Cisco ACI Reviews

I predominantly work on switching and routing, specifically utilizing products like Secure Access, UCM, or something similar from Cisco. Currently, we are working with Catalyst 9000 series for the switches and Catalyst 8000 series for the routers. From the router, we use 8200 and 8300 series, and from switches, all 9200, 9300, and 9500 series. We use Catalyst Center in at least one or two cases.

Sometimes I use Firepower firewalls and sometimes I go for the Cisco ISE solution, ISE licenses, ISC licenses. We also work with wireless solutions like Meraki as well as Catalyst wireless. I am using Cisco ISE for network virtualization.

ACI is predominantly on the Nexus platform. We have deployed Cisco ACI for a couple of our customers where they migrated from the traditional Catalyst or traditional enterprise solutions to a Nexus platform for their data center network. We use Cisco ACI infrastructure for the SD-WAN and for the data center SDN solutions.

We have deployed Cisco ACI for a couple of our customers where they migrated from the traditional Catalyst or traditional enterprise solutions to a Nexus platform for their data center network. We use Cisco ACI infrastructure for the SD-WAN and for the data center SDN solutions.

For Cisco ACI, we predominantly use it for the data center software-defined network, where customers will have more control on their applications and it will have a matrix kind of architecture and it can have seamless connectivity and seamless access to applications without being moving from a traditional architecture of a data center. This is where they will have more visibility into their network and they can add any workloads in their network easily rather than pushing the configurations or doing the configuration from scratch. Configuration templates are already available in Cisco ACI, which we can push to the next workload which is getting connected to Cisco ACI infrastructure.

Cisco ACI infrastructure is predominantly for the server infrastructure. It is not the traditional VLANs or those things getting configured. It is basically the VXLANs and Data Center Bridging solutions would come in. There is a spine-leaf architecture where the spine controls the control plane of all the leaf, and the leaf will connect the nodes or the workloads of the servers to that. For the data center management team or the IT team, it will be easy to deploy any new workloads. Instead of taking days or multiple days for a deployment of a server or application, they can do it immediately within minutes because all the configuration templates are already there in the control plane, which we can push immediately when the new server gets added. This provides operational simplicity and visibility, making it easier for the data center IT team.

Analytics can be used, and AppDynamics can also be integrated into Cisco ACI for application-level monitoring, enabling analysis of applications and determining which application is taking how much of network loads. This kind of integration is possible, and Nexus Dashboard can also be useful in highlighting and providing a single dashboard to view all performance and any issues that may arise, which helps in faster troubleshooting.

Deployment could be made a bit simpler and the licensing part could be a bit easier as well, along with improvements on the costing.

There could be improvements such as a sort of C-worm, which is Cisco Workload Optimization Manager, where if there is a Cisco ACI infrastructure integrated with that, workload optimization could be done and perhaps also integrate security. There have been improvements happening towards that as well.

I would rate stability for Cisco ACI at eight.

Integration with third-party tools like VMware, OpenStack, or Microsoft Azure is definitely possible.

Cisco has a Customer Experience team and other professional services coming in, so their support seems to be good, and they try to solve issues as early as possible. Support is really good.

We are a Gold Partner for Cisco and a global Gold Partner for Cisco, so we resell Cisco products and have skill sets to provide services for Cisco. We have certified resources across our country and every country, and we utilize them for deployment and other professional services. We don't do marketplace; we go through direct Cisco. We sell directly through Cisco, discuss with the customer, and arrange a back-to-back ordering with Cisco instead of going through a marketplace.

I have seen Arista as one of the competitors of Cisco ACI, and in some places, we have seen Juniper Networks as competition as well.

We are still working with Cisco products. I have not much used Cisco ACI, but we have proposed it to customers. I have been working with Cisco ACI for almost three to four years.

Cisco ACI infrastructure is predominantly for the server infrastructure. It is not the traditional VLANs or those things getting configured. It is basically the VXLANs and Data Center Bridging solutions would come in. There is a spine-leaf architecture where the spine controls the control plane of all the leaf, and the leaf will connect the nodes or the workloads of the servers to that. For the data center management team or the IT team, it will be easy to deploy any new workloads. Instead of taking days or multiple days for a deployment of a server or application, they can do it immediately within minutes because all the configuration templates are already there in the control plane, which we can push immediately when the new server gets added. This provides operational simplicity and visibility, making it easier for the data center IT team.

