Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller Data Sheet
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The Cisco® Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI®) is part of our intent-based networking framework to enable agility in the datacenter. It captures higher-level business and user intent in the form of a policy and translates this into the network constructs necessary to dynamically provision network, security, and infrastructure services.
Built on top of the industry-leading Cisco Nexus® 9000 platform, Cisco ACI uses a holistic systems-based approach, with tight integration between hardware and software, between physical and virtual elements, an open ecosystem model, and innovative Cisco Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) to enable unique business value for modern data centers.
Cisco ACI is the industry’s most secure, open, and comprehensive Software-Defined Networking (SDN) solution.
ACI enables automation that accelerates infrastructure deployment and governance, simplifies management to easily move workloads across a multifabric, multicloud framework, and proactively secures against risk arising from anywhere. It radically simplifies, optimizes, and expedites the application deployment lifecycle.
Modern data centers are dynamic. IT operations must meet the expectation of quality-of-service business needs in a rapidly changing environment. ACI transforms IT operations from reactive to proactive with a highly intelligent set of software capabilities that analyzes every component of the data center to ensure business intent, guarantee reliability, and identify performance issues in the network before they happen.
As application usage gets more pervasive across an enterprise’s network, IT professionals are looking to build solutions for consistent policy and encryption from the campus to the datacenter. With ACI integrations with SDA/DNA Center and SD-WAN, customers can now automate and extend policy, security, assurance, and insights across their entire networking ecosystem.
The Cisco ACI solution consists of the following building blocks (Figure 1):
● Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC).
● Cisco Nexus 9000 Series spine and leaf switches for Cisco ACI.
● Cisco ACI Multi-Site Orchestrator.
● Cisco Cloud APIC.
Cisco ACI architectural building blocks
Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) features
The infrastructure controller is the main architectural component of the Cisco ACI solution. It is the unified point of automation and management for the Cisco ACI fabric, policy enforcement, and health monitoring. The APIC appliance is a centralized, clustered controller that optimizes performance and unifies the operation of physical and virtual environments. The controller manages and operates a scalable multitenant Cisco ACI fabric.
The main features of the APIC include the following:
● Application-centric network policies.
● Data-model-based declarative provisioning.
● Application and topology monitoring and troubleshooting.
● Third-party integration.
◦ Layer 4 through Layer 7 (L4-L7) services.
◦ VMware vCenter and vShield.
◦ Microsoft Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), and Azure Pack.
◦ Open Virtual Switch (OVS) and OpenStack.
◦ Kubernetes, RedHat OpenShift, Docker Enterprise.
● Image management (spine and leaf).
● Cisco ACI inventory and configuration.
● Implementation on a distributed framework across a cluster of appliances.
● Health scores for critical managed objects (tenants, application profiles, switches, etc).
● Fault, event, and performance management.
● Cisco Application Virtual Edge, which can be used as a virtual leaf switch.
The controller framework enables broad ecosystem and industry interoperability with Cisco ACI. It enables interoperability between a Cisco ACI environment and management, orchestration, virtualization, and L4-L7 services from a broad range of vendors.
The APIC appliance is deployed as a cluster. A minimum of three infrastructure controllers are configured in a cluster to provide control of the scale-out Cisco ACI fabric (Figure 2). The ultimate size of the controller cluster is directly proportionate to the size of the Cisco ACI deployment and is based on the transaction-rate requirements. Any controller in the cluster can service any user for any operation, and a controller can be transparently added to or removed from the cluster.
Cisco APIC cluster
APIC appliance product specifications
The APIC appliance is available in different form factors (Table 1):
Table 1. Cisco APIC sizes
| Cisco APIC configuration |
Part number |
Description |
| Medium M3 |
APIC-M3 |
APIC with medium-size CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (up to 1200 edge ports) |
| Large L3 |
APIC-L3 |
APIC with large CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (more than 1200 edge ports) |
| Medium cluster M3 |
APIC-CLUSTER-M3 |
Cluster of 3 APIC-M3 with medium-size CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (up to 1200 edge ports) |
| Large cluster L3 |
APIC-CLUSTER-L3 |
Cluster of 3 APIC-L3 with large CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (more than 1200 edge ports) |
| Medium M4 |
APIC-M4 |
APIC with medium-size CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (up to 1200 edge ports) |
| Large L4 |
APIC-L4 |
APIC with large CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (more than 1200 edge ports) |
| Medium cluster M4 |
APIC-CLUSTER-M4 |
Cluster of 3 APIC-M4 with medium-size CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (up to 1200 edge ports) |
| Large cluster L4 |
APIC-CLUSTER-L4 |
Cluster of 3 APIC-L4 with large CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (more than 1200 edge ports) |
Table 2. Specifications of the APIC M3 and L3 appliance. Note that at least three appliances need to be configured as a cluster.
