Overview
Product Information on Cisco ACI
What is Cisco ACI?
Cisco ACI Pricing
Overall experience with Cisco ACI
“Policy-Driven Cisco ACI Architecture Minimizes Network Outages and Configuration Errors”
About Company
Company Description
Cisco is a company that specializes in networking technologies, particularly Internet Protocol (IP)-based solutions. It was established in 1984 by a group of computer scientists from Stanford University. As of today, Cisco has a global workforce, continuing to innovate in various fields, notably in routing and switching. Adding to its core business, the company also delves into emerging technologies including home networking, IP telephony, optical networking, security features, storage area networking, and wireless technology. Moreover, Cisco extends its expertise to offer a sweeping range of services such as technical support and advanced services. The company sells its products and services on an enterprise level, to commercial businesses, service providers, and end-users.
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Key Insights
A Snapshot of What Matters - Based on Validated User Reviews
User Sentiment About Cisco ACI
Reviewer Insights for: Cisco ACI
Deciding Factors: Cisco ACI Vs. Market Average
Cisco ACI Likes & Dislikes
1. Policy Model (EPG, ESG, and Contracts) - You simply declare the intent of what should be allowed, and the ACI fabric figures out the rest. 2. Micros-segmentation - workloads cannot communicate with each other unless explicitly allowed by contract, even within the same group. 3. Service Graphs - identify a chain of L4-L7 services as a policy.
The Flexibility to adapt to business needs, the software and hardware quality, the vendor support
API, ESG, Dynamic EPG Classification
I don't really have anything I dislike
It's not a cheap solution and has a rather high price tag, also the major release upgrade procedures are intense and to fully maintain and test everything a lab setup is basically required.
- Missing Webhook for anomaly notifications: APIC lacks a native Webhook feature to proactively notify detected anomalies. - No built-in configuration templating: We miss having a robust configuration templating feature within APIC, similar to what NSO offers, provided without the extra cost of NDO. - Suboptimal L3out SVI behavior on vPC Leaf: When an L3Out SVI member port on one vPC Leaf fails, it's not properly removed from the remote leaf's forwarding path, potentially causing traffic loss issues.
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Cisco ACI Reviews and Ratings
- VP, INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES1B-10B USDBankingReview Source
Policy-Driven Cisco ACI Architecture Minimizes Network Outages and Configuration Errors
This feedback reflects our experience with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) after more than seven years of continuous use in our production data center environment. We consider Cisco ACI to be an exceptionally reliable and mature platform. It has fundamentally transformed our data center network operations from a traditional, manual framework into a modern, policy-driven system. The initial investment in training and migration has paid significant dividends in terms of stability, agility, and reduced operational overhead. The most significant impact of ACI has been a dramatic improvement in network availability. The architecture's inherent redundancy and fault isolation capabilities have proven robust. More importantly, the policy-driven model has drastically reduced network outages caused by human error and misconfiguration. By defining network intent through the network controller as a single source of truth, we have eliminated the inconsistencies that often arise from device-by-device manual changes. ACI's API has been a critical enabler for our automation strategy. We extensively use automation frameworks to manage the entire lifecycle of our network configuration. We have successfully integrated ACI with our broader technology domains. This includes seamless integration with security platforms to automate security policy enforcement and with business applications to dynamically provision network resources based on application needs. In summary, Cisco ACI has proven to be a foundational technology for our modern data center. Its reliability is unquestionable, and its ability to serve as a programmable, automated network fabric is unmatched in our experience. It has successfully reduced operational risk while simultaneously increasing business agility - Director Network Access50M-1B USDSoftwareReview Source
Outstanding Support and Adaptability Balanced By Price and Upgrade Demands
It's a solid product, we use it in 7 data centers in various setups. Support and Software Quality are outstanding and it comes with a huge user base and the flexibility you need these days to adapt to business needs. - IT Services Associate10B+ USDIT ServicesReview Source
Lack of Native Webhook and Configuration Templates Noted as APIC Limitations
I can holistically configure hundreds of devices with APIC, detect anomalies, and above all, it's excellent that APIs for devices continue to be provided. - IT ManagerGov't/PS/EdGovernmentReview Source
ACI is the foundation for scalable api driven data center
Cisco commitment to ACI is remarkable, the product has a solid foundation for true software defined data center. - IT ASSOCIATE10B+ USDHealthcare and BiotechReview Source
Automation and Reliability Noted Despite Software Bugs and Design Complexity in ACI
ACI has been working great for us and made our DC operations and management simpler and more efficient. However there is a high level of complexity on the configuration which could be simpler and more user-friendly