Cisco ACI Reviews

Our primary use case for this solution is to use it as our data center backbone. We've got multiple tenants built on it in a network-centric design. We have our Dev\QA Tenant, User Acceptance Tenant, Production Tenant, DMZ, and then UserEdge, where everything basically comes in and goes out. We have Firepower firewalls in-between, but we're basically using Cisco ACI to microsegment between the networks within the tenants. But intra-tenant traffic goes through the firewalls. 

Before we started using Cisco ACI, everything was essentially flat open access. By using ACI, we're able to segment out everything and get more visibility into our virtual environment. We are basically 99.99% virtual at our data center. There are many features we haven't even started using, but we will get there. 

The features we find most valuable is the integration with the virtual switches of our UCS platform. It gives a lot of visibility right from the ACI console, the ability to channel out the traffic and segment it without having to get into separate physical hardware or trying to figure out VDCs manually. So far that's been really powerful and extremely useful for us.

I think there are a lot of additional features that we haven't had a chance to look at yet, but I would like to see a simpler interface where it is easy to find endpoints and get information about them. Making it more user-friendly would be wonderful. That is my main concern. 

The stability has been good so far. We've got a big project to start doing upgrades on it. But it's been very stable and functioning properly. We haven't really had any issues with it as long as I've been here at the company. I'm sure there were some issues during deployment cause that was before my time. But it's been very stable for me.

In terms of scalability, we haven't grown the deployment yet and we are nowhere near capacity. But it seems like it is relatively scalable in terms of what we could use. It's a matter of what do we need. I just haven't had the opportunity to increase the scale of what we have right now.

The initial setup was fairly complex and it looks terrifying when you first log in. That's one thing about ACI. It takes a bit to wrap your mind around how it works. It's not overly complicated once you understand the concepts, but someone who has never worked with anything like ACI, will initially find it difficult to grasp the complexity of it.

We've used a couple of consultants over the last few years. I believe it was BT that helped us with the initial setup, and we're working with Presidio on the upgrade project. As far as I know, the technical support from BT was great. And the people at Presidio know their stuff, they seem to have good plans for where they're going with it. They put together a concrete plan rather than just saying, "Oh, let's just go for it."

I believe there is an ROI. We've been able to streamline our processes dramatically because of the way the new architecture works. So while it was a large investment, I believe that it had a big impact on the general productivity of our systems.

Not many people up in the northeast are familiar with Cisco ACI. It's kind of new and scary, so a lot of people are a little wary of it. Now that I've worked on it for a while, I find it very powerful. Getting direct access into the virtual switches is a huge advantage. I'm not the kind of person who rates nines and tens under many circumstances. So I rate this solution an eight out of ten.

My advice to others would be to take a good long look at it. It's great for segmenting your network and doing a little micro-segmentation in your data center. If you're familiar with the Nexus OS and the Nexus hardware platform, you will find that this is the same hardware platform as you would use in a Nexus OS deployment. Also, make sure you get a lot of training as part of your deployment. That would probably be my biggest piece of advice. Make sure that you get educated on how it works and why it was designed the way it was, or what the best practice design is if you're designing it on your own.

Our primary use case is to provide a replacement for our existing infrastructure in the data center. It's part of our lifecycle management.

The ability to integrate with other systems is the most valuable feature. 

We designed it from scratch which contributed to the complexity. They should have better information about the deployment requirements.

We haven't had any issues with stability so far. This is going to be concluded after doing some DR testing. 

We have had two calls with technical support. They are not the best. We opened a case to diagnose issues and it's taken weeks to get someone on the case and to move forward. 

The setup is simple in the beginning but complex when you get to the tiny details that need to be taken care of. I would say the initial public deployment is easy, but the migration part is more complex. 

We used Cisco services to help with the implementation. They were involved in the design phase but the rest we tried to keep in-house. Our experience with Cisco was that they were very helpful. 