Table 3. Cisco APIC M3 and L3 Physical and Environmental Specs
| Overview |
Description |
| Physical dimensions (H x W x D) |
1 Rack Unit (1RU): 1.7 x 16.9 x 28.5 in. (4.32 x 43 x 72.4 cm) |
| Temperature: Operating |
32 to 104°F (0 to 40°C) (operating, at sea level, with no fan fail and no CPU throttling, and with turbo mode) |
| Temperature: Nonoperating |
–40 to 158°F (–40 to 70°C) |
| Humidity: Operating |
10 to 90% noncondensing |
| Humidity: Nonoperating |
5 to 93% noncondensing |
| Altitude: Operating |
0 to 10,000 ft (0 to 3000m); maximum ambient temperature decreases by 1°C per 300m |
| Altitude: Nonoperating |
0 to 40,000 ft (12,000m) |
Table 4. Specifications of the APIC M4 and L4 appliance. Note that at least three appliances need to be configured as a cluster
|
|
Medium configuration: M4 |
|
Large configuration: L4 |
|
|
|
Description |
Default units |
Description |
Default units |
| Processor |
AMD 3.0GHz 7313P 155W 16C/128MB Cache DDR4 3200MHz |
1 |
AMD 2.85GHz 7443P 200W 24C/128MB Cache DDR4 3200MHz |
1 |
| Memory |
16GB RDIMM SRx4 3200 (8Gb) |
6 |
32GB RDIMM DRx4 3200 (8Gb) |
6 |
| Hard Drive |
480GB 2.5in Enterprise Performance 6GSATA SSD (3X endurance) 960GB 2.5in Enterprise performance 6GSATA SSD (3X endurance) |
1 each |
480GB 2.5in Enterprise Performance 6GSATA SSD(3X endurance) 1.6TB 2.5in U.2 WD SN840 NVMe Extreme Perf. High Endurance |
1 each |
| PCI Express (PCIe) slots |
Intel E810XXVDA2 2x25/10 GbE SFP28 PCIe NIC Intel X710T2LG 2x10 GbE RJ45 PCIe NIC |
None- Configurable Options |
Intel E810XXVDA2 2x25/10 GbE SFP28 PCIe NIC Intel X710T2LG 2x10 GbE RJ45 PCIe NIC |
None-Configurable Options |
| Power supply |
1050W (AC and DC) and 1600 W |
1 |
1050W (AC and DC) and 1600 W |
1 |
| FAN |
Eight hot-swappable fans |
|||
| Airflow |
Front to rear cooling |
|||
Table 5. Cisco APIC M4 and L4 Physical and Environmental Specs
| Overview |
Description |
| Physical Specifications |
1 Rack Unit (RU), Height (43.2 mm), Width 16.9 in. (429.0 mm), Depth (length) Server only: 29.5 in. (740.3 mm) |
| Temperature: Operating |
10° C to 35° C (50° F to 95° F) with no direct sunlight |
| Temperature: Nonoperating |
Below -40° C or above 65° C (below -40° F or above 149° F) |
| Humidity (RH): Operating |
8 to 90% and 24° C (75o F) maximum dew-point temperature, non-condensing environment |
| Humidity (RH): Nonoperating |
Below 5% or above 95% and 33o C (91o F) maximum dew-point temperature, |
| Altitude: Operating |
0 to 10,000 feet |
| Altitude: Nonoperating |
0 to 40,000 feet |
Table 6. Cisco medium form factor virtual APIC requirements
To use the APIC controller as a virtual form-factor or in AWS cloud, a DCN-vAPIC license is required. A minimum of three licenses are required for a cluster, and additional licenses can be ordered for expanding the cluster.
