Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager
Simplify Video Collaboration Management with End-to-End Visualization

Overview:

Cisco Prime™ Collaboration Manager is a comprehensive video service assurance and management system with a set of powerful monitoring, troubleshooting, and reporting capabilities that help ensure end users receive a consistent, high-quality video collaboration experience. Providing superior levels of video quality and availability to users can be an extremely challenging task for service and network operators. Collaboration Manager aids operators in delivering a first-rate end-user experience by:

• Visualizing and monitoring video collaboration sessions in real time, helping provide timely support to end users when issues arise
• Significantly reducing operational costs by dramatically speeding the time required to pinpoint issues that affect service
• Providing detailed video flow path analysis to rapidly isolate areas of service degradation in the session path, including an increased level of visibility if accessing Cisco medianet-enabled networks
• Helping to enable effective management of key assets through simplified diagnostic and utilization reports and at-a-glance executive summaries

About Cisco Prime

Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager is a product in the Cisco Prime network management portfolio.

The Cisco Prime portfolio of enterprise and service provider management offerings supports integrated lifecycle management of Cisco architectures and technologies based on a service-centered framework. Built on an intuitive workflow-oriented user experience, Cisco Prime products help increase IT productivity and reduce operational costs through innovative management solutions for network services, infrastructure, and endpoints.

Simplified Video Collaboration Management with End-to-End Visualization

Improve Operational Efficiencies with Rapid Problem Resolution
Video collaboration service operators need to manage large service deployments and monitor many concurrent sessions. Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager provides operators with the ability to visualize the service status and topology of all sessions currently in progress. Operators can quickly pinpoint critical sessions as well as locate and address sessions with problems (Figure 1). This built-in visibility helps operators optimize video delivery and reduce operational costs across the organization.

Figure 1. Session Monitoring Dashboard

End-to-End Visibility and Fault Isolation for Improved Troubleshooting
Video collaboration service operators need to quickly isolate the source of any service degradation in the network for all point-to-point and multipoint video sessions in an enterprise. Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager provides a detailed analysis of the end-to-end media path, including specifics about endpoint, service infrastructure, and network-related issues. Its ability to provide detailed visibility into the media path and critical fault and performance statistics facilitates faster isolation and resolution of video problems (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Media Path Visualization

Integrated Troubleshooting with Cisco Medianet
In conjunction with Cisco medianet Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager delivers richer end-to-end information that helps operators more easily identify and isolate video issues. Collaboration Manager uses Cisco medianet to provide enhanced path computation, statistics collection, and synthetic traffic generation.

When network devices are medianet-enabled, Collaboration Manager provides:

• Deeper, flow-related information along the video path using Mediatrace (Figure 3)
• Snapshot views of all traffic at network hot spots using Performance Monitor
• The ability to initiate synthetic video traffic from network devices using the IP service-level agreement (IP SLA) video operations to assess video performance on a network

Figure 3. Network Flow-Based Information Using Mediatrace

Simplified Reports and Executive Summaries
Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager 1.2 provides simple predefined reports as well as at-a-glance executive summaries (Figure 4) that help enable service administrators quickly and easily to view utilization and problem trends as well as critical outages in their video collaboration deployments. In 1.2, these reports can be scheduled, produced in either comma-separated value (CSV) or PDF format, and emailed automatically to administrators. These reports help business decision makers allocate video collaboration resources successfully at ideal locations and increase return on investment (ROI). In addition, being able to instantly view service degradation and problem trends, service operators can help ensure higher system uptime and greater end-user experience.

Figure 4. Collaboration Manager Landing Page Displaying Executive Summaries

Features and Benefits:

Feature	Function	Benefit
End-to-end service monitoring	Real-time visualization of in-progress video collaboration sessions Critical fault and performance metrics for sessions at endpoint and network level Extensive alarming with customizable thresholds and severity levels at the global and device level Configurable notification of service-affecting outages	Significantly reduces operational costs by speeding time required to pinpoint service-affecting issues Helps in providing proactive and timely support to end users when problems arise Allows for granular management of specific alarm detection and notification
Real-time service troubleshooting and diagnostics	End-to-end detailed video flow path visualization and identification of hot spots Deeper visibility into flow-related statistics and additional network traffic across Cisco medianet-enabled networks	Dramatically speeds time to detect and resolve problems by pinpointing service degradation along the session path Simplifies troubleshooting, reducing time to identify root causes that affect video end-user experience
Service readiness assessment with Cisco medianet	Initiate synthetic video traffic generation between endpoints using Cisco medianet-enabled routers and switches End-to-end video flow path analyses, including isolation of any service degradations	Proactively discovers issues to quickly fix problems before they affect end users Eases validation of network readiness prior to new video endpoint deployments
Executive summaries	Summary of business-affecting metrics (utilization, problem areas) At-a-glance status of health and utilization of all system resources Daily/weekly/monthly views Exportable to CSV files	Facilitates optimal resource allocation by displaying trends in room and endpoint model utilization Helps ensure higher system uptime through instant visibility of any system component degradation
Simplified out-of-the box reports	Comprehensive session and utilization data Statistical and diagnostic information, down to media flow level All reports exportable to CSV files, facilitating custom report creation	Increases ROI by providing endpoint-specific utilization data Helps identify utilization and problem trends through comprehensive endpoint and session reports
Centralized inventory of video infrastructure	Discovery and inventory of all deployed endpoints and service infrastructure devices Custom and out-of-the-box grouping of inventory objects for use in monitoring and reporting Centralized database contains endpoint peripheral information (software and firmware versions, serial and model numbers) Complete device information exportable to CSV file	Provides fast and easy access to comprehensive inventory details Reduces operations resources needed to verify device upgrades quickly and accurately