We also looked at VMware NSX. We went with Cisco because they are the most cost effective compared to the other options. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. Not a ten because it has a steep learning curve. 

I would advise someone considering this solution to watch the ACI presentations because they are packed with details and experience that comes from the trainers. It's very beneficial to get real-world experience.

We use it for data center management and multitenancy.

We are service providers. It has allowed us to serve some of our outsourced customers better than the previous generation of products.

The automation is its most valuable feature.

The product needs to be simpler. There is too much complexity in ACI. 80 percent of its features are of no use to us. We could do with a simplified version.

I would like to see some of the roadmap products remotely working to satisfaction where we could actually deploy them for our customers.

The stability is generally very good, but not perfect, because it has let us down before.

Scalability has mostly been perfectly adequate for what we have needed so far. We have not hit too many limits.

The technical support has been excellent. We engaged with Cisco Professional Services to help us get set up and their support has been outstanding. We have had our questions answered. New software and code has been provided when needed.

The desire to automate was a big driver for us to use this solution.

The initial setup was trivially simple and easy. It builds itself because it is automation. You don't have to do too much.

We used Cisco Professional Services for the deployment. They were outstanding, but very expensive.

It is an outstanding product.

We are an integrator, so we work with the finance, health, and public sectors. We use it to automate the data center infrastructure of our customers. 

• Its provisioning.
• It has the fastest automation. You can move and deploy services in just a couple of minutes. 

Previously, the product was a little tricky to use. However, it's now a well developed platform.

I would like to see the data center unification of Cisco ACI with Cisco DNA into a single platform to deliver the data center and campus sides.

It is very stable. It has 99 percent availability.

It has large scalability. You can deploy a new pod, rack, or service in just a few of minutes instead of hours or days of work. 

The technical support is very good. I don't use them that much because the platform is very robust and well-documented. However, in the past, we needed them a lot, and they were very useful and helpful.

With previous technologies, you had to configure everything by hand: the server, the network, etc. With ACI, you can deploy a service in just a couple of minutes.

The initial feel of it is a little complex. Not everyone can deploy it, but if you know what you are doing, it's very simple from a technician perspective.

My company is the integrator for this solution.

The price could be improved. It is expensive, but then again, it is Cisco. The price is worth what you pay for.

As an integrator, we are using the following vendors:

• Cisco for the networking side.
• VMware for the server side.
• F5 for load balancers.
• NETSCOUT for visibility.

Immediately buy Cisco ACI. It will simplify your work in a way that you can't even imagine until you try it. The product does what it says it will. ACI is a robust, functional platform.

• Qatar Rail: network and data center infrastructure
• Msheireb Downtown: smart city project including infrastructure for Big Data
• Ministry of Interior: network design based on Qatar Rail's passive infrastructure.

ACI provides network ability to deploy and respond to the needs of applications, both in the data center and in the cloud.

The ACI fabric supports more than 64,000 dedicated tenant networks. A single fabric can support more than one million IPv4/IPv6 endpoints, more than 64,000 tenants, and more than 200,000 10G ports. 

The ACI fabric enables any service (physical or virtual) anywhere with no need for additional software or hardware gateways to connect between the physical and virtual services and normalizes encapsulations for virtual extensible local area network (VXLAN)/VLAN/network virtualization using generic routing encapsulation (NVGRE).

• Security and isolation based on the type of traffic

• High level of resiliency.

We implement customized Cisco ACI for our clients as a networking solution for a variety of purposes.

My organization specifically implements Cisco ACI for other companies, so the product is basically our business model.

For clients, a visible GUI dashboard provides a unified view of the network. In order to do that before, clients may have had to implement multiple tools depending on the structure of the network. Now they can implement one tool and have a unified visual picture of the health of the network.

In a very general way, the ease of access, ease of use, and ease of connecting the system is a valuable feature in itself. The solution doesn't really increase detection rates as that is not what it was created for. Threat prevention comes from other devices that might be connected to the Cisco ACI that monitors external traffic. The ACI solution maintains what end-of-life products would be doing and offers other opportunities to unify solutions.

