Cisco ACI Reviews

We're planning to use it as a product to sell to our customers. We are in the business of service integration. We offer solutions for our customers. We have specific customers who have a use for ACI because of the microsegmentation. They have five regional offices which all have five different people who are responsible for managing their site so we are trying to unite them and put everything under one roof and have a single place of control and visibility of the full network specifically for their data center.

Now, our customers have tiers of management that have meetings with about the simplest tasks because it has to be approved from upper management and senior management and by the time it gets to the engineer that's going to deploy it, it takes way too long. With the solution, they can delegate a person who would be in charge of running the ACI as a whole, and it will be much faster because it doesn't have to go through the whole chain of command for the simple task of deploying one little machine on one port in the data center.

It eases our deployment. Now, we use service requests when there's a project and we have to deploy it. So when the networking team gets a service request it'll be two clicks, anyone can do it. It will be less of a job, and it will be easier and faster. The main benefit is the simplicity of the deployment. On the flipside, it's also a drawback because if only one person does it and if he does something wrong, the whole system can stop working. If ten people are doing ten different things and one person messes up, it's only one error and it's easier to isolate the problem and fix it. A customer is going to deploy something on their own and more often than not, they don't have the knowledge and experience to understand what can go wrong, so they might accidentally clog the network.

If I was a customer who is using the ACI to run my network, I would like for there to be more information about it available. While using the ACI in the graphical interface, I would like if there was something that explained every step that you can click and it will tell you what you are doing in more detail. For me, I understand what's happening because I did a course, but the problem will be when our customers, who are not so versatile in this, start using it and won't know what's going on. If it works it's fine, but when they run into problems, then it's gonna be an issue. If everything works, it should be fine but if any issues come up, a lot of Cisco services will be needed.

The scalability is impressive. I think the best thing about that is the vendor-agnostic part. In the lab, we did a VMware deployment from what I heard it doesn't matter how the VM is deployed, it can integrate with ACI and you can manage it from the Epic controller.

In the lab environment, we had a setup rebuilt, it was their virtual environment. It was a small deployment. Four switches in total, two leaf and two spine switches, and three controllers. From my past experiences with those types of deployments, the setup shouldn't be an issue. The natural connectivity between them and six switches should be easy. From the controller itself, the deployment of the overlay is pretty straightforward and simple.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

I would advise a colleague to definitely try it. Mess around with it, test it as much as possible because it's a new solution. It's different from the traditional data center deployment so there's not a lot of internet posts about it in which you could go and Google and find out more information. The chances that someone has had your problem before and probably found a solution for it are slim so you might get stuck and you will have to go straight to Cisco.

Our primary use case is to interconnect both data centers in my corporation.

The biggest benefit has been that it has improved communication between my endpoints in the data center.

I would like to see better training. I don't have good training with this product. If I did, I probably would be able to solve all of the problems during the installations. 

It's very stable. 

Their technical support is fantastic. Whenever I have a problem, our partners at Cisco support answer quickly.

The initial setup was complex. If I didn't have my partner's support, I probably couldn't deploy Cisco ACI in my data center.

We implemented through a partner. I trust our partner, and I trust any of their recommendations and their deployments.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten. Not a ten because I don't have good training for this solution. I am now implementing Cisco ACI in the company. It's not 100% on the network. It's on 25% approx, more or less.

We started working with a customer which is in the Netherlands. They are really important for us. They started migrating the building of their CRM to ACI. We started with 2.0. We just upgraded the fabric to 3.2. In the next three months, we are aiming to migrate and upgrade the fabric plan to 4.0

Our customer has around 1,000 virtual machines and before, they were all 100 physical servers which, on our side, were obviously consuming energy and resources. Now everything is on the customer and so it's up to them to manage the size of the virtual machines. 

The straightforward migration of all of the applications and loop balancing are the two most valuable features. Also, the measurement of their customer-wide sources is very straightforward. It's another dimension of the networks.

The virtualization area needs improvement but I expect that to happen with the 4.0 version.

I would like for them to develop integration with AWS. 

Scalability is pretty good. 

Their technical support is top notch. 

We had reached the capacity in the data center. We could build a new data center or buy a new solution so we migrated to a new solution to save space. 

The setup was complex because we have a complex internet architecture. It wasn't because of the product. It was complex because of internal issues on our side. 

We had Cisco support but everything was done internally. 

We only looked at Cisco because we have all of our routing and switching infrastructure with Cisco. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. There's room for improvement in the software version. To get to a ten, they should improve the virtualization and develop integration with AWS. 

For companies starting from scratch, ACI is the best solution in terms of the space needed and time to delivery. 

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.

Our primary use case of this solution is for monitoring, automation, links monitoring, configuring of devices, like laptop devices. I use templates and push templates to the devices. We also use it for global software updates.

It has benefited my organization by saving us a lot of time. 