Automation processes can definitely be done as well. I am totally satisfied with the functionality of Cisco ACI. My overall review rating for Cisco ACI is eight.

We are the user, representing the organization ATOM, a mobile operator in Myanmar. We have several products in our portfolio, including Vertica database, Document Management, Operation Bridge Manager, and IDSM. We are only using Operation Bridge Manager for monitoring, which generates alerts. We have the Network Monitoring Module, NNMi, for network operations management. We are customers with a direct relationship with the vendor.

I can only comment on the IDSM tools and the monitoring observability part, which we find to be a great tool. However, we struggled with support a couple of years back due to external factors, such as sanctions, that caused a delay in receiving support. The support we refer to is technical support, and one of the functionalities missing in the current OpenText version is AI. Apart from that, it is quite good. The current tool is adequate for day-to-day operations, but we want to explore more on AI Ops and hope future versions of OpenText can support that.

We are using this for the infrastructure. We are not working with Operations Orchestration. We do not make use of its visibility and analytics features, as we are mostly using it for the networking part only.

Their technical support has been great, and they have a great partner, so there is nothing to comment on regarding the service.

Cost is one thing that could be improved, as it is heavy for an emerging market like ours.

We work with other vendors as well, having a few other suppliers providing support for different solutions. We are not working with them at this moment. We have solutions from different partners, including Cisco, HP, and Oracle for many different solutions, as we are part of the infrastructure team.

I am not responsible for Vertica, as we are not responsible for the Vertica side; it will be handled by a separate team, but we mainly work on IDSM and Operation Bridge Management. The current tool is adequate for day-to-day operations, but we want to explore more on AI Ops and hope future versions of OpenText can support that. In the future, I would like to see more flexibility on the integration with other platforms and greater flexibility for integrations or automations with other platforms. Other platforms such as Microsoft Azure and AWS would be beneficial. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The main use case for Cisco ACI is for data center. I use Cisco ACI for data center services.

The main features of Cisco ACI that I really appreciate are the application-centric and network-centric designs, allowing you to create your network according to your application. That's helpful, and it's good for one-time implementation. The automation capabilities are really helpful. We deployed one data center using Terraform, and after deployment, many automation features are available, which can be very helpful.

Based on my experience, Cisco ACI provides substantial capability; you can design your network accordingly and it's part of the SDN family, providing many benefits to the organization, especially when moving from traditional network infrastructure. Many organizations are actually using the old traditional Nexus infrastructure or some old data center devices. It gives you significant control and one-time implementation capabilities, and it also provides better performance and security. Functionality-wise, Cisco ACI provides integration using automation. We implemented it through Terraform, which was easy. Those features are available, so I don't think any new features are needed right now; something new could come up, but they have implemented many improvements over the years.

I believe the product is good; right now, I don't see any areas for improvement for Cisco ACI. I cannot suggest any improvements as I might not have used all features to identify improvement areas. Most aspects are good.

I've been working with Cisco ACI for around five to six years.

For stability, Cisco ACI rates a nine or 9.5 because I've seen three customers using Cisco ACI and once deployed, the solution is very stable.

The scalability of Cisco ACI deserves a rating of nine. It has great scalability features.

Expanding your network or your data center with Cisco ACI is not an issue; scalability is a good feature. You can expand it very easily without needing to do much. You just keep adding, and you can add more servers, storage, and everything. There's a scalability limit, but it stretches. You can use the multi-site and multi-pod features, which help you scale the data center over the WAN and create large sites.

For technical support, I would rate them a seven because it's a complex technology and the TAC people sometimes don't have much understanding of the product. When issues occur, the TAC is not able to provide much support, leading to difficulties in finding RCAs.

In my opinion, Arista is the main competitor for Cisco ACI. I never worked on Arista, so I'm not sure which solution is more preferable.

The initial setup process for Cisco ACI is simple; it's not complex. First-time configuration requires a lot of setup, but that's the great thing about Cisco ACI: it's one-time implementation. You create many policies at once, and after that, it becomes pretty easy.

From my perspective, I've procured Cisco ACI in my previous organization. I never did any procurement for other vendors such as VMware or Arista, so I'm not sure how their pricing compares. When procuring everything for the first time, including licenses and hardware, it can be at a higher price, but I believe price-wise it's comparable to other vendors.

