Installation Overview

This chapter contains the following sections:

Overview

This guide describes how to install Cisco Prime Network Registrar 11.2 on Linux operating system. You can also see the following documents for important information about configuring and managing Cisco Prime Network Registrar:

  • For configuration and management procedures for Cisco Prime Network Registrar, see the Cisco Prime Network Registrar 11.2 Administration Guide.

  • For details about commands available through the Command Line Interface (CLI), see the Cisco Prime Network Registrar 11.2 CLI Reference Guide.

About Cisco Prime Network Registrar

Cisco Prime Network Registrar is a network server suite that automates managing enterprise IP addresses. It provides a stable infrastructure that increases address assignment reliability and efficiency. It includes (refer the below figure).

  • Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server

  • Domain Name System (DNS) server

  • Caching Domain Name System (CDNS) server

  • Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) server

  • Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) server

You can control these servers by using the Cisco Prime Network Registrar web-based user interface (web UI) or the CLI. These user interfaces can also control server clusters that run on different platforms.

You can install Cisco Prime Network Registrar in either local or regional mode:

  • Local mode is used for managing local cluster protocol servers.

  • Regional mode is used for managing multiple local clusters through a central management model.

A regional cluster is required for licensing and can be used to centrally manage local cluster servers and their address spaces. The regional administrator can perform the following operations:

  • Manage licenses for Cisco Prime Network Registrar. An installation must have at least one regional cluster for license management purposes.

  • Push and pull configuration data to and from the local DNS and DHCP servers.

  • Obtain DHCP utilization and IP lease history data from the local clusters.

    Figure 1. Cisco Prime Network Registrar User Interfaces and the Server Cluster

Sensitive Data Exposure

Most of the data that Cisco Prime Network Registrar deals with is sent over unencrypted networks (especially the last hop to client devices), and is designed by its nature to be shared and available to other devices on the network (either locally or across the Internet).

If you consider the data (or portions of it) that Cisco Prime Network Registrar has as sensitive, we highly recommend you to encrypt your disks using the Linux support for disk based encryption. This will help protect the data once the disks leave controlled space (that is, reach end of life, when it not possible to erase it properly, or is stolen). You also need to consider how to protect any backups, or other places you may move the data.