|
|
Cisco Virtual APIC Requirements |
|
|
Description |
| Processor |
16 vCPU of 3 GHz or Higher |
| Memory |
96 GB of RAM |
| DiskSpace |
Disk 1: SSD or NVMe – 120GB (root disk) Disk 2: SSD or NVMe – 360GB (data disk) I/O latency of 20ms |
| ESxi |
7.0 |
Cisco Network Controller Product Specifications
The Cisco Cloud Network Controller is a virtual appliance deployed in public cloud environments for Cisco Cloud ACI deployments. The Cisco Cloud Network Controller virtual appliance will provide policy translation, multicloud connectivity, and cloud-networking functionalities.
Cisco Cloud Network Controller
The Cisco Cloud Network Controller is available on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace as an AMI image. A single instance of the Cisco Cloud Network Controller can provide networking, visibility, and policy-translation functionalities for workloads deployed across multiple AWS regions and availability zones. This enables IT organizations to simplify their operations and governance in multicloud environments. The solution enables ease of application deployment across any location and any cloud. The Cisco Cloud Network Controller specifications are listed in tables 3 and 4.
Table 7. Cisco Cloud Network Controller requirements for Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud
| AWS native resources |
Cisco Cloud APIC requirements |
|
|
Description |
| Amazon EC2 Instance Type |
m5.2xlarge (recommended), m4.x2large |
| Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) |
100G gp2 SSD, 300G gp2 SSD |
| Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) |
Standard S3 storage |
| AWS CloudTrail |
Management events. Single copy. |
Table 8. Cisco Cloud Network Controller requirements for Azure public cloud
| Azure Resource Name |
Resource Type |
Minimum Requirement |
| Instance type |
Compute |
D8S_V3 |
| Virtual Networks |
Network |
2 |
| Static Public IP Addresses |
Network |
9 |
| Total Public IP Addresses |
Network |
12 |
| Network Security Groups |
Network |
5 |
| Application Security Groups |
Network |
5 |
| Application Gateways |
Network |
1 |
| Virtual Machines |
Compute |
8 |
| Standard DSv2 Family vCPUs |
Compute |
16 |
| Standard DSv3 Family vCPUs |
Compute |
8 |
| Premium Storage Managed Disks |
Compute |
4 |
Cisco environmental sustainability
Information about Cisco’s environmental sustainability policies and initiatives for our products, solutions, operations, and extended operations or supply chain is provided in the “Environment Sustainability” section of Cisco’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report.
Reference links to information about key environmental sustainability topics (mentioned in the “Environment Sustainability” section of the CSR Report) are provided in the following table:
| Sustainability topic |
Reference |
| Information on product material content laws and regulations |
|
| Information on electronic waste laws and regulations, including products, batteries, and packaging |
Cisco makes the packaging data available for informational purposes only. It may not reflect the most current legal developments, and Cisco does not represent, warrant, or guarantee that it is complete, accurate, or up to date. This information is subject to change without notice.
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Use the following links for additional information:
● Cisco ACI solution data sheet: Click here.
● Cisco Cloud ACI solution brief: Click here.
● Cisco ACI ordering guide: Click here.
● Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches data sheet: Click here.
● Cisco Application Services Engine data sheet: Click here.
● Cisco ACI Virtual Edge data sheet: Click here.
● Cisco ACI solution general details: Click here.
● Technical white papers: Click here.
● Case studies: Click here.
● Solution overviews: Click here.
● YouTube video tutorials: Click here.
● Release notes for Cisco ACI and APIC solutions: Click here.
● Release notes for Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches: Click here.
● Download Cisco ACI software: Click here.
| New or Revised Topic |
Described In |
Date |
| Remove XS Cluster, Medium Spare and Large Spare PIDs. Update the table with APIC-M4/L4 PIDs |
Table 1 |
February 1, 2023 |
| Change the heading to "Cisco APIC M3 and L3 Physical and Environmental Specs |
Table 1 |
February 1, 2023 |
| Added additional specs |
Table 2-6 |
February 1, 2023 |
| Revised name for Cisco Cloud APIC to Cisco Cloud Network Controller |
Cisco Network Controller Product Specifications |
February 1, 2023 |