There's a lot of units in the lab and a lot of templates that go to the lab. That is the most valuable feature. 

I would like for ACI to manage all of the devices. 

It's stable. I don't think we have had any downtime or lag. It works fine. 

There's a lot of options with scalability. There's a limit of 1000 devices.

I checked forums and sites. We asked the reseller if Cisco could come in to do a demo. We saw there were some things they could do that we needed in the company so we went with it. 

The setup is okay. The configuration takes a lot of time and we have to prepare the devices to communicate with ACI which took a lot of time. The entire setup took around eight hours. 

We don't use all of the features but it's still worth the money.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

Prepare your infrastructure beforehand because once you run the ACI it goes to one device every time and reconfigures it. Prepare the devices before, check their specifications, and then run the ACI. It will help you save your time.

Instead of using traditional network structures we use ACI for network function mutualization. The mutualization of network devices and also for the control of automatization to manage the internet public.

The operation and maintenance costs have been reduced. It is also simple to deploy any deployment. Any configuration can be easily done. 

It is stable.

We've had to use their technical support and have found them to be helpful.

The first setup was difficult because it is a very different discipline than other traditional network deployments. The terminology is very different, so the first time can be difficult.

We implemented it ourselves. 

We have seen ROI. It has saved operation costs and also, the deployment phases are now very quick.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

If your objective is to deploy infrastructure quickly and in a fast manner this is the best solution.

The primary use case for this product is to enhance the speed of certain tasks in the network. We get faster deployments of network policies based on applications that we need to provide.

The centralized management of the entire network data center, in this case with ACI, is the most valuable feature. By having access to some powerful APIs you can build your own tool to speak to the ACI controller, then with that, you can deploy things really fast. Having the option to build your own tools and then using the centralized management of the ACI to push the configuration to the network devices is very valuable.

The error messages should be improved. Sometimes we want to remove an error message so we acknowledge an error and we would then like to remove it but there's no real way of doing that. If we need to do it, we need to open a tech case. That could use improvement. 

From my experience, it seems like a really stable product. The only thing that concerns me a bit is the fact that you have a lot of errors. It gives you a lot of error messages and they mostly don't really influence the functionality, so it still works. It just notifies that there is some misconfiguration and I think it will scare people with these kinds of messages that don't really have an influence on the functions. Operating the ACI fabric is a concern I have. 

I have seen the guide for scalability and I think it's great. I have no complaints. 

We had some problems so we opened a tech case and we got help. We could do the things we couldn't do so their support is great.

Everyone is getting faster and if you want to compete with other companies then you have to bring services to your customers that are at the level of the other companies. ACI is a way of doing things faster by automating. That's the reason why we have it in our company. We chose Cisco because it was based on certain conditions that had to be met, and of course, also because of the price. It was the best product in terms of price and what comes with it.

At first, the setup was really complex because we did everything with the GUI first. We had to figure out how to do that and it was frustrating because we had a lot of errors which didn't really tell us anything because we're used to other kinds of messages from the old school networking. That was kind of frustrating but then once we got it, it got easier. Now, there are new challenges that we are facing when we want to do certain configurations but it totally gets better with the help of online communities.

We have someone coming from Cisco once a week. We ask him questions and he helps us integrate this new technology in our company.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. Not a ten because of the error messages. In order to get to a ten, they need to have a better way of telling if something is really important. They shouldn't have the message in the same window or in the same menu, they should be separated. The guys who looks at it should be able to tell really fast if it's a problem they have to look at right away or if it has time. Also, they should have the option to delete the messages if you acknowledge them and don't want to see them anymore. 

Advice I would give to someone considering this solution would be don't be too frustrated about trying to do certain things because it needs time and you need to learn the GUI and what it does in the background. Take the time and ask the community or ask a Cisco employee to help you integrate and then with time it will get better.  

We use this product at a French hospital. It has helped to improve the data center and we would like to use it to change how we work with clients. 

It has reduced the time it takes to resolve problems and to understand what colleagues want from inside the company.

It simplifies the utilization of the network. 

The first time we used it, it was not stable, but now, a few years later, it's better. Cisco continues to work on this. If anything is not stable, tech helps us. 

It has very good scalability. 

Their technical support is very good. We had a problem and Cisco gave us the best engineer to resolve the issue. 

The initial setup was very complex. It's a new solution and it was very difficult to have an approach for it. With a lot of the help from a Cisco network engineer we had a good approach and are able to easily resolve any problem. 

We used our own company to deploy the network. 

It's expensive but the product is very good. I have never found another partner like Cisco with a solution like this and with great support.

We also looked at Juniper but their solution isn't stable so we didn't go with them. 

I would rate it a seven out of ten. It's a good product, and Cisco has a very good support team and very good network engineers. 

Of course I would recommend this product. We work with Cisco because they have many possibilities to work with very good support.