Item: Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
Rating: 9
Author: Scott Enwright

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Provide Networking solutions for data center deployments. Business problem was to migrate data centers from old to new and relocate the workloads into the new data center. Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure multipod and remote leaf architecture used to provide migration links. Layer 2 extensions used to co-exit workloads while they are being migrated.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Once setup IMAC are simple
Very reliable
Performance on the platform is great

Cons

Simpler Inband management
Easier troubleshooting of contracts
More checks during upgrades (endpoints and routes)

Return on Investment

Improved stability of network environment
Simple dashboard to view network status
Easy upgrade/maintenance

Alternatives Considered

I have used competitors fabric products, however they were unmanaged (no APIC) and manually configured. In this deployment model, all tasks are manual and there is no central controller to monitor and maintain the system. It's also prone to configuration errors as each leaf switch is individually managed. APIC solution is much better.

Scalability

Scalability hasn't really been a thing for my deployments as we have built to size, and our requirements have remained static. However should our needs change, we can simply add more leafs switches and we can scale significantly as we have two spine switches with 32 ports. Adding switches is not a problem.

Automation

We have used Ansible automation with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure and this has been very successful. A change that would have taken many hours was able to be done in minutes using Ansible. The Ansible script can be prepared in advance and tested in the non-prod system and then deployed into production with safety.

Key Insights

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

Not sure

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

Well suited to data center deployments with storage and compute to host applications. When deployed with VMWARE and/or hyperconverged infrastructure you get a good solution that is reliable and robust and can support a vast array of solutions. Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure works on any sized solution however, it's more appropriate to mid to large scale deployments.

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Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure review