Likelihood to Recommend Although Cisco Prime [LAN Management Solution] is a nice tool and no other 4rd party tools can match its native monitoring and managing capabilities still i have given less rating and that's because it is only for Cisco vendor Devices. Hence if you have only Cisco infrastructure then go for it or else look for another 4rd party tool in conjunction with Cisco prime.
Read full review From a packet tracing standpoint, it was easy to setup and analyze an issue we were having with eigrp errors between 2 data centers. Took a few minutes to stand up on both sides and compare the traffic to determine hellos weren't being sent. On the other spectrum, had it had the analytics of such products as Extrahop, it could have recognized and alerted us of an internal DNS attack we had.
Read full review Pros Wireless file detection and planning mode has helped us expand into new areas of our buildings. Alerting is detailed when we have issues with hardwired and wireless devices, and Rogue Access Points are easily identifiable. Cisco equipment information is much more detailed than other management products' SNMP queries and is an excellent tool for troubleshooting end-device connectivity issues. Our KPI reporting for senior management and centralized management of our WIPS 'Wireless Intrusion Prevention' setup have both benefited significantly from the detailed reporting capabilities. Read full review Network QOS Assessment, and recommendations, and point-and-click remediation Network L2/L3 Assessment, and recommendations, and point-and-click remediation Network Security Assessment, and recommendations, and point-and-click remediation Read full review Cons Maps. One thing that I miss is the fact that you can't see both wired and wireless equipment in the same topology map. For visualization and troubleshooting purposes, that would help a lot, and I honestly don' t think it's that much harder to implement. I'd love to see an option to show 'live dashboards,' maps, or other visual tools to publish in a NOC room, or even just to broadcast in a big monitor to allow multiple workmates to check that information. Again, I don't think that would be too hard to implement. I remember a similar feature was available in the first versions of the product, way back in the 90's (yes, I'm that old :-) ) Sometimes, depending on what screen you are, the solution can be a little slow. I'm not saying the whole system is slow, but sometimes that slowness can bother a little. Talking about areas for improvement, one area I think can be improved is the upgrade process. Even for not so large deployments, it can take a lot of time. Having this time decreased would be the right thing to do. Read full review I use it primarily as a monitoring tool from a security standpoint, so one complaint is that the filter creation process takes a little time to learn. In the digital days of printing less, I do still need to print network diagrams for compliance documentation and some of the larger network diagrams documents do not print easily. I wish the network connection lines were easier to see. They are typically very light and you have to drill down to see them more clearly. Read full review Support Rating We are very happy using Cisco Prime LAN Management Solution for the following reason: 1- Ease of use with the GUI. 2- Very well organized dashboard which can view many statistics on your devices. 3- Customized dashboard for different views ( for technical team and executives ) 4- Schedule configuration templates to use whenever we need on whatever device we want.
Read full review Can't really rate this, we never had to call support. The product wasn't complicated to setup and learn. We have a high level of network knowledge so the product was self-explanatory.
Read full review Alternatives Considered There are various 3rd party tools available in the market which not only supports monitoring of cisco devices but also supports non-cisco devices, even with these capabilities in these 3rd party tools Cisco Prime has maintained a uniqueness in its products being the native tool from Cisco. The uniqueness is about product supportability for given devices and some of the edge features such as configuration management, detailed heatmaps etc
Read full review There is not any other product that does exactly what LiveAction does. Some come about halfway close, like scrutinizer by Plixer. However, there is a gap with that product as it doesn't give proper quality of service recommendations, or to update l2/l3 configs to head off problems. Plixer's scrutinizer product costs about the same. It was a no-brainer to pick LiveAction.
Read full review Return on Investment It has helped us with our quarterly wireless security testing by pinpointing the location of non-approved access points vs. hunting for them via signal strength. Saves time by helping to identify network health issues before they become a definitive problem causing downtime. With errors detected early, we have noticed our wi-fi network is much more stable thus freeing up our engineer's time elsewhere. Read full review Real time insight to network issues whether security related or not. Great reporting features for executives. Read full review ScreenShots