Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) vs. Cisco Software-Defined Access (SD-Access)

I feel that Cisco ACI is quite good at different architecture designs. You can have it as just a straight layer two network. You can have it like we have with a vast layer three network and I think just for the layer three network it has easen up the use. I think the use cases for layer three networking is better for ACI. If you just want to do the layer two, you can still use Cisco Nexus and so on and that should be almost simpler in some way.

Incentivized

It's well suited in our corporate offices, where all our business users resides and where we can control all their accesses. What doesn't really fit well is when we have our branch fronts, where all the software domain access features aren't utilized to its fullest, due to the fact that customers and users don't really need to have all the security features that SDA provides.

Incentivized

• So with the old one, we've had a secure zone, core zone, so we have special hardware specific for those zones, so security zones in our data center. This allows us to basically have the spine leaf and we could put any ports in any zone. So it allows a lot more, I'd say efficient use of equipment, being able to plug in things to whatever, and then program it to how you want it to work on.

Incentivized

• Automation, pushing template-based configuration to multiple devices in one push saves time and manpower.
• Assurance [helps trace] issues related to devices, clients, and provide the troubleshoot as [the] best practices.
• Segmentation, with the use of the SGT tags, we are able to achieve segmentation and micro-segmentation securely.

Incentivized

• I think something I've just went to a session with hyper fabric and the ideas that hyper fabric has. Keep it really simple because Cisco ACI is a complex system and adopt some of the ideas behind hyper fabric, bring it to ACI that will be really beneficial. So as I said, automation is a great thing, but it's still, you need to have the background and the really complex stuff that happens behind the scenes to leverage the value of that solution. And by adding more simplicity to it, I think that will be a great thing. And also integrating with other applications in terms of the automation.

Incentivized

• Documentation: Working in this solution I realized there were missing information details about the fusion device support for nexus.
• Fusion router: This roll in the fabric should be already integrated in the solution, right now it is configured manually.
• Bugs: Unfortunately the solution still present a lot of bugs, mainly in the controller.

Incentivized

Cisco ACI is doing exactly what was intended for it to do, that is support our next generation data centre, improve security, and increase resiliency. Migrating to another platform would be a waste of time, resource and energy, which could be better spent migrating more legacy applications into the Cisco ACI fabric.

Incentivized

Cisco ACI has changed the traditional data center model into a new era of automation and agility. The product was considerably easy to deploy met all the expectations. In terms of usability, ACI provides a unified interface for managing the whole infrastructure in one place which is the main benefit for users (admins)

Incentivized

It is difficult to start using the product due to its unfamiliar name and acronyms. ,The task should be accomplished in a specific order to ensure success

Incentivized

It allways works. If there are problems with links going down by accident (say someone accidentally unpatches something they shouldn't have), we rarely miss more then one packet over the link. Also, using VPCs we are able to upgrade the software on the switches without the attached EPs ever noticing.

Incentivized

I do not give it 10 because the platform evolves more and more every day in the data traffic of the datacenter. But the implementations that they carry out for different clients of the platform are very happy with the result of the same over time. Another point that you notice about the platform, despite its good performance, is the low use of energy used by this 24x7 on, it is a good fact to take into account for our environment.

Incentivized

Cisco provides users and partners with a multitude of data for you to consume. I think that the stuff in the public domain goes a long way to assisting you find any answers you may need, plus insights and information from areas such as DevNet provide you with access to more than just the traditional release notes and the like

Incentivized

As far as my experience with SD-Access -I'd say things that can be improved are - better functionality with ISE, ease to understand licensing and better documentation for configuration (add-ons, etc), and licensing.

Incentivized

The Cisco ACI training provided by Cisco was in depth, covered all of our requirements, and allowed us to implement and maintain the platform without issues.

Incentivized

I rated the training an 8 because overall, it was well-structured, and the instructor was highly knowledgeable on the subject matter. The content was relevant, and I appreciated the clear explanations of complex topics. However, I felt that some sections were covered too quickly, making it difficult to fully absorb the information before moving on. Additionally, I would have liked more time dedicated to Q&A, as there were moments when I had questions but didn’t get the opportunity to ask them due to time constraints. Adding more interactive discussions or hands-on exercises could further enhance the learning experience and make it even more engaging

Incentivized

Being involved in the implmentation gives you more overview on how things are supposed to be working and communicating, you can easily performce troubleshooting and understanding the troubleshooting scenario

Incentivized

At the beginning, we had to open a TAC case for every single step during the implementation phase.

Incentivized

We have selected ACI because it’s the most powerful solution for network deployment and management. Cisco ESA, FortiGate, and Panorama are each the best solution in their respective fields, and they all fit perfectly with the Cisco ACI solution. It permits automating network tasks for both virtual and physical environments. Cisco ACI is perfect with Fortinet, Palo Alto, and, of course, Cisco devices.

Incentivized

Basically, we have various devices and solutions from Cisco and we are more focused on the next generation networks with the best support. We knew that Cisco has the best team sitting to support [any] issues and help us to troubleshoot whenever we need it. So we go with Cisco for this solution.

Incentivized

Cisco ACI scales well and is suited in scenarios such as multi-cloud or large data centre implementations. It is not suited to smaller deployments as the efficiencies that it provides are not fully realised. It is well suited in large environments that contain both virtual and bare-metal machines allowing a great deal of flexibility. It is also perfect to support multi-tenancy platforms.

Incentivized

• The positive one, I mean because before the Catalyst 9800 wireless hand controller, there was another version, I can't remember the name. It was quite, the web UI was very not up to date, but with the 9800, it was a pretty web view user interface. Nothing there was also integrated some API where you could make API calls to the 9800 to configure it. That was a positive negative. I can't think of anything really negative about it.

Incentivized

• Positive: Less time to provisioning a device in the campus Lan network
• Positive: Less time to troubleshoot the network
• Negative: the implementation phase itself was too long because of a lot of bugs in the oldest versions.

Incentivized