Key messages
Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA, developed in collaboration with NVIDIA and strategic ecosystem partners, is a modular reference design that propels enterprises toward secure and rapid AI adoption from core to edge. It combines cutting-edge AI infrastructure with full-stack security and observability, paving the way for secure, high-performance, and responsible AI. By leveraging enterprise data and AI models as foundational inputs, the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA empowers enterprises to operationalize AI pipelines with agility and purpose, fostering faster delivery of trusted Agentic and Physical AI applications, and enabling enterprises to unlock business value through the power of AI. It is a security-first solution with observability and resiliency to enable safe AI. Unlike other AI factories in the market, it embeds security and observability at every layer of the stack to help securely develop and deliver trusted AI tokens and applications. Security posture is continuously monitored and analyzed, providing advanced threat detection, investigation, and response.
· Cisco provides high-performance, enterprise-proven networking, accelerated compute, and scalable storage from partners that form the foundation of a secure and efficient AI infrastructure. Together with AI orchestration and application software, these capabilities accelerate every phase of the AI and GenAI pipeline, enabling faster development and delivery of trusted AI outcomes. For more than 40 years, enterprises have relied on Cisco’s market-leading networking, which is now even more critical to the success of AI initiatives. Cisco's high-performance Ethernet networking now offers options to deploy switches with Cisco Silicon One or NVIDIA Spectrum-X silicon for AI scale-out fabric.
· Flexible, modular deployment options help operationalize the solution at your own pace and remove infrastructure and security as the barriers to AI adoption. Enterprises have the flexibility to choose between a modular, pre-validated AI infrastructure stack, backed by Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs); a turnkey cloud-managed AI infrastructure stack; or a build-your-own option to purchase and deploy individual products as needed.by buying Cisco and partner products separately and integrating them on their own, or with help from Cisco or one of our partners.
· Professional Services from Cisco and our partners minimize technical, deployment, and financial risk—ensuring the fastest time to market and the lowest cost per token.
What sets Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA apart from AI infrastructure solutions from competitors is its foundational emphasis on security and observability at all layers of the stack, and Cisco’s market-leading high-performance ethernet networking that enterprises have trusted for 40 years. This enables enterprises with exceptional flexibility, enhanced security, and superior performance, equipping them to navigate the evolving landscape of AI with confidence.
Q. What is Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA?
A. Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA is a modular reference design from Cisco, NVIDIA, and our strategic ecosystem partners. It combines high-performance AI infrastructure with full-stack security and observability to accelerate the delivery of trusted Agentic and Physical AI applications from core to edge.
Figure 1.
Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA
Q. What challenges does Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA solve?
A. Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA addresses key challenges enterprises face when operationalizing secure AI infrastructure on premises:
· Complex AI infrastructure deployments: It simplifies the deployment of secure, scalable, and well-architected AI infrastructure by offering a modular reference design that showcases combining AI software, compute, networking, storage, security, observability, and Kubernetes platform into a secure AI infrastructure, helping enterprises avoid stalled AI projects and reduce operational complexity. The Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA simplifies this by providing a modular reference design that integrates AI software, compute, networking, storage, security, observability, and a Kubernetes platform from core to edge.
· AI security vulnerabilities: It provides integrated security across the entire AI pipeline—protecting AI models, frameworks, applications, agents and infrastructure from emerging cyber threats such as prompt injection, adversarial attacks, model poisoning, data leaks, and unauthorized GPU access.
· AI infrastructure performance bottlenecks: The solution delivers enterprise-grade, high-performance AI infrastructure to maximize GPU utilization and optimize performance for AI pipeline phases including training, optimization, and inferencing. This includes handling both east-west traffic (between GPU servers) and north-south traffic (clients to GPU servers to storage), the dominant traffic patterns in AI workloads.
This comprehensive approach enables enterprises to deploy trusted, high-performance AI applications on premises with confidence and efficiency.
Q. What are the key functional capabilities included in Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA?
A. The visual below shows the key functional capabilities in the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA modular reference design. These are all critical capabilities that any organization would need to operationalize a secure AI infrastructure, allowing AI practitioners to quickly develop the trusted AI applications that LOBs want to help achieve business goals. Key capability areas include:
· AI software
· AI compute (GPU-accelerated servers)
· High-performance AI networking and optics
· NVIDIA and Cisco-certified storage
· AI security (model, application, agents, workload, and infrastructure protection)
· Observability for AI (infrastructure and AI agent monitoring)
· AI orchestration and GPU management software
· Kubernetes platform
These capabilities allow AI practitioners to quickly develop and deliver trusted AI applications aligned to business goals.
