Cisco Prime Infrastructure Vs Cisco DNA Center

Today I am going to talk about the difference between Cisco Prime Infrastructure and Cisco DNA Center. The purpose of the both tools are same but there are lot of enhancements in Cisco DNA Center while Cisco Prime is an traditional tool to manage Cisco Devices in Campus environment. 

Fig 1.1- Basic Campus Design

The purpose of the Cisco Prime and Cisco DNA Center is same but now Cisco Categorized the devices in different portfolios while managing various Cisco devices. You can manage Cisco Catalyst switches, Cisco Routers, Cisco Nexus devices, Cisco Wireless Controllers and Cisco Access points with Cisco Prime Infrastructure but with Cisco DNA Center you can manage Cisco Catalyst Switches, Cisco Routers, Cisco Wireless controllers and Cisco Access points with sensors as well. 

So no for Cisco Nexus devices with Cisco DNA center. The Answer is Cisco DNA Center is not the tool to manage Cisco Nexus devices as we said Cisco now categorized the devices based on the portfolio like Campus, Datacenter environment. Cisco Nexus devices are managed through the other tool which is named as DCNM (if using the NS-OX images) and APIC(if using Cisco ACI environment).

Cisco Prime Infrastructure
Cisco Prime Infrastructure is a bundled solution for complete wired and wireless lifecycle management. With Cisco Prime Infrastructure you can Converged management for ease of monitoring, troubleshooting, and reporting. You can have improved configuration, change, and compliance management for lower TCO.

Cisco Prime for Enterprise is an innovative strategy and portfolio of management products that empower IT departments to more effectively manage their networks and the services they deliver. Cisco Prime simplifies network management, improves operations efficiency, reduces errors, and makes the delivery of network services more predictable.

Cisco DNA Center
Cisco DNA Center is a complete management and control platform for your network, designed, created, and implemented by Cisco. This single, extensible software platform includes integrated tools for network management, automation, virtualization, analytics and assurance, security, and Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity and can also interface with your business-critical tools. 

Until now, functionality this complete could be achieved only through the purchase and operation of multiple third-party software tools.

Cisco DNA Center offers a single dashboard for every core function in your network. With this platform, IT can become more nimble and respond to changes and challenges faster and more intelligently.

Cisco DNA Center is the network management system, foundational controller, and analytics platform at the heart of Cisco’s intent-based network. Beyond device management and configuration

Let's talk about the difference between Cisco Prime Infrastructure and Cisco DNA Center now 

Difference between Cisco Prime Infrastructure and Cisco DNA Center

Configuration:
Cisco Prime: template
Cisco DNA C: Profiles and templates

As earlier we used Cisco Prime to push the configuration to the devices. The provisioning is achieved using template and Configuration groups while when migrate to Cisco DNA Center the same is achieved by Service based network level provisioning via profiles and policy abstraction. We can also used the template based provisioning in Cisco DNA Center. The Template language used in Cisco Prime is Velocity while in Cisco DNA C template used can be Velocity (VTL) or Jinja

Fig 1.2- Configuration via Prime and DNA C

Config Config Templates are mostly customer provided and CLI pushed via management console in Cisco Prime. While in Cisco DNA Center it uses the abstract services normalized across device types and pushes Cisco CVD best practices.

In Cisco Prime manual failure recovery is via another CLI template. In Cisco DNA C it has capability to roll back.

In Cisco Prime Day 0 and Day N updates via multiple CLI template or composite templates while in Cisco DNA C, Day 0 is basically pushed via PNP profile with settings and profiles at site/regional level. 

Image Upgrade:
Cisco Prime: Device Based
Cisco DNA C: Intent Based

I will not explain this as the below picture will clarify the exact difference how Cisco Prime and Cisco DNA Center is doing the SWIM.

Fig 1.3- SWIM- Cisco Prime and DNA C

Monitoring:
Cisco Prime: SNMP Based
Cisco DNA C: Streaming Telemetry and SNMP

I will not explain this as the below picture will clarify the exact difference how Cisco Prime and Cisco DNA Center is doing the Monitoring.

Fig 1.4- SNMP and Streaming Telemetry

Troubleshooting:
Cisco Prime: KPI Driven
Cisco DNA C: Health and Analytics Driven

I will not explain this as the below picture will clarify the exact difference how Cisco Prime and Cisco DNA Center is doing the troubleshooting

Fig 1.5- troubleshooting with Cisco Prime and DNA C

Alerting:
Cisco Prime: Alarms
Cisco DNA C: Issue Insights

I will not explain this as the below picture will clarify the exact difference how Cisco Prime and Cisco DNA Center is doing the alerting.

Fig 1.6- Alerting with Cisco Prime and DNA C

So If you see the above all diagrams the way Cisco Prime Infrastructure is managing the devices is actually a traditional way and Cisco DNA  Center is managing using intent based networking which is also called as Next Generation networking.