Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller Data Sheet

About Cisco ACI

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.

Cisco ACI components

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 Nexus Dashboard

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, Red Hat 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.

●     Isovalent^® Cilium and eBPF integration for end-to-end observability

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.

Cisco APIC cluster

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

Table 2.        Specifications of the APIC G5 combined appliance. Note that at least three appliances need to be configured as a cluster.

Table 3.        Cisco APIC G5 physical and environmental specs

Table 4.        Specifications of the APIC M4 and L4 appliance. Note that at least three appliances need to be configured as a cluster

Table 5.        Cisco APIC M4 and L4 Physical and Environmental Specs

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 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:

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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For more information

Use the following links for additional information:

●     Cisco ACI solution data sheet: Click here.

●     Cisco ACI ordering guide: Click here.

●     Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches data sheet: Click here.

●     Cisco Nexus Dashboard 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.

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