There has not been a single implementation we have done where the client wants to use all the features that are in the product currently. Contemplating new features seems out of order. Every product can benefit from new features as long as they are desired and add functionality that is useful. Most of the features that are there now are good and Cisco is doing a really good job at staying ahead of the curve with their competition. They are implementing new features before companies are even ready to use them or know that there might be a need for them.

Figuring out how to implement the product for clients is the area we struggle with the most every day. Perhaps an enhancement would be artificially intelligent solutions, but that would be further down the road.

The product itself is very stable. As long as it is deployed with care and solid core objects it will remain stable.

The solution is extremely scalable in ways that pure hardware solutions were incapable of.

I think the customer service is really good. I call Cisco any time and I can usually get someone to help me with whatever I need at whatever time I call.

A portion of Cisco's equipment is going end-of-life. Most of the companies that we implement for are using Cisco Nexus 7K, 5K, 2K so they have 752 implementations and some of their 7K's are going end-of-life. The newer equipment that's becoming available is cheaper. Sometimes Cisco will essentially give it away.

Initial setup can be straightforward or complex depending on who you're implementing the solution for and what they want to do with it. If the client's network is extremely complex, they have a lot of different things that can bring information into and out of their network. Implementation can become significantly more complex as there is more to consider. If the client's network is really simple, then the deployment is straightforward.

We do sometimes experience some issues with integration and in trying to satisfy some of the things that the client wants to do. There are some hidden issues that don't surface until you implement the solution in the network. Some of the issues are client-facing where the client causes the issues. In other words, the issues are not necessarily a problem with the system.

You still have to spend time to try to go through everything and make it work optimally. When you are implementing new features, there's almost always a learning curve if the features are not performing with objects that have already been built.

We are the integrator and reseller, so the implementation is always excellent and the expertise is superior.

I think it has a fairly good time to value. While it takes time to implement, once it's implemented the ability to make changes and adopt new functionality to the system becomes very easy. That saves more money over time because changes are implemented using fewer internal resources.

I've seen some ROI for clients. Clients don't normally share that information with me, but I see how clients have benefited from implemented ACI and how the speed of implementing changes on their network improves over time. The ability to quickly make changes in the network is the biggest benefit that I've seen.

We don't license the products ourselves. The clients that we implement for also license it with Cisco.

As it stands right now, the licensing structure hasn't been fully fleshed out for ACI. So, if Cisco hasn't fully fleshed it out, I'm not sure what the cost is going to be yet.

I would rate the solution as a nine out of ten. It is a great product, but there are issues with it. It's not perfect and it would have to be to get a ten. The issues that are there are easily mitigated but that also requires effort.

The analytics are pretty good. The built-in dashboard essentially provides analytics out of the box. There are other plug-ins that you can use to make the solution work better for you as a company. You have the option of developing other tools and utilities to use with it because it's an API.

When you are first building the system, it takes longer because you have to build all the objects that you expect to reuse. But because you're building reusable objects it makes adding other functionality easier because of the simple fact that you've already built those reusable objects. When you're doing new things it gets easier.

I think one thing that most people do is avoid reading manuals for anything. Read, read, read and consider doing research. Not all the information you find will be good, but you will discover things you don't know.

We are using it for application centric infrastructure (ACI). It is the evolution of the current data center setup from the legacy design to something programmable with some automation features which are missing today. The key challenge is to set up a new data center, then move all the legacy stuff into the new design. 

We need to understand how to do it, as are already under way. We already have products, but we need to go farther in the design and development of the platform.

Financially, it should be an improvement because we expect everything will converge in the tool. Therefore, we can change the way that we invest money in resources. Today, we have to keep a very wide range of skill resources in the company. Going forward, we will be able to focus in more specific skills that will allow us to keep the new tool up and running. It's a big change of approach, but in the long run, it will provide us a lot of benefits. The benefit is the finance of our IT will change.

