Overview

Cisco UCS Director and Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure

Cisco UCS Director is a unified infrastructure management solution that provides management from a single interface for compute, network, storage, and virtualization layers. Cisco UCS Director uses a workflow orchestration engine with workflow tasks that support the compute, network, storage, and virtualization layers. Cisco UCS Director supports multitenancy, which enables policy-based and shared use of the infrastructure.

Cisco UCS Director also supports the ability to define contracts between different container tiers, enabling you to apply rules between tiers.

Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) allows application requirements to define the network. This architecture simplifies, optimizes, and accelerates the entire application deployment cycle.

The combination of Cisco UCS Director and Cisco ACI enables automatic provisioning and delivery of an application-centric infrastructure.


Note

To use ACI 1.1(1*), ensure that TLSv1 is enabled in Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC). In APIC, choose Fabric > Fabric Resources > Pod Polices > Communication > Default and enable TLSv1.

Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller

The Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) is the unified point of automation, management, monitoring, and programmability for the Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI). The APIC supports the deployment, management, and monitoring of any application anywhere, with a unified operations model for physical and virtual components of the infrastructure. It is the central control engine for the broader cloud network. The APIC programmatically automates network provisioning and control-based on user-defined application requirements and policies.

The Cisco UCS Director orchestration feature allows you to automate APIC configuration and management tasks through operational workflows. A complete list of the APIC orchestration tasks is available in the Workflow Designer, and in the Task Library. For more information about orchestration in Cisco UCS Director, see the Cisco UCS Director Orchestration Guide.