Figure 2.
Key capabilities of Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA
Q. What Cisco and partner products deliver these capabilities in Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA?
A. The Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA modular reference design brings together products from Cisco, NVIDIA, and our broader partner ecosystem to enable a complete, secure AI infrastructure. The visual below illustrates all the components that make up the solution stack. Multiple options are available at each layer of the stack to support customer choice and flexibility. Contact your Cisco account team for a detailed bill of materials matched to your requirements.
Figure 3.
Key products in Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA
Q. How does Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA differ from other AI factories in the market?
A. Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA differentiates in multiple areas:
Security at every layer: Unlike other AI factories in the market, it embeds security at every layer of the stack (AI models, agents, and associated software components, applications, workloads, infrastructure) to help securely develop and deliver trusted AI tokens and applications. Cisco AI Defense integrated with NVIDIA AI, Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall that includes Isovalent, and Secure Firewall, and Splunk Enterprise Security enable end-to-end security for the full stack. The Hybrid Mesh Firewall serves as a single enforcement point for security policies, including enforcement on NVIDIA BlueField DPUs on AI servers, preserving CPU and GPU resources for AI processing.
Cisco AI Networking: Cisco’s market-leading, high-performance Ethernet networking—trusted by enterprises for 40 years—is the only networking platform in the market with options to deploy switches with Cisco or NVIDIA Spectrum-X silicon. This includes the Cisco N9300 series (powered by Cisco Silicon One) and the Cisco N9100 series (powered by NVIDIA Spectrum-X silicon) for scale-out data center AI networking.
Cisco Unified Edge: Purpose-built for AI inferencing at the edge, Cisco Unified Edge consolidates compute, networking, and security into a single modular chassis—enabling real-time AI inferencing and agentic workloads without data center latency.
Observability for AI: Cisco Splunk delivers end-to-end visibility across the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA, enabling teams to monitor the performance, quality, security, and cost of their AI infrastructure stack. Specifically, AI Infrastructure Monitoring ensures the AI Infrastructure stack remains performant, resilient, and secure.
This includes human-guided AI assistants such as the AI Assistant for SPL, the AI Assistant in Splunk Observability, and AI Canvas, as well as autonomous AI agents like the troubleshooting agent for Splunk Observability. Splunk Observability can also monitor both agentic AI applications (AI Agent Monitoring) and AI infrastructure (AI Infrastructure Monitoring).
Finally, Cisco performs rigorous testing and validation of the modular capabilities of Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA, publishing Cisco Validated Designs that help de-risk enterprise deployments.
Q. What types of AI workloads does Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA support?
A. Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA is designed to support the full range of enterprise AI workloads, including model training, optimization (fine-tuning and retrieval-augmented generation), inferencing, and emerging multi-agent systems. It also supports Physical AI workloads at the edge. The modular reference design scales to meet varying workload requirements through T-shirt-sized Cisco AI POD configurations validated for each workload type.
Q. How is Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA related to Cisco AI PODs?
A. Cisco AI PODs are the building blocks for operationalizing the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA modular reference design for enterprises. There are two types of AI PODs:
Workload PODs: Runs the customer AI workloads such as model training, optimization, and inferencing using Cisco’s T-shirt sized, full-stack Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs) optimized for AI workloads.
Services PODs: Deliver essential shared capabilities—including security, observability, and data services, serving multiple Workload PODs within a Secure AI Factory deployment. Together, these AI PODs enable a modular, scalable, and secure AI infrastructure tailored for enterprise AI adoption.
Q. What are the key security capabilities in the Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA?
A. Here are the differentiated security capabilities in Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA:
Securing the AI Models, Agents, and Application: Cisco AI Defense, integrated with NVIDIA AI, empowers the security and AI practitioner teams with comprehensive tools for robust testing and runtime security of LLMs and generative AI applications and agents Utilizing algorithmic red teaming techniques, AI Defense evaluates generative AI models against diverse security (data privacy, prompt injections, etc.) and safety (e.g., toxic behavior) risks without requiring application modifications. Additionally, AI Defense applies runtime controls to ensure applications comply with leading frameworks, including OPSWAT LLM and MITRE ATLAS.