In general, Cisco ACI is on the higher side; it's not a cheap solution. Obviously, it's a data center solution, and if it were lower-priced, that would be great for selling to other companies choosing other products due to cost issues.

I have only worked with Cisco ACI in an on-premises deployment; I'm not sure about the hybrid model. I'm not currently working with the analytics part. I haven't integrated Cisco ACI with third-party tools such as VMware, OpenStack, or Microsoft Azure. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Cisco ACI a 9.

We use Cisco ACI for data center software-defined networking. Instead of restricting ourselves to older Cisco data center networking like 6500 switches for servers or Nexus devices or 6500 core switches, I personally like the flexibility of Cisco ACI to grow the data center footprint and stability Cisco was promising with new 6500 like architecture. That is when I decided to go for software-defined networking, where you can program things and do it better.

We also had something coming up on the horizon where two different MUFG entities were likely to come together  and start consolidating Infrastructure, namely MUFG Bank and MUFG Securities. Cisco ACI is like cloud data center networking or cloud networking in your private DCs, where you have a multi-tenancy. The real use case for Cisco ACI was to segment two different entities and put them on the same network hardware but still have a completely segregated separate environment. That was the reason why we went for Cisco ACI.

Cisco ACI has saved us more than 50% of the cost in terms of what we do in networking. Without Cisco ACI, we would have needed two distinct networking stacks, two cores, and two different server connectivity platforms for the two entities I manage today as Head of Network for MUFG Bank and Securities

We are now in a common data center for both entities. Instead of having a duplicate of everything in a data center, I can run two different entities on same networking platform and have the flexibility of the cloud within my own DC.

The solution's most valuable feature is its programmability and the automation you can do for large changes. It's not that automation wasn't available on any of the other Cisco platforms, like Cisco NX-OS, but not many people did it, Network Automation was just buzz word, but with MSO/NDO this automation becomes real for DC networking Stack. Cisco ACI is built on data application-centric infrastructure with automation and Cisco is bring more automation be working with partners like Nutanix etc

We have not implemented Cisco ACI with APIC and spine and leaf in the application centric mode but in network centric mode be use another Cisco platform for micro-segmentation very successfully in protecting out internal environment. Even though it was a painful journey for us, right from day one, we went for a Cisco multi-site implementation with Cisco's MSO (Multi-Site Orchestrator), which is today called NDO. We configured and deployed Cisco ACI through an NDO.

 The way you can expand the platform within the data center allows you to have a top-of-the-row design instead of centralizing everything in one frame and one central network rack.

You can have leaf switches in the cabinet where they are needed most. You can have a top-of-the-row design or within-a-row design instead of a centralized design. That architecture allows you to have spines in a central place, but leaves can be distributed wherever you need them.

Cisco's MSO (Multi-Site Orchestrator) or NDO has room for improvement. Cisco monitors ACI through a product called NDI. I find it very frustrating that Cisco has multiple monitoring platforms. It has DNAC for monitoring Cisco NX-OS, campus switches, and any other routers and switches you would have in the environment. That same thing does not work for Cisco ACI monitoring. MEraki cloudbasd platform for Meraki which will get extended to Campus monitoring, to be honest Cisco never got Monitoring 100% right from days of CiscoWorks to Prime to current platforms.

To monitor and manage Cisco ACI, you need to have another platform called NDI and Cisco Dashboard Insights. What frustrates me about Cisco is that it never has a central, single pane of glass platform for all its solutions. It has one thing for Cisco ACI and another thing for campus switches. I would really appreciate it if Cisco came up with something centralized to monitor everything.

I haven't thought about anything since the Cisco NDO is quite advanced, and you can deploy your cloud networking through it. I don't know how many people use it. I might explore it as my cloud orchestration tool in the future. We do a lot of cloud automation using our scripts like TerraForm, but I would like to see people using NDO more.

We could have more case studies on how many people use NDO for their cloud orchestration. That might be a much easier journey for people when they move from an on-premises data center into a cloud and move from one cloud to another cloud. That is where I personally see an orchestrator being effectively used for multiple deployments.

I have been using Cisco ACI for four and a half years.

