, and CPU, memory, and interface utilization, and QoS.
– Performance: This includes Assurance data such a traffic statistics, application metrics, and voice metrics.
– Network audit records: This includes audit records for configuration changes triggered by users, and so on.
– System health records: This includes most data shown on Prime Infrastructure administrator dashboards.
The retention periods for these aggregation types are defined as Default, Minimum, and Maximum (see the table below). Use the Administration > Settings > System Settings > General > Data Retention page to define aggregated data retention periods. Aggregation types include hourly, daily, and weekly.
Enabling Data Deduplication
Data deduplication allows you to identify authoritative sources for each of the following classes of application data:
- Application Response Time data for TCP applications
- Traffic analysis data for all applications
- Voice/Video data for RTP applications
Prime Infrastructure stores all data it receives about network elements and protocols, including any duplicate data that it may receive from multiple sources. When you specify authoritative data sources, only the data from the specified sources is displayed when you view a particular location or site.
The Data Deduplication page allows you to specify one or more authoritative data sources at a specific location. For example, if you have a Network Analysis Module (NAM) at a branch office as well as NetFlow data that is sent from the same branch, you can choose to have Prime Infrastructure display only the NAM or the NetFlow data for that location.
Step 1 Choose Services > Application Visibility & Control > Data Deduplication.
Step 2 Select the Enable Data Deduplication checkbox and click Apply . The Data Deduplication page displays the list of your defined location groups.
Step 3 To automatically detect authoritative sources at all locations, click Auto-Detect . If it can identify them, Prime Infrastructure will fill in the address of an authoritative source in the list box under the column listing sources for each of the classes of application data.
Step 4 To specify authoritative sources for a class of application data at a specific location:
a. Click the location group name.
b. Click the drop-down list box under the class of application data for which you want to specify an authoritative source (for example: click in the list box under “Application Response Time”).
c. From the drop-down list, select the data sources you want to specify as authoritative for that location and application data type. Then click OK .
d. Click Save to save your selections.
Repeat this step as needed for each location and application data type for which you want to specify authoritative data source.
Step 5 When you are finished, click Apply to save your changes.
Controlling Report Storage and Retention
All scheduled reports are stored in the Scheduled Reports Repository. You will want to ensure that scheduled reports are retained in the report repository for reasonable lengths of time only, and deleted on a regular basis.
Step 1 Choose Administration > Settings > System Settings > General > Report . The Report page appears.
Step 2 In Repository Path , specify the report repository path on the Prime Infrastructure server.
Step 3 In File Retain Period , specify the maximum number of days reports should be retained.
Specifying Inventory Collection After Receiving Events
The Inventory page allows you to specify if Prime Infrastructure must collect inventory when a syslog event is received for a device.
Step 1 Choose Administration > Settings > System Settings > Inventory > Inventory . The Inventory page appears.
Step 2 Select the Enable event based inventory collection check box to allow Prime Infrastructure to collect inventory when it receives a syslog event for a device.
Step 3 Select the Enable Syslog and Traps on device check box to allow Prime Infrastructure to enable syslog and trap notifications on newly added devices.
Controlling Configuration Deployment Behavior
Administrators can choose to have device configurations backed up or rolled back whenever Prime Infrastructure users deploy new device configuration templates. They can also control how Cisco WLC configurations are archived, as explained in the following related topics.
- Archiving Device Configurations Before Template Deployment
- Rolling Back Device Configurations on Template Deployment Failure
- Specifying When and How to Archive WLC Configurations
Archiving Device Configurations Before Template Deployment
With Backup Device Configuration enabled, Prime Infrastructure automatically backs up all device running and startup configurations before deploying new configuration templates.
Step 1 Choose Administration > Settings > System Settings > Inventory > Configuration .
Step 2 Select the Backup Device Configuration check box.
Rolling Back Device Configurations on Template Deployment Failure
With Rollback Configuration enabled, Prime Infrastructure automatically rolls back each device to its last archived running and startup configurations when any attempt to deploy a new configuration template to the device has failed.
Step 1 Choose Administration > Settings > System Settings > Configuration .
Step 2 Select the Rollback Configuration check box.
Specifying When and How to Archive WLC Configurations
By default, Prime Infrastructure keeps a backup archive of running configurations for each device running Cisco Wireless LAN Controller (WLC) software whenever it:
- Collects initial out-of-box inventory for these devices
- Receives notification of a configuration change event for these devices
Configuration archiving is supported for devices running Cisco WLC software only. Only running configurations are archived (startup configurations are excluded).
You can change many of the basic parameters controlling Cisco WLC configuration archiving, including:
- The maximum timeout on all Cisco WLC configuration operations (fetch, archive or rollback).
- The maximum time to to wait before updating the Cisco WLC configuration archive summary information.
- Whether or not to archive configurations at initial inventory collection, after each inventory synchronization, and on receipt of configuration change events.
- Whether or not to mask security information when exporting archived configurations to files.
- The maximum number of archived configurations for each device and the maximum number of days to retain them.
- The maximum number of thread pools to devote to the archive operation. Increasing the default can be helpful with Prime Infrastructure performance during archiving of changes involving more than 1,000 devices.
