Cisco Cisco Data Center Network Manager 5.2 Getting Started Guide

At-A-Glance

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C45-645148-01  07/11

Ordering Options

Cisco DCNM is available with multiple licensing options for a wide range of data center 
deployments (Figure 2). Cisco DCNM can be licensed for SAN (Cisco DCNM for SAN) 
and LAN (Cisco DCNM for LAN) environments separately. An important change in the 
licensing model with Cisco DCNM (compared to Cisco Fabric Manager) is that licenses 
are hosted on the management server and not the switch. All currently installed Cisco 
FMS licenses will be automatically retained and supported by Cisco DCNM 5.2 (see 
the Q&A document at 

http://www.cisco.com/go/dcnm

)

Furthermore, two types of Cisco DCNM for SAN and DCNM for LAN licenses are 
available: Essentials Edition and Advanced Edition. Cisco DCNM for SAN Essentials 
Edition is included with every Cisco MDS 9000 Family hardware purchase at no charge 
and can be downloaded from 

http://www.cisco.com/go/dcnm

. Cisco DCNM for LAN 

Essentials Edition is included with every Cisco Nexus Family hardware purchase at no 
charge and can be downloaded from 

http://www.cisco.com/go/dcnm

. 

Cisco DCNM for SAN Advanced Edition adds capabilities such as performance 
monitoring and trending, virtual machine–aware path analysis, event forwarding, 
and federation across multiple data centers and can be licensed using specific part 
numbers (see the data sheet at 

http://www.cisco.com/go/dcnm

). 

Figure 2  Cisco DCNM Licensing Options

Cisco DCNM

for SAN

Free. Discovery, Configuration,
Fault and Topology

$$. Dashboards, VMpath,
Performance trending and FCoE

•  Cisco Fabric Manager → Cisco DCNM for SAN Essentials

*  Cisco FMS → Cisco DCNM for SAN Advanced

Free. Cisco Nexus 7000: Basic features
Cisco Nexus 1000, 2000, 4000, 5000 
series: All features

$$. Cisco Nexus 1000, 2000, 4000, 5000,
7000 series: All features

Cisco DCNM for SAN

Cisco DCNM for SAN

Cisco DCNM (converged)

One SW Package

Cisco DCNM

for LAN

Cisco DCNM for LAN

Cisco DCNM for LAN

Cisco DCNM for LAN Advanced Edition adds capabilities such as configuration 
management, image management, virtual device contexts (VDCs), and Cisco 
FabricPath and can be licensed using specific part numbers (see the data sheet at 

Benefits of Cisco DCNM

Cisco DCNM is the recommended solution for managing Cisco data center networking 
(SAN and LAN) infrastructure. The main benefits of using Cisco DCNM to operate and 
manage a virtualized data center are: 

•  Simplified operational management of virtualized data centers

 

- Proactive monitoring and problem diagnosis; less time needed to troubleshoot 

problems

 

- Performance and capacity monitoring and trending for SAN and LAN 

infrastructure

 

- VMpath analytics and troubleshooting

•  Simplified deployment of innovative Cisco NX-OS features

 

- Easy-to-use provisioning capabilities for technologies such as virtual PortChannel 

(vPC), VDC, Cisco FabricPath, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), zoning, and 
virtual SANs (VSANs)

 

- Template-based configuration capabilities for efficient rollout of new technologies

For More Information

For more information about the Cisco DCNM software, send an email to  

, visit the product homepage at 

www.cisco.com/go/dcnm

, 

or contact your local account representative.