Cisco ACI is a highly stable solution. Cisco has come up with a product that is as stable as 6500. We have seen a lot of stability issues in Cisco Nexus switches. When Cisco introduced Cisco Nexus in the plants, it wasn't as stable a platform as 6500 would have been. We had 6500 switches running for 19 years without any downtime. Cisco ACI follows the stability of 6500 and provides a stable environment.

Since we implemented Cisco ACI, any outages in my environment were caused by the bugs in Orchestrator. When you deploy a new policy, the bugs in Orchestrator create outages. Over the last four and a half years, Cisco has resolved the bugs within Orchestrator, and the product has stabilized. MUFG is probably among the top five percent of Cisco customers running the latest NDO and Cisco ACI, and we do not have any stability issues.

I rate the solution’s stability ten out of ten.

Scalability was the reason why we went for Cisco ACI instead of Nexus or some other switches. The other reasons were the ease of migration and Cisco ACI's multi-pod environments. You can move the data center however you like from one place to another. Instead of having sites A and B, you can have multiple pods within site A.

That offers you a way to move away from one data center to another. It gives an organization full flexibility if they want to move away. It's not that you have to redeploy everything completely, but you can extend from one site to another without causing any business outages.

Around 5,500 users use the solution extensively in our organization. We have another data center consolidation coming up. With that consolidation, my old networking stack in one of the old data centers will be completely gone. Everything in that data center will be moved into Cisco ACI.

I rate the solution’s scalability ten out of ten.

My experience with the solution's technical support has been quite good. Sometimes, we find that some of the engineers we get from technical support do not know about the latest version of Cisco NDO. Cisco still has to train its engineers on the latest version because they are more used to the older versions.

Sometimes, my own engineers find it funny that they know more than Cisco engineers because we use the solution's latest version. It's not that they don't know it. They are not completely familiar with their own product. It could be because we reached out to Cisco on the weekend, and the engineers available were not specialists in the product's latest version.

I think whatever Cisco has done in the technical support background has improved recently. I know that Cisco has started using artificial intelligence in its TAC environment. Since some AI advises their technical support staff, the meantime to resolve has drastically reduced for me as a customer.

Positive

We previously used Cisco 6500 switches in our data center. It was a mix of Cisco 6500 and Cisco Nexus switching for our data center. We switched to Cisco ACI because I wanted a multi-tenancy environment as two entities were coming together. I like the way you can change things within Cisco ACI. I also like the programmability or automation capability that this platform gives me.

The solution's initial setup was easy because we went for network-centric implementation. When we deployed the solution, Cisco MSO (Multi-Site Orchestrator) was a new product in the market. It was quite buggy, and we have had some production outages because of the bugs in the product.

It took us longer than expected for us to deploy the solution because the COVID pandemic struck while we were implementing Cisco ACI. All the plans to deploy it were disrupted, but we managed to deploy it within a year instead of six months. If it hadn't been for COVID, we would have finished our project as planned within six months.

The deployment process was more about understanding the current network design and seeing how it will work within ACI. We considered what sort of tenancy we would need for one organization, how we carve out the tenancy for another organization, how many tenants we need, and how we maintain all this aggregation and some restructuring. The process was quite involved. However, once everybody grasped it, it was quite easy for us.

A core team of four people were involved in the solution’s deployment.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup an eight out of ten.

I had my own team, along with a third-party reseller, to deploy Cisco ACI. The third-party reseller's name then was Dimension Data, which NTT had purchased. I had a team of architects from Dimension Data who worked extensively with my team to deploy it for us.

We have seen a return on investment with Cisco ACI. I could get rid of another entity's data center. MUFG Bank was another entity that ran a traditional Cisco data center stack. When we came together as two different entities and consolidated our data center, I didn't have to buy any kit for MUFG Bank.

The return on investment for me is that I run two different entities, MUFG Bank and MUFG Securities, on the same hardware. It is a 50% return on investment for each entity. One entity originally invested in the platform, another entity came as an additional tenant, and both started sharing the cost of the platform.

It's a huge benefit for anybody trying to acquire additional businesses, and if there is a regulatory need to keep those environments separate from each other. There are huge security benefits as well with multi-tenancy. Both tenants remain separate. If one is hacked or something happens to one tenant, the other one still remains separate and protected.

If you want two different administrative teams, you can have one network team manage one tenant and another network team manage the other tenant. You have all the advantages of a cloud platform in your own data center.

