Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC)

Data Sheets and Literature

Programmatically Automate Network Provisioning

The Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (Cisco APIC) is the unifying point of automation and management for the Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) fabric. The Cisco APIC provides centralized access to all fabric information, optimizes the application lifecycle for scale and performance, and supports flexible application provisioning across physical and virtual resources.

Video Data Sheet

Learn more about Cisco APIC. (5:06 min)

Cisco APIC and OpenStack

Extend ACI application policy to OpenStack. (4:05 min)

Features and Capabilities

Centralized application-level control for network, security, and network services automation
Common policy and management framework across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure
Open architecture (open APIs and standards) to integrate Layer 4 - 7 service, virtualization, and management vendors
OpenStack to allow development operations to easily implement policy visibility and control
Application awareness, mobility, integrated visibility, and control
Robust implementation of multi-tenant security, quality of service (QoS), and high availability

Designed for automation, programmability, and centralized management, the Cisco APIC itself exposes northbound APIs through XML and JSON. It provides both a command-line interface (CLI) and GUI which utilize the APIs to manage the fabric holistically. The system also provides an open source southbound API which allows third-party network service vendors to implement policy control of supplied devices through the Cisco APIC.

Cisco APIC provides:

A single pane of glass for application-centric network policies
Fabric image management and inventory
Application, tenant, and topology monitoring
Troubleshooting

Cisco APIC is completely removed from the data path. This means the fabric can still forward traffic even when communication with the Cisco APIC is lost.