Overview

This section provides basic information about the product and this Guide.

About This Guide

This guide describes how to install Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.6 for Microsoft Hyper-V and how to migrate or upgrade from previous releases of Cisco prime infrastructure to Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.6.

For upgrading from Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.4.x and 3.5.x to Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.6, See Upgrade from Previous Releases of Cisco Prime Infrastructure.

For Migrating from previous releases of Cisco prime infrastructure to Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.6, see Migrate from Previous Releases of Cisco Prime Infrastructure.

For information about configuring and managing this product, see the latest Cisco Prime Infrastructure User Guide and Cisco Prime Infrastructure Administrator Guide.

Product Overview

Prime Infrastructure provides a single integrated solution for comprehensive lifecycle management of the wired or wireless access, campus, and branch networks, and rich visibility into end-user connectivity and application performance assurance issues. Prime Infrastructure accelerates the rollout of new services, secure access and management of mobile devices, making “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) a reality for corporate IT. Tightly coupling client awareness with application performance visibility and network control, Prime Infrastructure helps ensure uncompromised end-user quality of experience. Deep integration with the Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) further extends this visibility across security and policy-related problems, presenting a complete view of client access issues with a clear path to solving them.

For:

About Prime Infrastructure for Microsoft Hyper-V

Cisco Prime Infrastructure for Microsoft Hyper-V extends Cisco networking benefits to Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V deployments.

Hyper-V is a hypervisor-based server-virtualization product that improves utilization, consolidates server workloads, and reduces costs. To achieve this, Cisco Prime Infrastructure on Hyper-V uses hardware virtualization to enable multiple operating systems to run on a single host, and allows the operating systems to share the same underlying physical hardware.

You can deploy Cisco Prime Infrastructure on Hyper-V in a standalone role or as an installable product.

Prime Infrastructure Operations Center is not supported on Microsoft Hyper-V.

Prerequisites

You must have the following before you begin the installation:

  • Microsoft Hyper-V 2016 requirements
    • Server—Hyper-V server 2016
    • Client—Windows 2010 with Hyper-V Manager

See Remotely manage Hyper-V hosts with Hyper-V Manager for more details.

  • Microsoft Windows 2016 Server Edition:
    • Server—Windows 2016 Standard or Datacenter Edition
    • Client—Hyper-V Manager installed in the same Windows 2016 server

See Install the Hyper-V role on Windows Server 2016 for more details.

Cisco Prime Infrastructure ISO image

The following Prime Infrastructure ISO images must be available:

  • PI-APL-3.6.0.0.172-1-K9.iso

You can verify the Cisco Signature for the ISO image with the following steps:

  1. Download PI-APL-3.6.0.0.172-1-K9.iso, PrimeInfra.pem and PI-APL-3.6.0.0.172-1-K9.iso.signature.
  2. Copy these file to any Linux server and enter the following command.

openssl dgst -sha512 -verify
 PrimeInfra.pem -signature PI-APL-3.6.0.0.172-1-K9.iso.signature PI-APL-3.6.0.0.172-1-K9.iso

The result will be shown as “Verified”.

Direct Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.6 installation is supported on Microsoft Hyper-V.


Note

Multiple deployments of Prime Infrastructure on the same Hyper-V host in parallel may cause errors, due to non availability of free space when creating VHDs. We recommend that you do not deploy multiple Prime Infrastructure installations on Hyper-V in parallel, unless you have verified that you have enough free disk space required for the respective Cisco Prime Infrastructure models.

System Configuration

The system configuration matrix for the image deployment is:

Table 1. System Configuration Matrix

Requirement

Express

Express-Plus

Standard

Professional

Windows 2016 server & Hyper-V 2016 server

2016

2016

2016

2016

Virtual CPUs

4

8

16

16

Memory (RAM)

12288 MB

16384 MB

16384 MB

24576 MB

HDD Size

300 GB

600 GB

900 GB

1.2 TB

Throughput (Disk IOPS)

200 MB/s

200 MB/s

200 MB/s

320 MB/s

For maximum management capacities for each installation option, see the section Scaling Prime Infrastructure in the latest Cisco Prime Infrastructure Quick start Guide . You must enter the details about the number of Virtual CPUs, Memory (RAM) and HDD manually during system configuration.