It is not the cheapest platform but one network outage and Bank could be loosing millions and that's how we have to think

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten.

Before choosing Cisco ACI, we did look at some other vendors. However, my team has always been a network team that has hands-on experience with Cisco technologies. I felt comfortable because we had managed the Cisco environment for a long time. We know how good the stability of the environment is.

It was not an easy decision to choose Cisco's new platform considering you need to train your all network engineers to think different from traditional way they have been doing networking. I met some of the top-level VPs then and decided to go for Cisco. I explored the platform in Cisco CPOC labs and looked at the product's capability.

I am working with the latest version of Cisco ACI. I don't like the policy-driven approach of Cisco ACI. I have deployed Cisco ACI to get multi-tenancy and other features, but not the policy-driven features. Cisco ACI follows an application-centric approach that segregates all your applications within the ACI. The solution's policy-driven approach makes it really complicated to administer an ACI infrastructure.

As a network team, our run MUFG ACI is in a more network-centric mode, where it is like a network that is known to us. It facilitates network expansion and allows me to have multi-tenancy and other nice features. I do micro-segmentation that policy driven approach using another Cisco product called Cisco Secure Workload or Cisco Tetration as it used to be called.

I took the decision to onboard Cisco Secure Workload or Cisco Tetration. We use that product for any segmentation or micro-segmentation with in internal enviroment, have have onboarded product and my IT RSC team has successfully deployed for many critical applications

I have an ACI expert on my team to maintain the solution. Cisco ACI is completely new for a normal network engineer who is used to racking, stacking, and configuring switches from scratch using the command line. It's rocket science for a normal network engineer because the way you do things in Cisco ACI is different.

You do not configure a leaf switch or a spine switch. You just connect and configure them to an Orchestrator. This was more of an eye-opening journey for network engineers, as it showed how networks are changing and how on-premise networks are transforming into cloud-like. I had to retrain my entire team through Cisco ACI.

There have been a lot of in-house sessions where people were learning from each other, training each other, and taking some Cisco courses as well. I think it was a journey worth embarking on over four and a half years. People have changed their mindsets, become experts, and can now manage the platform on their own.

I don't know any other platform that I would have chosen for such a critical use case. You have to consider that the network is the core of everything. You cannot afford an outage on a network because I have 500 applications running within my network. If something goes wrong with the network, the business suffers.

The cost of network outages for businesses is quite high. A single two-hour outage within my network coudl cost us million as an investment bank. Since the cost of network outage is high, we cannot buy just any technology. We need a robust solution that guarantees it will always work.

I would advise new users to go for Cisco in a network-centric mode. It offers you all the flexibility of Cisco ACI without the complication of application-centric infrastructure with EPGs. If you run one single application within Cisco ACI, the application-centric infrastructure or policy-based element will work, where you restrict one from talking to the other.

Suppose you work for a complicated organization like an investment bank, where we have over 300 applications. If somebody goes for an application-centric architecture within Cisco ACI, they will spend another three to four years trying to get it together.

My advice would be to go for the other capabilities of Cisco ACI and not for its segmentation or micro-segmentation capabilities. Users can deploy Cisco Secure Workload for their micro-segmentation needs.

Overall, I rate Cisco ACI ten out of ten.

We are using Cisco ACI primarily for data center operations. We are creating different remote channels for segmentation and structuring our network, building routes for traffic management, and implementing micro-segmentation from end-to-end for traffic management.

Robustness is a key aspect. Stability and robustness are what we are banking on. It is essential for growing our data center connectivity and enablement for our customers. It is a must for us. The routing of traffic is one of our main focuses when utilizing Cisco ACI.

We are looking at better synchronization with the cloud and on-premise, bringing in a multi-cloud networking solution. It can be simplified. We need more APIs to capture logs, offer next-level insights for debugging, and performance-based packet tracking. Additionally, some sustainability measures or emissions tracking features would be beneficial.

My team has been working with Cisco ACI for five to six years.

Stability is one of the highlights, contributing to the robustness of the solution.

The scalability of Cisco ACI supports our organization's growth effectively. It is scalable and provides essential support as we grow our data center connectivity.

Initially, we faced challenges in getting technical support. Currently, we have no issues. The technical support from Cisco is satisfactory.