Once we have it running, it should be easier for us to program our IT rather than going case-by-case, by switches and different elements, or program it by hand. 

Interoperability with third-party products always seems so straightforward, but every time you need to invest a lot to add an external element to the ACI Fabric technology. A good improvement would be to have an easier integration with external building blocks in the customer's environment.

Biannually, there is a new design delivered by Cisco. Thus, you are always running behind the new design, and it never stops. With Cisco ACI, this has been a nightmare. I recommend that they provide more customer focused blueprints to fix this. They should try to learn and understand what are the real needs of each customer.

Now, we are running behind releases. However, with each new release of a new design, you have to test it and validate it. So, we aren't going operational, which is not good. This support was not offered to us with the product.

I would not want to see any additional features at this point. We have had enough additional features. We still have a lot to learn and don't want anything extra.

The hardware is not stable. We have switches failing.

We are not that big to reach the limit (or edges) of this technology. Its scalability is fine. It is very easy to scale. 

Today, doing changes to the infrastructure is a nightmare. Every single device has different programs and programmatics. However, with this tool, you simply plug and play. When you want to scale, you add one piece, and it's done. It works.

We are buying support services from a Cisco partner, and they have not always worked perfectly. Sometimes, we have to open many types of tickets. We have to make them very clear what we need and just exclusively ask them to forward a request to Cisco. Once we get to Cisco, the support works.

Since the product is new, it is difficult to get the partners onboard. Other companies are not able to provide effective support for this technology yet.

We switched to ACI because there came a time to make the decision to either stay with another 10 years with the technology that we had in place or go through this challenge and bet on the future with better, new technologies (and also new skill sets and new setups for our teams). We also try to resell internally to our internal customers and other departments. We help them find new ways to facilitate their core business. We do IT for them, so they need the best possible solutions from us to make their lives easier.

Today, it is sort of a nightmare for them too. Every time we have to do maintenance, for instance, on the infrastructure, we have to break their business continuity, which is not always good.

The initial setup was easy. At the time that we did our setup, the design was easy. The original design was easy to set up. Then, Cisco changed it, and it was more complex. They should not have changed it.

Cisco's partner did the implementation. The experience was great. They came and helped us to do a zero day setup. In a few weeks, we were up and running with the pro console.

The business case is not a complete success today, because we still have the two environments running. We want to switch down the first environment while we have everything up and running on the new one, but it's taking ages. This is a big challenge.

We bought a package for hardware, software, and support. At that time, Cisco was simply selling that package to distributors, then we opted for it directly.

VMware is one of ACI's competitors. We considered VMware because we also have it in our infrastructure.

We chose Cisco ACI, because VMware is just focusing virtual infrastructure and microsegmentation. The idea was to use Cisco for the physical infrastructure and integrate with VMware for the virtual infrastructure.

I would recommend the solution to anyone with a similar use case, though try for a greenfield solution or project instead of migrating your previous infrastructure.

In principle, what we are looking for is to have one gigantic tool which can be programmable, making our lives easier in terms of troubleshooting and management.

The most valuable features of Cisco ACI are the EPGs and the micro segmentation.

I would like to see Cisco ACI become more similar to what SD is, with improvements made to the onboarding on the multiport situation. Currently, it is complicated.

Cisco ACI would benefit by providing the option to integrate easily with DNAC in their next release.

I have been using Cisco ACI for a couple of years.

The solution is stable.

Cisco ACI is scalable and easy to expand. Cisco ACI is a data center concept. We have 1000 servers.

Technical support from Cisco is good. They are knowledgeable. I would rate their customer service and support a five out of five. 

Positive

The initial setup of Cisco ACI is simple.

Cisco ACI is more expensive than Juniper, however, ACI is not the most expensive option.

Prior to choosing Cisco ACI, we evaluated Juniper. 

Overall, I would rate Cisco ACI an eight out of ten.