Securing the workloads and infrastructure: Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall delivers unified security management with consistent, pervasive policy enforcement across multiple control points. Here are the key products that make up Hybrid Mesh Firewall:
1. Cisco Isovalent: Provides enhanced visibility into containerized workloads, protecting against lateral movement and proactively mitigating vulnerabilities.
2. Cisco Secure Firewall: Enables advanced threat protection across perimeters at scale without compromising performance.
3. Cisco Live Protect enable critical infrastructure hardening with vulnerability shields for Cisco AI networking devices with Nexus One.
Security Operations: Splunk Enterprise Security, a threat detection and incident response platform that enables real-time detection, investigation, and response through powerful analytics, automation, and risk-based insights.
Q. How does Cisco Intersight simplify GPU resource management in the Secure AI Factory?
A. Cisco Intersight provides unified, cloud-based management for Cisco UCS servers and the Unified Edge Platform, delivering consistent visibility and control from core to edge. Its policy-driven GPU sharing capability enables real-time allocation of PCIe GPUs—such as those on Cisco UCS X580p nodes—to any server within the same chassis, eliminating resource waste and maximizing GPU utilization across AI workloads.
Q. What are the AI software options available with Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA?
A. NVIDIA AI Enterprise and the Red Hat AI Factory software are the two options available today to enable choice with accelerating the development and delivery of AI applications.
Q. What Kubernetes platform options does Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA support?
A. Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA supports multiple Kubernetes platform options to accommodate enterprise preferences and existing investments. Supported options include Red Hat OpenShift, , Nutanix NKP, and upstream open-source Kubernetes. This flexibility allows AI practitioners to use the container management environment they are already familiar with.
Q. What edge AI capabilities does Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA include?
A.
Cisco Unified Edge extends the Secure AI Factory to on-premises edge environments, enabling real-time AI inferencing and agentic workloads without data center latency. It consolidates high-performance compute, networking, and security into a single modular chassis designed for any edge environment. Cisco Unified Edge is managed through Cisco Intersight for unified visibility from core to edge.
Q. What storage options are available in Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA?
A. Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA supports a choice of NVIDIA and Cisco-certified storage solutions to meet varying performance and capacity requirements. Validated storage partners include NetApp, Pure Storage, VAST Data, Hitachi Vantara, and Nutanix NUS. This partner flexibility allows enterprises to integrate existing storage investments or select the option best suited for their AI workload demands.
Q. What Professional Services are available for Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA?
A. Cisco and its partners offer Professional Services to help enterprises design, deploy, and scale their Secure AI Factory. These services minimize technical, deployment, and financial risks—ensuring the fastest time to market and the lowest cost per AI token. Services cover solution sizing, infrastructure deployment, integration, and ongoing operational support.
Q. Is Cisco Splunk part of Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA modular reference design?
A.
Yes, Cisco Splunk is now part of Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA for observability and security operations capabilities. The Cisco Splunk Dashboard for AI PODs monitoring provides end-to-end visibility across the AI POD stack, helping ensure maximum uptime, scalability, performance, and infrastructure efficiency.
Observability for AI, powered by Cisco Splunk, delivers end-to-end visibility across Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA, enabling teams to monitor the performance, quality, security, and cost of their AI application stack. Specifically, AI Infrastructure Monitoring ensures the AI infrastructure stack remains performant, resilient, and secure.
With
Splunk Observability Cloud, teams gain real-time insights into AI infrastructure health, availability, and resource utilization (e.g., GPU, power, network, nodes, token costs), empowering proactive root cause analysis, rapid issue resolution, and alerts that improve efficiency and reliability With AI Agent Monitoring in Splunk Observability Cloud, teams can monitor the performance, quality, security, and cost of LLM and agentic applications—including tracking prompts and responses for hallucinations, bias, and semantic quality.
Splunk Enterprise Security extends this visibility to protect AI workloads, correlating security events from Cisco technologies (AI Defense, Hybrid Mesh Firewall, Isovalent, Hyperfabric AI) with operational data to detect and mitigate threats such as data leaks, prompt injections, and unauthorized access.
Q. How does Cisco validate the Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA solution?
A. Cisco performs rigorous testing and validation of the Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA solution, publishing Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs) that are compliant with NVIDIA Reference Architectures. Cisco also performance large scale testing, and publish results via Cisco Reference Architectures (CRAs) that are compliant with NVIDIA Enterprise Reference Architectures (ERA) and NVIDIA Cloud Partner Reference Architectures (NCP RA) for deployments at any scale..
Q. Is Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA available today?