Cisco ACI Reviews

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. 

We are switching the Nexus line to ACI for our customer: the server, firewall, etc.

We will improve our organization using the automation.

• Its resilience
• It easy to configure.

They need more documentation. Because when we hit an issue and searched on Google, we didn't find a lot of documents about the issue. Possibly because it's a new product.

We are deploying ACI, and at same time, we are testing migration from our old network. Our old next is Nexus, latest version, and we have a less load balancing and it's hard to migrate. We are hitting some issues, so maybe there is room for improvement.

It is to early to evaluate the stability.

The scalability is okay. We are deploying the leaf switches one-to-one.

The technical support is okay. We have been looking into some issues with our legacy network when migrating our ACI. While the tech support has responded well, we are still waiting for some more information.

We were having some issues with our network, so we took some advice from Cisco regarding that product, and looked for another product to replace it.

We deployed a lot of Fabrics to multiple sites, which was a bit complex.

We only worked directly with Cisco's IT, and they provide some consultants onsite to help us.

Cisco ACI is a good solution, but Cisco needs to test all the networks before doing a migration.

The primary use case is for data center switching. This is what it was intended to do.

I am a partner, and I implement the solution for other organizations.

• It scales very well. When you increasingly scale with it, it makes the product easier to work with.
• You can automate it.
• It has a lot of insight into monitoring and traffic. However, this could also be improved.
  

The interface is sometimes slow. I receive a lot of weird errors when I try to install apps, such as contract apps, which should give me a nice visualization of all the contracts. However, it just doesn't load, etc.

I would like more thought put into the way the graphic part of the monitoring is rendered. When you have a lot of contracts, you can't understand the graphics because they are so loaded.

The solution is stable. I haven't seen it crash.

While I haven't done big installs, it does seem like it would scale well.

I haven't used the technical support.

This is a client decision on whether to switch.

The initial setup isn't straightforward, but it is manageable. 

We are the integrator for our customers. The installation is straightforward.

I am an implementer, not user, of the solution. Therefore, ROI is not applicable.

We were only considering Cisco. ACI is such a complex solution that I am not sure that are any competitors which can match the product's complexity.

Go for this solution.

We use ACI with Nexus 9000 in multi-tenancy scenarios.

We can support multiple VDRs of multiple branch offices at same physical location in the same infrastructure.

It offers multitenancy. The opportunity to install it on the same platform with a huge amount of customers.

It needs more features for integrating with third-party vendors.

The product's stability is quite good.

The scalability's capabilities are very good for our needs.

Our initial setup was complex because we have a very complex scenario. We had to put in place a tricky solution in order to support all of our customers' needs. However, we feel confident that it is a good solution for our needs.

We implemented it in-house.

Leverage the multi-tenant functionalities. We have been quite satisfied with the implementation.