Positive

We have experience working with other SD-WAN solutions, such as Cisco Viptela, Meraki, Aruba Central, and Juniper, at the SD-WAN level yet not at the data center level. We use NSX for another customer, however, it is not at the scale of Cisco ACI.

The initial setup was not straightforward. We adopted an agile strategy, starting small and expanding to multiple data centers. The deployment took approximately eighteen months.

We engaged Cisco for professional services during the initial stages, and we collaborated closely with their team to address challenges.

Efficient utilization leads to cost savings and efficiency gains. We achieved ROI within approximately 30 to 35 months, and it has been essential for us.

We have used SD-WAN solutions like Cisco Viptela, Meraki, Aruba Central, and Juniper. Additionally, we work with NSX for another customer.

I recommend Cisco ACI due to its reliable tech support, timely updates for security, traffic management, and ease of management. Enhancements with public APIs and sustainability measures could be beneficial. 

Overall, I rate the solution as nine on a scale of one to ten.

I work as an integrator and reseller for Cisco ACI, which helps in network automation and application deployment.

Cisco ACI was the first product in the market, offering stability with a significant install base. Its features, like easy application deployment, short deployment time for new applications or software, and eliminating the hassle of STP, are appreciated. Additionally, performance capabilities like connectivity of forty gs and one hundred gs and security integration are key benefits.

Cisco needs to enhance their technical support and pay more attention to regional support. They should ensure frequent visits, updates, and client meetings. Their lack of on-ground offices can result in business losses.

The solution is stable.

The solution offers high performance and scalability with connectivity options up to 100 GS.

Cisco's technical support could use improvement to provide more comprehensive assistance.

Positive

Before Cisco ACI, we worked with other cloud networks architecture, however, not SDA.

Installation, configuration, and upgrades are easy and straightforward.

I have observed that Cisco ACI minimizes operational costs, however, I haven't made a formal comparison.

Cisco's pricing tends to be on the higher end compared to other vendors.

I did not evaluate any alternate solutions.

I rate Cisco ACI nine out of ten due to its impressive features. However, I recommend they improve their technical support.

We primarily use it for network-centric applications and environments. It's mostly used for migrating traditional three-tier networks to the ACI infrastructure.

Automation features have been most beneficial for managing complex networks.

It could benefit from an orchestration tool that makes deploying services easier.

I have been working with Cisco ACI for almost seven years. 

It is a very stable. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten.

ACI is highly scalable, both within a single site and across multiple data centers.

I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. Our clients vary from mid-sized to large, including financial institutions.

We don't usually need much support unless there's a technical issue or bug. We might contact them for design reviews during deployment.

Neutral

It was easy, especially with the newer version. After preparing the initial fabric, it's mostly plug-and-play. 

However, service deployment could be simplified with a better orchestration tool for deploying endpoint groups (EPGs) and other objects.

The deployment process is an ongoing process that can take over a year, as it's part of a migration of workloads and services. You can't migrate an active data center all at once. There are project dependencies that affect the timeline.

These are not technical challenges but project dependencies. Each project has its own timeline and phases. The technical aspects aren't that complicated.

I haven't encountered any challenges in deployment. It's simple automation through a portal for deploying services and EPGs.

I highly recommend it. Compared to traditional data centers, it's more efficient, easier to deploy, and has less dependency on the infrastructure for application management.

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Cisco ACI is used as an automation solution for the DC environment. The solution is also used for the implementation of agile services with the customer sites.

The most valuable features of Cisco ACI are micro-segmentation, the VXLAN, and the ACI flattening services. The solution's policy extension or unified policy within each remote site is homogeneous to the entire environment.

It would be good if Cisco ACI had some cross-domain orchestrator that could rule all the pillars in the customer network or interconnect more easily with the compass environment.

I have been using Cisco ACI for two years.

I rate Cisco ACI ten out of ten for stability.

Most of our clients for Cisco ACI are enterprise businesses.

I rate Cisco ACI ten out of ten for scalability.

The technical support's investigation time should be shorter.

Positive

I rate Cisco ACI an eight out of ten for the ease of its initial setup.

The solution's initial deployment takes around a couple of days. The more complex part is the solution's ongoing mapping and implementation.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten.

Overall, I rate Cisco ACI a nine out of ten.

We deploy Cisco ACI within our customer's data centers, providing them with the capability to configure the software-defined network as per their defined requirements. This solution empowers customers to centrally monitor and control the network without the need for individual edge management. Moreover, it offers scalability, allowing for easy expansion in the future.

