Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued) vs. Progress WhatsUp Gold

Cisco Prime can monitor faults and performance, generate heat maps, manage device configuration, and alert. The tools that we find will help us identify wireless access points, network switches, and everything in between. It's simple to manage a dozen devices, but hundreds or thousands require a platform like Cisco LMS. Its bulk configuration and backup configuration features are crucial. We can also access dashboards that show admins and technicians the network's health at a glance.

Incentivized

[Progress WhatsUp Gold (formerly Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold)] is good for what it is. An inexpensive but accurate monitor for alerting on systems and services. However, it is time consuming to configure, The GUI leaves a lot to be desired and the formatting for txt alerts stinks (I just use it now as an alert to check my email to view the actual alert.)

Incentivized

• You can deploy from simple snippets of config to a whole template to multiple devices at the same time. That saves us a lot of time (remember that time is money) when we need to change some setting globally, like adjust a ACL or add new global policy. Doesn't matter how many models of the same equipment you have.
• The Network Topology map is also a great tool for troubleshooting. You can check several aspects of the topology, the connection between the equipment, the status of the connections and even check specific alarms related to that part of the topology (or map). Again, consider that in a multi site, global environment and you'll see the benefits.
• Inventory and firmware updates are also great tools inside the solution. You have check exactly what equipment is outdated and schedule an update with a couple of clicks. You can do that also in a batch, saving a lot of time (and money) and avoid to go handle the equipment one by one, sometimes even needing to have physical access to those equipment.

Incentivized

• Easy to install and manage.
• While it does require a whole server with IIS and a SQL db it is low impact on resources but still quick to respond.
• Great for quick notifications about a server going above a configured resource threshold. We don't have to look at every server's resource utilization individually anymore.
• Quick and easy to setup a service up or down notification.

Incentivized

• Prime can be be difficult to use in some cases where the UI falls short in doing things effeciently
• Prime maps can take quite a while to load with lots of APs
• Locations for certain key functions are sometimes buried away behind menus that don't pertain to it

Incentivized

• While it is easy to get up and running, I know I could utilize the software better if I had some formal training on it. There are a wealth of features available, but I don't have time to learn them all in depth.
• The training classes offered are very expensive. I'd love it if IPSwitch offered some kind of reasonably priced training options.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Not too much to support as it doesn't do that much.

Incentivized

Although there are many powerful tools available in the market such as Solarwinds, Micro Focus, CA Spectrum with advanced configuration options and customization options available still Cisco Prime [LAN Management Solution] is the preferred tool for following reasons - 1. If you have only Cisco Infrastructure then go for Cisco Prime Blindly. 2. Extensive information on network devices mapping layout. 3. Devices configuration management specially for wireless.

Incentivized

WhatsUp Gold gives you a much better in-depth analysis and understanding of both your network and endpoint devices but the emphasis should be laid more on report generation. WhatsUp Gold has the ability to generate a report (e.g device uptime, bandwidth utilization, device health etc) and track events that took place even as low as 5 minutes ago.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• As I mentioned earlier, the monitoring of the external environment and uptime is a necessity. An hour down is a 1% loss of revenue per day which may not sound like much but in a million dollar company, that 1% is a huge chunk.
• The backup configuration has been very handy in turn around time for failed equipment. I did have a homegrown way of backing up configurations but had to check daily and verify every backup. This becomes very time consuming and a waste of company time.
• Only negative is the mapping. In the Cisco world CDP is a great way to map connections and they don't seem to do it that way.

Incentivized