Item: Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are replacing all our Cisco Nexus 5k / 6k / 7k with Cisco ACI. Currently we have deployed it in 6 datacenters. Currently we are still in a migration scenario where we have deployed it in a network centric approach but we are planning this year to start the transition towards application centric. our goals are: - Manageability of large switch fabrics - Automation using ansible - Scalability (100+ nodes per site)

Pros and Cons

Pros

Overview of the network
Ease of scaling
Automation

Cons

Configuration is complex for beginning engineers
MPLS-SR feature is there, but poorly documented
More service provider integration

Return on Investment

Speed of deployment
Stability of the L2 enviroment (less incidents)

Alternatives Considered

Cisco Nexus Series Switches

We have made the decision for ACI over NX-OS for the following:
- no more self-made configuration of the underlay network
- ease of scaling out port capacity
- better insight of the network
- ease of deployment (single click software upgrades and port configuration), specially for the large environment of 100+ switches we have running.

Scalability

Cisco ACI is very fast in deploying additional port capacity, our network is growing every week with new VMware hosts. We can now easily deploy a new pod within a few weeks

Automation

We are currently working on our application centric use cases to make the fit with automation. The network centric use cases we have not integrated into automation

Key Insights

Do you think Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)'s feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

Since we migrated from a legacy L2 environment, it is really hard to start using the new features ACI brings. I would really recommend to start a greenfield deployment, since we have a lot of challenges to translate our current use cases towards ACI use cases. If you can start from the beginning with developing the usecase around ACI, it will speed up the deployment.

Comments

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Cisco ACI for a mobile service provider