Cisco Prime Provisioning Documentation Overview, 6.8

Cisco Prime Provisioning 6.8
Documentation Overview

---

This document is a road map that summarizes the steps required to use Prime Provisioning and provides a suggested reading order for the Cisco Prime Provisioning 6.8 documentation set.

Cisco Prime Provisioning 6.8 is a follow-on release to Cisco Prime Provisioning 6.7, Cisco Prime Provisioning 6.7.1 and Cisco Prime Provisioning 6.7.2

Details of added, changed, and dropped functionality are provided in the Cisco Prime Provisioning Release Notes 6.8.

Note All documentation might be upgraded over time. All upgraded documentation will be available at the same URLs specified in this document.

Note Prime Provisioning can be used as a standalone product or as part of the Cisco Prime Carrier Management suite. When installed as part of the suite, you can launch Prime Provisioning from the Prime Central portal as well as from the right-click menu on devices in Prime Network. For more information about Prime Central, see the documentation for Cisco Prime Central 1.5.1.

Cisco Prime Provisioning is an intelligent network management application that helps reduce overall administration and management cost by providing automated resource management and rapid profile-based provisioning capabilities. Prime Provisioning enables fast deployment and time to market of Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) and Carrier Ethernet technologies. In addition, the Prime Provisioning Traffic Engineering Management application is Cisco's exclusive planning and provisioning application for Cisco MPLS Traffic Engineering (MPLS-TE)-enabled routers. Cisco Prime Provisioning also leverages Cisco Prime Network to manage MPLS Transport Profile (MPLS TP) network topologies and offers RAN Backhaul capabilities via ATM and Expand to Time Division Multiplexing and Circuit Emulation (TDM-CEM) services.

The primary applications in Prime Provisioning include:

• Carrier Ethernet Management
• Radio Access Network (RAN) Backhaul Management
• Layer 3 Virtual Private Network (Layer 3 VPN) Management
• MPLS Transport Profile (MPLS TP) Management
• MPLS Traffic Engineering (MPLS TE) Management

These applications and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are all distributed on one product DVD.

Getting Started with Prime Provisioning

This section explains how to get started using the Prime Provisioning 6.8 product. Please follow the steps in the specified order.

Step 1 You can access the entire documentation set for Prime Provisioning 6.8 here.

From here you can navigate to all the Prime Provisioning 6.8 documentation.

Step 2 Read the Cisco Prime Provisioning Release Notes 6.8.

This document gives you information about this specific Prime Provisioning 6.8 release (for example, new and changed information and known problems in the release).

Step 3 Check for needed device and platform support in the sortable Cisco Prime Provisioning Supported Devices spreadsheet.

Step 4 Locate the DVD for the Prime Provisioning 6.8 product in the product box, or, if you have ordered eDelivery, use the download instructions provided by e-mail and then proceed with your installation.

Information about the system recommendations, how to install and log into Prime Provisioning, setting up an Oracle database (optional), backing up and restoring the Prime Provisioning repository, and setting up a standby system is available in the Cisco Prime Provisioning Installation Guide 6.8.

Step 5 Upon completing your installation, you start and log into Prime Provisioning. Then you must enter the license key(s) for newly purchased components or upgrades, which are obtained by e-mailing isc-licensing.

Information about entering license information is found in the chapter, “Installing and Logging Into Prime Provisioning”, in the Cisco Prime Provisioning Installation Guide 6.8.

Third party and open source copyright information is found in the Cisco Prime Provisioning Open Source 6.8.

Step 6 Next you configure Prime Provisioning to know about the preconfiguration information, such as devices, providers, customers, and so on, that Prime Provisioning is going to manage and their roles. The procedure for installing license keys and information about setting up users and user roles is described in the Cisco Prime Provisioning 6.8 Administration Guide.

Any relevant post-installation preconfiguration information is explained in the Cisco Prime Provisioning User Guide 6.8 at the beginning of each Prime Provisioning service chapter. How to create the associated elements and set up basic services in Prime Provisioning is explained in the chapter “Before Setting Up Prime Provisioning”.

Step 7 Next you configure Prime Provisioning to set up the users and Role Based Access Control (RBAC) roles.

How to set up the users and RBAC roles is explained in the chapter “Administration Tasks” in the Cisco Prime Provisioning User Guide 6.8 :

Step 8 The next part of the documentation that you should refer is the specific provisioning documentation that applies to your network.

This information is found in the Cisco Prime Provisioning User Guide 6.8 :

• Managing Ethernet Virtual Circuit (EVC) Services

This chapter describes Ethernet Virtual Circuit (EVC) services and how to provision them using access technology Ethernet (Carrier Ethernet) on Layer 2 and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) cores as well as Hierarchical Virtual Private LAN Services (H-VPLS).

• Managing TDM-CEM Services (RAN Backhaul)

This chapter describes how to set up radio access network (RAN) backhaul transport services using the TDM-CEM technology. RAN backhaul extends the IP network from the core to the edge by preparing all RAN backhaul traffic for transport over pseudowires or carrier-metro Ethernet.

• Managing ATM Services (RAN Backhaul)
• Similar to the ATM service, this chapter describes how to set up radio access network (RAN) backhaul transport services using ATM technology.
• Managing MPLS VPN Services

This part of the user guide explains the tasks and step-by-step procedures you need to perform to set up the Layer 3 VPN network infrastructure in Prime Provisioning and deploy the Layer 3 VPN service on the network.

• Managing MPLS Transport Profile Services

This part of the user guide provides information for MPLS Transport Profile (TP) technologies, MPLS-TP is the technology that enables MPLS to be deployed in a transport network and operated in a similar manner to existing transport technologies.

• Managing MPLS Traffic Engineering Services

This part of the user guide explains how to use Traffic Engineering Management (TEM), which is a tool for managing MPLS Traffic Engineering (TE) primary and backup tunnels for the purpose of offering Service Level Agreement (SLA) guarantees for your network traffic.

Step 9 For more information about the API feature set, see the following documents:

• Cisco Prime Provisioning API Programmer Guide 6.8 :

This programmer guide provides information about the Prime Provisioning API components and processes that allow you to use operations support system (OSS) client programs to connect to the Prime Provisioning system.

• Cisco Prime Provisioning API Programmer Reference 6.8 :

This programmer reference provides XML examples for the Prime Provisioning 6.8 APIs.

Obtaining Documentation, Obtaining Support, and Security Guidelines

For information on obtaining documentation, using the Cisco Bug Search Tool (BST), submitting a service request, and gathering additional information, see What’s New in Cisco Product Documentation.

To receive new and revised Cisco technical content directly to your desktop, you can subscribe to the  What’s New in Cisco Product Documentation RSS feed. The RSS feeds are a free service.