Create Prime Infrastructure Virtual Machines Using Hyper-V Manager

Hyper-V manager has to be installed Windows 2016 server or Windows 10 client. See Install the Hyper-V role for more details.


Note

The Hyper-V server must be listed in the Hyper-V manager before you proceed with creating a new VM.

To create a VM using the new Virtual Machine Wizard in the Microsoft Hyper-V Manager, follow these steps:


Note

System administrator privileges for Hyper-V are required.

Procedure


Step 1

Login to the Windows 2016 or Windows 10 client and launch Hyper-V manager.

Step 2

Right click on the server and select New > virtual Machine.

The New Virtual Machine Wizard screen opens

Step 3

Read the Before You Begin information and click Next.

Step 4

Enter the VM name and click Next.

You can check the Store the virtual machine in a different location check box if you want to specify a location other than the default location.

Step 5

Select Generation 1 in the Specify Generation screen and click Next.

Note 
Generation 2 is not supported for Prime Infrastructure deployment.
Step 6

Enter the start up memory value in the Assign Memory screen and click Next.

Refer to the table in the section System Configuration for the startup memory values.

Step 7

Select Virtual Network Adapter from the Connection drop-down and click Next.

See Create a virtual switch for Hyper-V virtual machines for more information on a virtual switch.

Step 8

Select Create a virtual hard disk, enter the hard disk size in GB and click Next.

Refer to the table in the section System Configuration for the hard disk values.

Step 9

Select Install an operating system from a boot CD/DVD-ROM > Image file (.iso) from the Installation Options screen and browse to the location where the PI-APL-3.6.0.0.172-1-K9.iso is saved and click Next.

Note 
The ISO image should be available in the Hyper-V server if it is a stand alone Hyper-V server.
Step 10

Click Finish in the Completing the New Virtual Machine Wizard screen after reviewing your settings.

The Virtual Machine is created with the name used in Step 4.

Step 11

Right click the Virtual Machine and click Settings.

Step 12

Click Processors and enter the following:

  • Number of virtual processors.

  • Virtual Machine Reserve Percentage to 100%

See the table in the section System Configuration for more details.

Step 13

Click Memory and enter the following:

  • Start Up RAM.

  • Set the Memory Weight at 50%.

Note 
The memory must be in MB. See the table in the section System Configuration for more details.
Step 14

Click OK and Apply.

Step 15

Select the virtual machine you created, right click and choose Connect to open the VM windows..

Step 16

Select the virtual machine, right click and choose Start to boot the virtual machine.

Step 17

Enter 1—Prime Infrastructure System Installation (Keyboard/Monitor as the boot option.

The installation process takes about 10 to 15 minutes to complete.


Set Up Prime Infrastructure on a Hyper-V Virtual Machine

To set up and start Prime Infrastructure on a Hyper-V virtual machine follow these steps:

Procedure


Step 1

Click the Console tab.

After the server boots up, the localhost login prompt appears.

Step 2

Enter setup at the localhost login prompt.

Step 3

Enter the following parameters:

  • Hostname—The host name of the virtual appliance.

  • IP Address—The IP address of the virtual appliance.

  • IP default netmask—The default subnet mask for the IP address.

  • IP default gateway—The IP address of the default gateway.

  • Default DNS domain—The default domain name.

  • Primary nameserver—The IP address of the primary name server.

  • Secondary name servers—The IP address if the secondary name server, if available. You can add up to three secondary name servers.

  • Primary NTP server—The IP address or host name of the primary Network Time Protocol server you want to use. (time.nist.gov is the default).

  • Secondary NTP servers—The IP addresses or host names of the secondary NTP servers to be used when the primary is not available.

  • System Time Zone—The time zone code you want to use. See the chapter System Timezones in the latest Cisco Prime Infrastructure User Guide .

  • Clock time—The clock time based on the server’s time zone.

  • Username—The name of the first administrative user (known as “admin”). This is the administrator account used to log in to the server via the console or SSH. You can accept the default, which is admin.

  • Password—Enter the admin user password and then confirm it.

The installer application tests the network configuration parameters entered and installs the software if the parameters entered are correct.

