Cisco ACI Reviews

The primary use case for Cisco ACI is to migrate a legacy data center, including the new infrastructure.

The product has performed well. 

Automation is its most valuable feature.

The challenging thing about Cisco ACI was we had to put a lot of effort into providing the customer the full picture, new standards, and new technology that they had to use. This was more challenging than deploying the product.

There should be more focus on training and support.

I would like to see is more integration with services and service graphs.

The stability has been good.

The project is pretty small, but from what we have seen, it is scalable.

There have been challenges with the technical support. Though, the product is almost three to four-years-old, there are still things that only a few people can solve. So, Cisco should put more effort into training their people.

The business switched because the legacy way of operating these type of data centers is no longer optimal.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was easy to set up, because our plans for migration were very detailed. We didn't have any problems with it.

We are the partner and the integrator.

It was Cisco ACI vs VMware NSX.

Eventually, the client chose Cisco ACI because they had more experience with Cisco and they still had a lot of physical infrastructure to handle.

It is one of the better solutions in the market right now.

The primary use case is using the automation for deploying new applications in our data center.

It is now easier than before we had ACI to configure any new changes into our data center.

The centralized configuration is its most valuable feature.

The only drawback that we are seeing is the user interface is still a little complex and difficult to use. It needs a more user-friendly interface. I do not use it daily. Every time that I have to go back and configure something, it is very difficult and confusing to remember how to do it and where the menu are located.

The stability is good.

The scalability is good.

I have never had to open a technical support ticket.

The initial setup was complex, but that was not an issue for us. The complexity was around such a big change in architecture, as there were a lot of new topics to learn.

We used Cisco for the initial deployment. Our experience with them was very good. We have had someone on site regularly, which has been really helpful.

Cisco is the only company that we seriously considered.

Do not be afraid of the change that Cisco ACI requires. It takes some time to get used to it. However, in the end, it is worth it as the solution is simpler and more efficient.

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.

We are putting ACI into replace the customer's legacy networks, so it's a migration project. 

We have been able to deploy new applications more efficiently and faster. 

We can support policy based on our intent, then that gets rendered into the policy that we will be using for Fabric.

It is more about resolving bugs early on in the code. Otherwise, as the product gets more mature and those bugs get discovered sometimes by the customer, then Cisco will resolve them.

It is pretty good once it is in, then up and running. The stability is fine. I haven't had many issues.

The product is scalable. You can scale east-west by adding in additional leaf switches. I haven't experienced any scale issues so far, which is good.

The technical support is good. We have Cisco SEs assigned to this project, and we have used them. They are pretty responsive. We have been happy with them. 

That decision would have been made by the customer internally, but they would do a LAN upgrade and an RFP. In this case, Cisco ACI came out as the winner.

It took quite a bit of time to get the design completed in advance. However, once the core ACI Fabric was in and migrated on, the initial setup is fairly easy. It's the same with any new deployment.

We are the supplier to the customer and the Cisco partner. We are actually doing the implementation, and the customer hired us to do it.

It saves time and resources.

The only real competitor to this product is VMware NSX.

Primary use case is data center software-defined networking. We didn't have this before, so are just moving onto these new products to try to be more efficient with better performance.

It is more scalable than our previous products. 

The product works very well with our virtual environment.

• Telemetry
• Analyzing the environment.

Because this is new technology, which requires a different way of thinking, it can be hard to understand. Therefore, I would like more documentation or education.

It is very stable. It allows us to update firmware on the go without any downtime, which we couldn't do before. Everything is redundant, so if you shutdown one system, then another one takes over.

Its scalability is very good. It is really easy to scale in this product.

I haven't a lot of experience with technical support for this product. My colleague has experience with the technical support and says that they are good.

The old solution was outdated and not scalable. It was difficult to manage in a large scale environment. We do not have many people, so we needed to automate a lot of things. This new product helps us do that.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It has been a new technology for us, so we had  look at the documentation and follow the instructions, which were pretty good.

We used a Cisco partner who was very good, since we didn't know everything about the product from the start.

The pricing is pretty good for new technology.

We only thought about Cisco because they are our primary vendor for network solutions.

Receive education on the new product before you buy it, since it is pretty complex. It is not like the previous products. It has a different way of thinking. However, software-defined networking has a bright future, and it is a good idea to get onboard with it.

We use this product in our services. At this moment, it performs very well.

• It is popular.
• It is simple.
• It works 100 percent of the time.

We would like to have faster services and problem monitoring for our customers.

It is very stable. It works 100 percent of the time. We don't have any problems at the moment.

The scalability is good. At the moment, we are using about 18 percent of the solution. In a few months, when we grow, we should be using more performance of the solution.

This depends on our customers and their change strategy.

The initial set up was complex. 

We are internally integrated. The integration was simple.

We also looked at Juniper and Fortinet.

We chose Cisco because we trust them. Cisco give us a very high level support and technical information.

I would recommend Cisco ACI. This solution is the best.

We use it in our data center.

The security component is its most valuable feature.

I would like to see more integration with other Cisco products.

It is a very stable product.

I deployed it in a small environment (a lab), so I cannot comment on scalability.

Going from legacy data center stuff to Cisco ACI, I saw the value it could offer the company that I was working with.

The initial setup was a bit complex. ACI was just out at that time, and there wasn't support at that time. This was the first year it came out. The support and deployments in Africa weren't considerable and resources were a problem. I am from South Africa. So, it was something that we taught ourselves.

There is support for it now. 

It was implemented in-house.

We did not see ROI since this was in a lab.

Get more support from Cisco, as far as the product's concerned. Training is a must.

Our primary use case is for automating our data center. We are moving from a classic legacy data center to new data center, with Cisco UCS. The first implementation will have multiple implementations, then we will move ahead with a Multi-site implementation next year. 

We are still in the development phase.

It improves security and automation. It is stable and provides flexibility with different workloads. It is also more powerful from a security point of view.

The areas for improvement are automation and user-friendliness.

If I lose the connection from one side to the core, I can't use the other side to go to the core. I hope in the future, this will be fixed.

It is very stable.

I would rate the technical support as a nine out of ten.

The initial setup is complex, because we had to work with Cisco Professional Services to find the correct solution for our implementation.

We directly used Cisco Professional Services for our implementation. They are very professional.

We investigated different products and found that ACI can be used with different workloads (e.g., legacy permits) or with different systems, like Microsoft Hyper-V. Cisco ACI is more flexible as a product.

Pay attention to the implementation and interconnections between the data centers with this product.