At-A-Glance
Cisco Prime Network Services Controller
Unified Network Management Solution
Consistent Adherence to Policies
Unifying network management is a major IT trend. Today IT teams make frequent
changes to the network infrastructure, which is more dynamic than ever. It now
consists of both virtual and physical service instances and serves cloud-based
environments.
Cisco Prime Network Services Controller uses security profiles for template-based
configuration. This approach significantly simplifies authoring, deployment, and
management of security policies, including dense multitenant environments. By
providing consistent, repeatable deployment and resource management, this solution
offers scalability while reducing errors.
The dynamic elements of next-generation data centers present IT with significant
challenges, including network security requirements, application dependencies,
and management complexities. Therefore, a unified approach is needed to manage
networks effectively in the current data-center context.
Cisco Prime™ Network Services Controller gives you a single solution to manage
virtual network infrastructure and automate processes. This solution addresses today’s
challenges because it supports standardization, consistent execution of policies, and
automation. It also provides reliability and speed, allowing staff to focus on optimizing
the network environment.
Transparent, Scalable, and Dependable
This Cisco® solution offers transparent, scalable network management of virtualized
data centers with a focus on automation and adherence to standards. Cisco Prime
Network Services Controller provides important capabilities that make administration
teams efficient.
It offers:
• Nondisruptive administration
• Consistent adherence to policies
• Effective management on the fly
Nondisruptive Administration
The solution provides visual and programmatic controls that allow nondisruptive
administration models and network management across a diverse range of
environments and hypervisors.
Efficient Management
Cisco Prime Network Services Controller implements an information-model
architecture in which each managed device is represented by the device’s objectinformation model. This helps enable the use of:
• Stateless managed devices: Security policies and configurations are abstracted and
used as a template against any virtual device type.
• Dynamic device allocation: Centralized resource management is used to pool
devices deployed in service or available for commissioning.
Management Scenarios
Uses for the controller can range from deploying hybrid clouds to securing a virtualized
data center:
• Network Security: Network security is becoming increasingly difficult to manage as
network infrastructure is increasingly virtualized. Prime Network Services Controller
automates and provisions network security configurations using the Cisco Virtual
Security Gateway (VSG), Cisco ASA 1000V firewall, and Cisco CSR 1000V Edge
Router.
• Hybrid-cloud deployment: Enterprises wishing to extend enterprise networks to
the public cloud can migrate virtual machines efficiently and with a high level of
security using the Cisco Prime Network Services Controller and Cisco Nexus 1000V
InterCloud. System administrators get the policy consistency and network visibility
that they require, while retaining control of the cloud environment as a transparent
extension of the enterprise data center.
• Virtual Services Integration: Prime Network Services Controller incorporates Cisco
VSG, CSR 1000V, and Citrix NetScaler VPX/1000V to drive services integration for
Cisco Dynamic Fabric automation to simplify physical and virtual server deployments.
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this URL: www.cisco.com/go/trademarks.
Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R)
At-A-Glance
Broad Coverage
Why Cisco?
Cisco Prime Network Services Controller provides broad coverage and supports the
following major technologies and vital management tasks:
In increasingly complex networking environments that cross private and public clouds,
the integration of Cisco Prime Network Services Controller and other Cisco services
(including Cisco Nexus 1000V, Cisco ASA 1000V, Cisco VSG, and Cisco CSR1000V)
provides new ways for organizations to build and benefit from secured hybrid-cloudbased services through a single, unified management model.
• Cisco Nexus 1000V Switches, Cisco Virtual Security Gateway (VSG), and Cisco ASA
1000V Cloud Firewall, Cisco Cloud Services Router 1000V, and Citrix NetScaler
VPX/1000V
• Virtual machine migration between private and public clouds to enable hybrid clouds
with Cisco Nexus 1000V InterCloud
• Multiple virtual machine managers, through their APIs, and multiple hypervisor
types through the controller’s tight integration with Cisco Nexus 1000V and virtual
supervisor modules
For More Information
Learn more about the Cisco Prime Network Services Controller
at: http://www.cisco.com/go/services-controller.
• Transparent operation management for smooth interaction with Cisco Intelligent
Automation for Cloud and other third-party management and orchestration tools
As shown in Figure 1, the extensible architecture of the Cisco Prime Network Services
Controller will support data centers over time with broad coverage that takes security
into consideration.
Figure 1. Cisco Prime Network Services Controller Extensible Architecture
CISCO AND THIRD-PARTY MANAGEMENT ECOSYSTEM
Operation
Management
Cisco Intelligent Automation
for Cloud
BMC CLM
Other
Cisco UCS Director
OpenStack
CloudStack
Hybrid
Cloud
Single API
IP Address
Management
Image
Management
Policy
Management
Service
Configuration
System
Administration
License
Management
Amazon
Capacity
Management
Service
Chaining
Config Archive
VM Lifecycle
Change Audit
Monitoring
Azure
Cisco Prime Network Services Controller
Performance
Management
Terremark
N1KV
InterCloud
VSG
(Zone-Based
Firewall)
ASA1000V
(Edge
Firewall)
CSR1000V
(L3 Router)
Third-Party
Device
(VPX)
MULTISERVICE
vSphere
HyperV
KVM
Xen
Multihypervisor
© 2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this URL: www.cisco.com/go/trademarks.
Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R)
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