The flexibility of adding new components with minimal impact on existing services running in the data center is a key benefit of this ACI-based solution. Customers appreciate the unified control and management provided by ACI, allowing them to oversee the entire data center centrally. This solution facilitates seamless communication between various services and ensures future scalability with minimal configurations and operational effort. The cost savings for customers are notable, particularly in instances where adding ports or making operational adjustments is a straightforward process, requiring minimal resources. ACI stands out as a state-of-the-art, high-performance, and highly scalable solution.

Its scalability and reliability capabilities should be enhanced.

We have been working with it for approximately eight years.

Occasionally, we encounter the need to reset certain programs due to bugs within one of the implemented data features. This requires performing upgrades approximately every six months to address and resolve these issues. I would rate its stability capability eight out of ten.

While I acknowledge that the solution is scalable, there are occasional bugs and the need for upgrades or adjustments approximately every five years. We operate on multiple levels, with small, medium, and high scalability organizations. Typically, we opt for the highest scalable level during our implementations. I would rate its scalability at seven out of ten.

I would rate its customer service and support nine out of ten.

Positive

Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

Over the past six years, I've gained extensive experience with Cisco ACI, working on diverse solutions. This includes multi-site projects, like one involving a private bank with interconnected data centers utilizing Dark Fiber and Cisco ACI for seamless operations. I've also successfully integrated Cisco ACI with Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift to support container-based applications. I've played a dual role as an instructor, teaching Cisco ACI topics, and actively participating in various ACI-related projects. These projects have covered single-site, multi-site, and multi-tenant infrastructures, involving aspects like design, implementation, troubleshooting, and training, giving me a comprehensive understanding of the ACI ecosystem.

Our clients find several features of Cisco ACI particularly valuable, like the ability to create Service Graphs and employ Policy-Based Routing in an Application-Centric manner. One significant attraction for clients in Iran is the robustness of multicast solutions, which has been a major driver for them to migrate to Cisco ACI. It's worth noting that in Iran, the predominant IT infrastructure is on-premises, with limited usage of AWS or hybrid solutions.

While it is quite functional, I found it to be somewhat slow, and there was a notable issue related to the removal of the help section. In previous ACI versions, every configuration section had an accompanying help section that provided valuable information. This feature was removed in the latest version, and the reasoning behind this change is unclear. I believe there's room for improvement in terms of ACI's integration with various technologies. For instance, when it comes to integrating with Kubernetes, the compatibility is somewhat lagging.

I have approximately five to six years of experience working with Cisco ACI.

It exhibits remarkable stability, particularly from ACI version five onwards. For instance, the stock exchange infrastructure I've worked with has been operating flawlessly on ACI for almost two years now, with no significant issues. I would rate it ten out of ten.

I rate the scalability of ACI as nine out of ten, leaving room for potential improvements or aspects that I haven't explored fully.

I have never sought support from Cisco, mainly because of the nature of the operations and issues I've encountered. With the exception of hardware problems, which are usually beyond our control, I've handled all other situations and software failures directly.

Generally, I find the initial setup and configuration of Cisco ACI to be one of the simplest processes in the context of this technology, except in rare cases involving unique configurations. I would rate it eight out of ten.

The duration and complexity of the deployment can vary significantly based on the chosen approach, whether it's application-centric or network-centric. In the service recognition phase, especially for application-centric deployments, a deeper understanding of the service infrastructure is required. This involves collaboration with the software team to comprehend the service architecture, which can extend the deployment timeline. This approach differs from a more straightforward network-centric implementation where you might only need to convert legacy VLAN and IP contracts to ACI objects. In my experience, building Cisco ACI from the ground up can take anywhere from four months to nearly a year. For instance, if you aim to migrate swiftly to ACI without relying heavily on advanced features like service graphs and PBR, and simply want to establish ACI as the default gateway for servers, the fabric can be set up in as little as three to four months. Certain operations, such as the physical installation of spine switches, can extend the timeline from three to four months up to nearly a year for a complete project.

It is not very cheap, but it is still a cost-effective solution, especially when considering the broader context of data center expenses, including servers, storage, and firewalls. The pricing, including both hardware and licenses, is reasonable.

Overall, I would rate it ten out of ten.