What is Cisco ACI?

As part of Digital Transformation processes, data centers, no longer considered exclusively as data repositories, play an important and strategic role in achieving the following objectives:

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1. High reliability and continuity in the provision of services,

2. Greater efficiency,

3. Better operability,

4. High degree of flexibility (business agility) in order to reduce the “time to market” of the innovations required by market challenges

5. Reduction of costs in order to allow greater investments in additional services to customers.

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For this reason, in recent years, Data Centers have always been the protagonists of an evolutionary process guided by 4 factors:

1. VIRTUALIZATION OF COMPUTING, of Storage and server containerization: these are technologies that have made it possible to achieve cost savings by increasing the efficiency and scalability (“pay as you grow” model) of IT resources;

2. NETWORK AND APPLICATION SECURITY: using shared infrastructures for cost containment policies, the need to adopt multitenant systems that guarantee network segmentation, isolation and encryption of data in order to protect and control customer information is essential;

3. AUTOMATION: the opportunity to automate workflows allows the minimization of human error in delivery and configuration activities and guarantees the possibility of implementing products and services ever faster;

4. CLOUD COMPUTING: the creation of hybrid deployments (coexistence of private and public clouds) has made it possible to combine the need for access to the high computing resources made available by public clouds with the end-to-end security aspects of the applications.

What does the future hold?

New trends technologies also guide future data center transformations, in some cases already under way.

For example:

1. INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT): it contributes increasingly to the accumulation of data generated and transported in today's networks to processing centers;

2. EDGE COMPUTING: the need to reduce latency in certain applications and the use of networks makes it necessary to move data processing functions to the boundaries of the network, close to the sources, transforming the data center from a centralized structure to a distributed solution;

3. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MACHINE LEARNING APPLICATIONS (ML): the proliferation of such applications with the consequent growth in demand for computing power causes a greater need for integration with public clouds;

4. ANALYTICS: they make it possible to implement innovative intelligent monitoring technologies.

What solutions does the market offer?

A leading solution adopted in modern Data Center To respond to these evolutionary challenges is the solution Cisco ACI SDN (Application Centric Infrastructure). Born as an on-premises solution, the solution

Cisco ACI consists of:

a. Application Centric Policy (APIC-based)

b. Cisco ACI Fabric (based on Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switch and Cisco Cave Application Virtual Edge)

c. Cisco ACI Open Partner Ecosystem

The adoption of a policy-based operating model with an application-centric approach allows the application (based on its components and the relationships between them) to define network requirements and not vice versa, allowing Security delivery more granular, not having to be forced to adapt the application to the network infrastructure; this model also makes it possible to reduce the complexity of managing the network, physical and virtual environments by providing a”Single Point of Provisioning“Via GUI Or via REST API.

Cisco ACI is based on tight integration between hardware and software, between physical and virtual elements: the use hardware-based gateway (Nexus 9000) provides greater performance compared to solutions that use only gateway software; through Cisco AVE manages switching and policy enforcement to any hypervisor, providing security and visibility to any virtual infrastructure.

Cisco ACI also exploits an OPEN Ecosystem consisting of numerous partners that, together with the adoption of open APIs, creates programmable fabrics and guarantees interoperability with 3rd party systems, based on the joint certification of solutions with partners.

So let's analyze the main characteristics of the Cisco ACI solution:

· It's a system Multitenant;

· delete flooding from the fabric;

· Facilitates end-to-end and multitenant security;

· Facilitates automation of the data center both in the provisioning phase and in the management of resources through the adoption of open APIs: provides network automation, L4-L7 services (firewall, load balancer, etc.. through service chaining and traffic redirection) and applications;

· Accelerates the introduction of new applications (application agility) by removing the rigidity of IT structures;

· Simplify the management of physical and virtual environments used jointly by the different teams of IT organizations (Network, Security, Cloud and DevOps), offering them common governance;

· Facilitates the implementation of solutions of Business Continuity or Disaster Recovery;

· Simplifies the creation of distributed DataCenters through Remote Leaf capabilities, Multi-POD, Multi-Site and Virtual ACI: it is possible to extend overlay connectivity to remote sites by eliminating the need for a complex interconnection infrastructure (DCI) and taking full advantage of the potential of the policy model (policies, once defined at a centralized level, are distributed when and where they are needed);

· Allows a detailed role-based access control (RBAC);

· Facilitates scalability without adding complexity;

· It allows you to create a centralized monitoring in real time of the network and applications (application level visibility) through telemetry services;

· Simplify troubleshooting reducing the time needed to isolate problems and implement remediation operations through the centralized management of faults, events and performance analysis.

Concluding remarks:

Cisco ACI However, it is not only an on-premises system, it is also a cloud-ready SDN solution.

Cisco Cloud ACI makes it possible to extend the functionality seen so far to public cloud sites, thus accelerating the customer's expansion to the multicloud:

1. Simplifies routing and end-to-end connectivity between on-premises Data Centers and public clouds, while ensuring the consistency of security policies;

2. It guarantees the scalability of applications in any environment without compromising their availability or security;

3. It provides real-time visibility of the network and of the applications distributed even in the various cloud environments;

4. It facilitates all management through a unique policy orchestrator that automates the configuration of the various systems to provide infrastructure and security services even in cloud environments and allows the rapid delivery of “any application on any infrastructure and any cloud”.

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