You can also tell Prime Infrastructure to ignore for archive purposes any change that involves specified commands on devices of a given family, type, or model. This is useful when you want to ignore insignificant or routine changes in a few parameters on one or many devices.
Step 1 Choose Administration > Settings > System Settings > Configuration Archive .
Step 2 On the Basic tab, change the basic archive parameters as needed.
Step 3 To specify devices and configuration commands to exclude from archived configurations:
b. In the Product Family list, choose the device(s) for which you want to specify configuration commands to exclude.
Use the List/Tree View dropdown, or click the > icons to drill down to individual product types and models for which you want to specify exclude commands.
c. In the Command Exclude List, enter (separated by commas) the configuration commands you want to exclude for the currently selected device family, type, or model.
If the device(s) you select has configuration changes and Prime Infrastructure detects that the change is one of the specified commands in the Exclude List, Prime Infrastructure will not create an archived version of the configuration with this change.
e. To remove a specified set of command exclusions for a device family, type or model, select the device(s) in the Product Family list and click Reset .
Controlling Data Collection Jobs
Prime Infrastructure performs scheduled data collection jobs in the background on a regular basis. You can change each job’s schedule, pause or resume it, or execute it immediately.
Disabling or limiting these background data collection jobs can have a direct impact on how you use Prime Infrastructure, especially for reporting. To help you consider these impacts, take note of the reports this data is used in.
- Scheduling Data Collection Jobs
- Pausing and Resuming Data Collection Jobs
- Running Data Collection Jobs Immediately
- About Data Collection Jobs
Scheduling Data Collection Jobs
Data collection jobs run on a regular default schedule, as described in the related topic “About Data Collection Jobs”. You can re-schedule them as needed.
Step 1 Choose Administration > Dashboards > Job Dashboard > System Jobs .
Step 2 Select the category of data collection job you want to re-schedule (e.g., Inventory , Wireless Poller , or Wireless System ).
Step 3 Click the check box next to the system job you want to re-schedule.
Step 4 Click Edit Schedule and specify the schedule you want the job to run on.
You can select the date and time the job is executed. You can choose to have the job recur on a minute, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or annual basis. You can also specify end times and dates, and total recurrences.
Step 5 When you are finished, click Submit .
Pausing and Resuming Data Collection Jobs
You can pause any scheduled data collection job, and resume it if already paused.
Step 1 Choose Administration > Dashboards > Job Dashboard > System Jobs .
Step 2 Select the category of data collection job you want to pause or resume (e.g., Inventory , Wireless Poller , or Wireless System ).
Step 3 Click the check box next to the system job you want.
Step 4 Click Pause Series to stop the job from executing.
If the job is already paused, click Resume Series to resume execution on the current schedule.
Running Data Collection Jobs Immediately
In addition to the steps below, you can run a job immediately by rescheduling it and selecting the time to execute as “Now” (see “Scheduling Data Collection Jobs” in Related Topics).
Step 1 Choose Administration > Dashboards > Job Dashboard > System Jobs .
Step 2 Select the category of data collection job you want to run(e.g., Inventory , Wireless Poller , or Wireless System ).
Step 3 Click the check box to select the system job you want to run immediately.
About Data Collection Jobs
The following tables describe the background data collection jobs Prime Infrastructure performs.
Controlling Prime Infrastructure Background Tasks
The following table describes the background tasks Prime Infrastructure performs. You can manage how and when they are performed by choosing Administration > Settings > System Settings > Background Tasks , then clicking the hypertext link for that task.
Migrating Data from Cisco Prime LMS to Cisco Prime Infrastructure
Prime Infrastructure supports data migration from Cisco Prime LAN Management Solution (LMS) version 4.2.5 on all platforms. The following LMS data can be imported into Prime Infrastructure using the CAR CLI:
- Device Credential and Repository (DCR) Devices
- Static Groups
- Dynamic Groups
- Software Image Management Repository Images
- User Defined Templates (Netconfig)
- LMS Local Users
- MIBs
Only the Dynamic Groups containing the rule with the following attributes can be imported from LMS.
- PI attribute Name—LMS attribute name
- Contact—System.Contact
- Description—System.Description
- Location— System.Location
- Management_Address—Device.ManagementIpAddress
- Name—System.Name
- Product_Family—Device.Category
- Product_Series—Device.Series
- Product_Type—Device.Model
- Software_Type—System.OStype
- Software_Version—Image.Version
To migrate LMS data to Prime Infrastructure, follow these steps:
Step 1 Identify the server where LMS backup data is stored.
Step 2 Open a CLI session with the Prime Infrastructure server (see “Connecting Via CLI” in Related Topics, below).
Step 3 Enter the following commands to configure the backup location:
admin(config)#
repository carsapps
admin(config-Repository)#
url
location
admin(config-Repository)#
user root password plain
password
Step 4 Import the LMS backup into Prime Infrastructure using the following command:
admin#
lms migrate repository carsapps
Step 5 Exit your CLI session, log back in to the Prime Infrastructure user interface, and verify that your LMS data was imported properly. The following table shows where to look in Prime Infrastructure for the imported LMS data.
Monitor > Monitoring Policies. In the menu, click Add, then select Policy Types > Custom MIB Polling. |
Feedback