Cisco ACI - not easy but really usable
November 10, 2025
Cisco ACI - not easy but really usable
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
In our organization, the Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure is used as a core data center networking and automation platform. The main business problem the product addresses is to address complex and time consuming network provisioning, when implementing new services in our data centrum. Scope of our use case is realy wide - we use Cisco ACI as an orchestrator for our Data Center, DMZ and also som other parts of service beds.
Pros
- enforces microsegmentation policies on the fabric
- rapib and consistent provisioning without any need of manual interactions
- fully API driven - we have own automatiton solution to push configuration on ACI via API with ansible playbooks
Cons
- GUI interface - it is really not user friendly and you need lots of time to study how to use it
- Troubleshooting part is also not very easy and it takes time to generate tshooting tech files
- Faults codes are sometimes misleading and you need to check for external documentations to find an solution
- Significant redution in network provisioning time - we save lots of costs (working hours) since the cisco ACI was deployed - maybe arund 80% of time
- lower operation costs because we develop our automatition software, where we are managing all configurations and deploying it on Cisco ACI via API calls -> everyting is easier and configurations can be prepared automatically or with less skilled engineers - we are saving money/time of senior colleagues
- consistend security policy enforcement saves also performence of our firewalls, because we dont have to send all trafic to FW - security is enfroced from the bottom
There are just a few contributors to Cisco ACI and as an engineer you usually dont have chance to work with all of them. But I can compare Cisco ACI to traditional VXLAN with EVPN deployments using Cisco NX-OS fabric and I can say it is totally different. In Cisco ACI there is and centralized management, build in automatition and direct policy control. Also the scalability is totally different - adding nexus switch in ACI fabric is really easy comared to traditional VXLAN deployment.
Scalability in our DC and DMZ networks is an key parameter, because services we are running are changing, removing, or groving everyday. So it is needed to work with ACI fabric on a day basics. The bigger advantege for Cisco ACI is that as an application (services) grow, policies are automatically ingerited and applied avoiding manual reconfiguratios. I can also remeber the application, needed 2 firewalls in the data flow - in traditional networks it would take number of days to configure, but in ACI it was work for an few hour to add new firewall in the way for just one application.
As i said, Cisco ACI is fully API driven. We developed our automatization software, using Cisco ACI Ansible playbooks and all network configurations are deploye via API right now. So fully API driven environment really helpd us to accelerate and automate application deoployment. It takes around 4-5 minutes to deploy new service in Cisco ACI via API and ACI than configure the whole fabric itself.
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
Comments
Please log in to join the conversation