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Co-engineered with Cisco
Stack Automation by Quali, co-engineered with Cisco, is a SaaS-based deployment automation platform that shifts Cisco infrastructure and ecosystem software from manual, component-by-component configuration to a fully automated, cloud-like day 0-1 deployment model. Delivered exclusively through Cisco and built on Quali’s Torque automation engine, the platform lets teams launch blueprints, validated by Cisco, from a self-service catalog or compose custom blueprints from existing Terraform, Ansible, and Helm assets - with agentic Copilot assistance to generate, optimize, and self-heal configurations. Stack Automation by Quali is expected to be available in Cisco Cloud Control in Q1 FY27.
Stack Automation reaches on-premises infrastructure through a lightweight management server deployed as a virtual appliance, and orchestrates deployments spanning compute, networking, storage, security, observability, and AI software layers across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments.
Stack Automation by Quali ships with a growing catalog of self-service blueprints validated by Cisco and spanning networking, security, storage, compute provisioning, observability, and AI/ML infrastructure. The table below summarizes the catalog by category as of July 30, 2026; the current, authoritative list is always available at stackautomation.cisco.com/help/solutions-hub.
| Category |
Representative solutions |
| Networking and SDN |
Nexus® Dashboard, Nexus 9300v, Cisco® Catalyst® Center, Catalyst 8000v, Cisco Crosswork Network Controller, Cisco Live Protect |
| Security |
Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense (FTDv), Cisco Secure Firepower Management Center, Cisco Identity Services Engine, Isovalent® Hubble/Cilium Enterprise/Tetragon |
| Storage and data protection |
NetApp ONTAP Select, Cohesity Virtual Edition, Veeam Backup and Replication, Qumulo Core NAS, VAST Data, Portworx by Everpure |
| Compute provisioning (OS and platform) |
Bare-metal ESXi 7.0/8.0, Rocky Linux, Ubuntu LTS, Windows Server, Proxmox VE, VMware vCenter Server Appliance, Red Hat OpenShift on Bare-Metal, K3s/Kubernetes |
| AI, ML and, GPU-as-a-Service |
AI-Ready Red Hat Cluster, Red Hat OpenShift AI, NVIDIA and AMD GPU operators, Cisco Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA, LLM model catalog (Llama, Mistral, and others), vLLM, Ollama, Open WebUI, Jupyter/VSCode Notebooks |
| Observability and IT/ OT operations |
Splunk® Enterprise, Grafana + Prometheus, ThousandEyes® Enterprise Agent, NetBox Labs, Cisco Cyber Vision |
| Management and ecosystem integration |
Cisco Intersight® Assist, Cisco vAPIC |
| Public cloud (AWS/ Microsoft Azure) |
RDS Database, RHEL VM pipelines, and additional NVIDIA NIM-based AI pipelines |
Management server – system requirements
The Stack Automation management server is deployed as a virtual appliance on customer-owned infrastructure and connects the SaaS control plane to on-premises inventory.
| Requirement |
Specification |
| Hypervisor platform |
VMware vCenter 6.7 or later |
| vCPU |
2 |
| Memory |
16 GB |
| Disk |
200 GB, thick-provisioned (thin provisioning not supported) |
The management server and the software it deploys (OS images, blueprint assets, and packages) are downloaded directly from origin at deployment time - they are not cached or proxied through the Stack Automation SaaS control plane.
The management server requires outbound connectivity to the Stack Automation SaaS control plane:
| Source |
Destination |
Port |
Protocol |
| Management server |
stackautomation.cisco.com |
443 |
TCP (HTTPS) |
The management server’s DNS resolver must be able to resolve stackautomation.cisco.com as well as general internet domains—confirming it has working, unrestricted DNS resolution (not just an internal-only resolver limited to local host names. Firewalls, DNS servers, and any upstream proxy in the path must permit both the outbound connection and name resolution for this domain.
Proxy configuration considerations
If an HTTP/HTTPS proxy is required for outbound access, configure the proxy allow-list with the explicit hostname stackautomation.cisco.com.
● Do not use a wildcard entry such as *.cisco.com – wildcard allow-listing is not supported and may cause connectivity or security-policy issues.
Stack Automation is offered in the following license tiers:
● Essentials: consumption-based access to the full solutions catalog, for up to 100 Concurrent Compute Units (CCUs) and standard community support.
● Essentials Support: along with fixed capacity and standard support from Quali, it gives you a remote connection to Quali for hands-on troubleshooting.
● Advantage: includes everything in Essentials, plus blueprint customization, custom repository integration, and agentic Copilot capabilities.
Platform limits and specifications
The following limits characterize the Stack Automation SaaS platform and its management server component. Values are finalized separately and will be published ahead of general availability.
| Segment |
Topic |
Value |
| Management Server |
Maximum concurrent simultaneous blueprint deploys (2 vCPUs/16GB RAM |
10 blueprints |
| Management Server Storage |
Space allocated for ISO caching |
200GB |
| Account |
Maximum spaces per account |
200 |
| Blueprint |
Maximum grains per blueprint |
200 |
| Repositories |
Maximum attached repositories |
300 repositories |
| Repository assets |
Maximum assets imported per repository |
10,000 |
| Space |
Maximum blueprints per space |
500 |
| Copilot requests |
Maximum Requests Per Minute (RPM) |
10,000 |
| Copilot tokens |
Tokens Per Minute (TPM) |
4,000,000 |
| Blueprint Execution |
Simultaneous server support - OS and Platform blueprints |
4 servers where multiple selection is supported |
Stack Automation discovers and provisions against the following inventory sources:
● Cisco Intersight
● Cisco Nexus Dashboard 4.1 or later
● VMware vCenter 6.7 or later
● Amazon Web Services (AWS)
● Microsoft Azure
Additional inventory provider integrations are on the platform roadmap; see Disclaimer.
Ordering information for Stack Automation license tiers:
| Billing PID |
Description |
Unit of quantity |
Pricing quantity |
Initial term (months) |
| STKAUTO-SAAS-ESS |
Stack Automation SaaS Essentials Support (optional) |
Yearly support |
1 (for up to 100 CCUs) |
12–60 |
| STKAUTO-SAAS-AD |
Stack Automation SaaS Subscription Advantage |
CCUs |
100–999,999 |
12–60 |
Note: Ordering support is optional for the Stack Automation Essentials tier
OS and platform blueprint – deployment prerequisites
Bare-metal OS and platform blueprints (Category: “OS and Platform” in the Stack Automation catalog) provision Cisco UCS® servers directly through Cisco Intersight. Prerequisites differ by server form factor:
Cisco UCS B-Series and Cisco UCS X-Series (Intersight-managed, fabric interconnect–attached)
● Boot storage: M.2 (MSTOR-RAID mirrored) or SD/SAS (SDA/FMEZZ1-SAS) RAID controller, selectable at launch.
● Networking: the blueprint provisions dual vNICs across the A and B fabric paths.
● Virtual volumes created by the boot/RAID policy: to be confirmed against the install-script output.
● Supported from Cisco UCS M6-generation servers and later.
Cisco UCS C-Series (standalone, non–fabric-interconnect)
● All physical network ports must be cabled and connected for server discovery and provisioning to complete successfully.
● Disk/RAID and OS install prerequisites follow the same M6-and-later support boundary as Cisco UCS B-Series/X-Series.
For the latest documentation, blueprint catalog, and how-tos, visit stackautomation.cisco.com/help.
Document revision
| Date |
July 30, 2026 |
| Revision |
1.0 |
Disclaimer
The images/diagrams and any roadmap items in this document are provided for conceptual discussion only and are subject to change at any time. They do not constitute a commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality.