Cisco Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.0 White Paper

 

 

© 2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. 

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The size of the secondary server must be larger than or equal to that of the primary server; for example, if the 

primary Cisco Prime Infrastructure server is the Express Plus OVA, then the secondary Cisco Prime Infrastructure 

server must be the Express Plus or larger. 

The primary and secondary server cannot be a mix of a physical and a virtual appliance. For example, if the 
primary Cisco Prime Infrastructure server is a virtual appliance, the secondary server can’t be a physical appliance. 

Secondary server should be a virtual appliance with same or large OVA. 

Customers must be running the same version of Cisco Prime Infrastructure and should be at the same patch level 

on both the primary and secondary Cisco Prime Infrastructure servers. 

The Cisco Prime Infrastructure HA feature is transparent to the wireless controller, that is, there is no software 

version requirement for the Cisco Wireless LAN Controller (WLC), access points (APs), and the Cisco Mobility 

Services Engine (MSE). 

An RTU (right-to-use) license is required to deploy Cisco Prime Infrastructure in HA implementation. Only one 

Cisco Prime Infrastructure server license needs to be purchased. There is no need to purchase a license for the 

secondary Cisco Prime Infrastructure server. The secondary server will use the license from the primary when a 

failover occurs. The same Cisco Prime Infrastructure license file resides on both the primary and secondary Cisco 

Prime Infrastructure servers. The license file is only active on one system at any given point in time. 

Cisco Prime Infrastructure HA can also be deployed with geographic separation of the primary and secondary 

servers. This type of deployment is also known as disaster recovery or geographic redundancy. 

There are two HA modes: failover and failback. After initial deployment of Cisco Prime Infrastructure 

– HA, the 

entire configuration of the primary Cisco Prime Infrastructure server is replicated to the host of the secondary Cisco 

Prime Infrastructure server. During normal operation (that is, when the primary Cisco Prime Infrastructure server is 

operational), the database and application data files from the primary server are replicated to the secondary Cisco 

Prime Infrastructure server. Replication frequency is 11 seconds (for real

‐time files) and 500 seconds (for batch 

files). 

Failover is the process of activating (Automatically or manually) the secondary server in response to a detected 

failure on the primary server. Health Monitor (HM) detects failure conditions using the heartbeat messages that the 

two servers exchange. If the primary server is not responsive to three consecutive heartbeat messages from the 

secondary, it is considered to have failed. During the health check, HM also checks the application process status 

and database health; if there is no proper response to these checks, these are also treated as having failed.