 

Service and Network Infrastructure Device Support Requirements:

Device Type	Devices	Software Version
Service Infrastructure
Cisco TelePresence System endpoints	TX9000 TX9200 CTS 500 Series CTS 1000 CTS 1100 CTS 1300 Series CTS 3000 Series CTS 3200 Series	1.7 or later
Cisco Telepresence System EX/Profile/Integrator C/QuickSet series endpoints	E20 EX60 EX90 C20 QuickSet SX20 C40 Series C60 Series C90 Series Profile 42 Profile Dual 52 and Profile 52 Profile Dual 65 and Profile 65 MXP 150 MXP 1000 MXP 1500 MXP 1700 MXP 3000 MXP 6000	TC 4.1 or later
Cisco Personal endpoints	Cisco CIUS 89xx/99xx IP Phones Jabber Video (formerly Movi)	9.2 or later 4.2
Third-party endpoints	Polycom HDX 6000, 7000, 8000, 9000 Polycom VSX 5000, 7000, 8000	HDX 3.0
Call processors	Cisco Unified Communications Manager Cisco Video Communication Server (VCS)	System version: 8.5 or later System version: x6.0 or later
Application managers	Cisco TelePresence Manager Cisco TelePresence Management Suite (TMS)	1.7 or later 13.1 or later
Conferencing devices	Cisco TelePresence Multipoint Switch Cisco TelePresence Server MCU 4500 MCU 4200 MSE 8510 MSE 8710	1.7 or later 2.1 or later 4.1 or later 4.1 or later 4.1 or later 2.1 or later
Network Infrastructure
Routers	1800, 2800, 3800 1900, 2900, 3900 ASR 1000 7200, 7400, 7600	ISRG1 Cisco IOS Software 15.1(3)T or later ISRG2 Cisco IOS Software 15.1(3)T, 15.1(4)M, 15.2(1)T, and 15.2(2)T Please see http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/routers/ps10536/data_sheet_c78-612429.html
Switches	Catalyst 2000 Catalyst 3000 Catalyst 4000 Catalyst 6000	Cisco IOS Software 12.2 or later Please see http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/routers/ps10536/data_sheet_c78-612429.html

System Requirements:

Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager 1.2 is available as a virtual appliance. A single downloadable open virtual appliance (OVA) image, which contains the Collaboration Manager virtual machine (VM), is provided for installation onto a VMware server with a virtual machine environment matching or exceeding the virtual machine template described below.

A virtual machine template defines the configuration of the virtual machine that includes CPU, memory, disk, and network resources. The configuration of a Collaboration Manager virtual machine must match or exceed the supported virtual machine template defined in Table.

Virtual Machine Templates
VM Template	vCPU	vMemory	vDisk	vNIC
Up to 1000 endpoints	4	8 GB	90 GB	1 GB NIC
More than 1000 endpoints	4	16 GB	90 GB	1 GB NIC

Table outlines the minimum system requirements for the VMware server onto which the Collaboration Manager OVA image will be installed.

System Requirements: Server
Description	Specifications
Hardware	All the hardware components such as servers, CPU, storage, and Storage Area Network (SAN) models should be compatible with the VMware comprehensive compatibility guides posted at http://www.vmware.com. Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS™) is recommended, but other servers can also be used.
Software (hypervisor)	VMware ESXi 4.1 or 5.0

Table outlines the minimum system requirements for client systems.

System Requirements: Client
Description	Specifications
Browser	Mozilla Firefox 6 to 11 Internet Explorer 8.0, 9.0
Flash Plug-in	Adobe Flash Player 10x
Resolution	1024 x 768 minimum

Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager licensing is based on the scale of Cisco Video deployment and allows customers to add individual device type licenses as they grow their video deployment. For specific details, contact your local Cisco account representative.

Table presents the specifications for each license type based on the variables described below.

Endpoint Device Categories
List of Highend Multi-codec Endpoints	List of Highend Single-codec Endpoints	List of Midrange Endpoints	List of Mass Endpoints
ciscoTX9200 ciscoCTS3200 ciscoCTS3010 ciscoCTS3210 ciscoTX9000 ciscoCTS3000	ciscoCTS1300 ciscoCTS1400 ciscoCTS1100 ciscoProfile42-C60 ciscoProfile52 ciscoProfile52-6000MXP ciscoProfile52-Dual ciscoCTS1000 ciscoProfile65-Dual ciscoProfile42-C20 ciscoProfile65	ciscoMX300 ciscoC40 ciscoC20 ciscoEX90 ciscoMX200 ciscoC60 ciscoMXP1500 ciscoMXP6000 ciscoC90 ciscoCTS500 ciscoMXP3000 ciscoEX60 ciscoMXP1700 ciscoMXP150 ciscoMXP1000 ciscoSX20	ciscoE20 PHONE POLYCOM ciscoCius MOVI

Documentation:

Download the Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager Datasheet (PDF).