Nowadays, there is a growing demand for the adoption of software-defined networking (SDN), driven by a fundamental change in the traditional networking approach due to the development of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI). Traditional networking involves the utilization of commands by administrators to manage various devices locally. Implementing Cisco ACI architecture within a data center setting offers a centralized approach to automation and application profiles. This approach provides the ability to customize software while maintaining the ability to increase hardware performance.
This article mainly focuses on what Cisco ACI is, how it works, and why it is beneficial.
What is Cisco ACI?
CISCO ACI is an architecture that fixes issues with SDN and enables full control over the application deployment lifecycle. ACI is an approach that combines cloud computing with data center management. To improve installation times and flexibility, ACI shifts enterprises away from the traditional IT architecture and toward a policy-based approach. While SDN drastically decreases the time it takes to implement network changes, ACI decreases that time even more.
Cisco's ACI speeds up, automates, optimizes, and simplifies the application deployment infrastructure. As a result of ACI, the network infrastructure may be configured, scaled, and managed with less conflict between application developers and network engineers. It is worth noting that making the transition to ACI might be challenging.
Components of Cisco ACI
The main components of Cisco ACI are:
The Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches provide the physical infrastructure for the ACI fabric. These switches support both traditional and ACI modes and can be deployed in leaf-spine topology for high performance and scalability.
The Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) is the brain of the ACI system. The APIC is a distributed software platform that manages the entire ACI fabric as a single entity. The APIC provides a GUI and a RESTful API for network administrators to define application policies, monitor the health and performance of the network, and troubleshoot issues, if any.
How does Cisco ACI work?
Cisco ACI functions by developing a logical network model according to application needs and can abstract the network configuration from the underlying hardware and software components. This logical model is defined as Application Network Profile (ANP), and it consists of a set of objects that defines the application components, relationships, and their policies.
The ANP defines four types of objects:
Endpoint Groups (EPGs): These are logical containers that group together endpoints (such as servers, virtual machines, containers, etc.) having similar characteristics or functions.
Contracts: These are rules that specify the communication permissions between EPGs. Contracts can include filters that define the allowed protocols, ports, and services and service graphs that define the required network services (such as firewalls, load balancers, etc.) for the traffic flow.
Bridge Domains (BDs): These are logical spaces that define the Layer 2 connectivity and broadcast domain for the EPGs.
Tenants: These are logical containers that isolate and secure the ANPs from each other. Tenants can represent different customers, departments, applications, or environments within the same ACI fabric.
Why is Cisco ACI beneficial?
Cisco ACI offers several benefits; some of these benefits are:
Simplification: Cisco ACI simplifies the network configuration and management by using a policy-based approach that focuses on the application needs rather than the device details. This reduces human errors, complexity, and operational costs.
Optimization: Cisco ACI optimizes the network performance and efficiency by using a fabric-based architecture that provides high bandwidth, low latency, and load balancing. This improves application availability, scalability, and responsiveness.
Security: Cisco ACI secures the network traffic by using contracts that enforce granular access control between EPGs. This prevents unauthorized communication, malware propagation, and data breaches.
Greater Scalability: The Cisco ACI architecture is linearly scalable, which indicates that it can serve a high number of users and devices without degrading its overall performance. Because of this, it is perfect for deployments throughout an entire company.
Innovation: Cisco ACI enables IT professionals to leverage new technologies and trends in the data center domain, such as cloud computing, microservices, containers, DevOps, etc. This increases their competitiveness and value in the market. One can also increase their chances of landing a job by studying Cisco ACI interview questions.
How Cisco ACI can be integrated with other products
Mainly there are three ways in which Cisco ACI can be implemented, these are:
The first is to use publicly available application programming interfaces. Cisco ACI's open APIs make it compatible with a wide variety of third-party software and hardware products. Using this method, clients may pick and choose the solutions that work best for them without sacrificing access to Cisco ACI's leading-edge capabilities and performance.
The second approach is to use solutions that have been collaboratively certified. These solutions have been verified to operate properly between Cisco and the partner. By employing this strategy, buyers may relax, knowing that their products are made with compatibility in mind.
Service chaining is the third approach. Using service chaining, Cisco ACI may link together several services in a certain order. This facilitates the development of complicated solutions that would be difficult to execute otherwise.
Conclusion
Cisco ACI is a powerful solution that transforms how data center networks are designed, deployed, and operated. By learning Cisco ACI architecture, IT professionals can gain an edge in their careers and deliver better organizational outcomes.
Candidates can also learn more about Cisco ACI through Cisco ACI interview questions and get the job they seek for.