Step 4

Enter the following post-installation parameters:

  • High Availability Role Selection—Enter yes at the prompt if you want this installed server to serve as the secondary server in a high availability implementation. You will be prompted to provide an authentication key to be used for high availability registration. If you enter no at the prompt, the server will act as the primary server (standalone) and the installation will proceed with the following prompts:

  • Advance Security option— You will be prompted for accessing root shell. Enter Yes at the prompt to enable root shell access. Enter No to disable root shell access.

  • Web Interface Root Password—Enter and confirm the password used for the default root administrator. This is the account used to log in to the Prime Infrastructure web user interface for the first time and set up other user accounts.

Step 5

Select Yes to proceed with the installation, or No to re-enter high availability options.

When the installation is complete, the appliance reboots and login prompt appears.

Step 6

Login to the virtual machine using the admin username and password that you specified in Step 4.

Step 7

Run ncs status to verify the all the processes have restarted.

See the section Check Prime Infrastructure Server Status in the latest Cisco Prime Infrastructure Administrator Guide for more information.

Login and launch the Prime Infrastructure web interface after the installation is complete.


Modify VM Resource Allocation Using Hyper-V Manager

Use the following steps to make changes to the virtual appliance RAM, CPU or disk space resource allocations.

Be sure to back up the Prime Infrastructure server before attempting these types of changes. For details, see the chapter Backup and Restore in the latest Cisco Prime Infrastructure Administrator Guide .

The Compliance Services will not work if you expand the RAM, CPU or disk space resource allocations after installation.


Tip

For better performance: If you are changing RAM and CPU resource allocations for the virtual machine on which you run Prime Infrastructure, and you have more than one virtual machine running on the same hardware, you may also want to change your RAM and CPU resource reservations using the Hyper-V Manager.


Procedure


Step 1

Login to the Windows 2016 or Windows 10 client and launch Hyper-V Manager.

Step 2

Right click the virtual appliance, then click Shutdown.

Step 3

Right-click the virtual appliance, then click Settings.

Step 4

To change the RAM allocation, select Memory and change the Memory Size as needed. Then click OK.

Step 5

To change the CPU allocation, select Processors and select the Number of Virtual Processors.

Step 6

To add a new disk, choose IDE Controller 0(you cannot expand the space of the existing disk):

  1. Select Hard Drive, and click Add.

  2. Click New in the New Virtual Hard Disk Wizard screen.

  3. Click Next on the Before You Begin screen.

  4. Choose Disk Format > VHDX, then click Next.

  5. Choose Disk Type > Fixed Size, then click Next.

  6. Enter the Name and specify a Location of the new virtual disk, then click Next.

    The name of the hard disk should not have any spaces.

  7. Choose Configure Disk > Create a new blank virtual hard disk, and enter the disk size to match one of the VM sizes as described in the latest Cisco Prime Infrastructure Quick Start Guide .

  8. Choose Summary, check the details entered by you, then click Finish.

Step 7

Click Apply, then OK.

Step 8

Right click the virtual appliance, then Start to restart the appliance.

The server takes approximately 10 to 20 minutes to restart. The HDD will be expanded as per the new configuration on restarting the virtual appliance.


Upgrade from Previous Releases of Cisco Prime Infrastructure

You can upgrade to Prime Infrastructure 3.6 from the following versions:

  • Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.5 update 2
  • Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.5 update 1
  • Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.5
  • Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.4.1 update 2
  • Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.4.1 update 1
  • Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.4.1
  • Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.4

See the latest Cisco Prime Infrastructure Quick Start Guide for more information.

Migrate from Previous Releases of Cisco Prime Infrastructure

You can restore back up only on Prime Infrastructure 3.6 from the following versions:

  • Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.5 update 2
  • Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.5 update 1
  • Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.5
  • Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.4.1 update 2
  • Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.4.1 update 1
  • Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.4.1
  • Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.4

If you are running multiple previous releases of Prime Infrastructure (for example, you are running version 3.5), you must select one version from which to restore data.

See the section Before You Migrate Your Data in the latest Cisco Prime Infrastructure Quick Start Guide before you restore your data from Prime Infrastructure 3.4.x or 3.5.x to your newly installed Prime Infrastructure 3.6 server.