Cisco ACI Reviews

Cisco ACI is the next-generation SDN-based solution that Cisco uses for almost every style of data center or server farm. It's similar to what we used when we wanted to build a facility containing our computing storage and everything we already have in our data center. However, this one is different because it uses innovative technology that combines VXLAN, MP-BGP, and SDN.

It has an amazing graphical user interface, and it integrates well with other brands like VMware. You can even integrate ACI with NSX in the latest versions. ACI integrates with NSX in version 5 and above. You can also use it with Kubernetes, OpenShift, and Cloud Foundry. It also has agents for cloud platforms like AWS and Azure.

ACI's most valuable feature is its SDN capabilities. Everything is on your software design controller. Everything is blocked by default until you allow it. 

The integration has room for improvement. There should be a drag-and-drop interface for configuring the integration where you connect some arrows to boxes, and the system takes care of the configuration. 

Right now, they have something similar, but it's limited. You have to take care of some things yourself. That is one area that the solution can work on. It's easy now, but it's much easier in other solutions.

Cisco ACI is highly stable. I've deployed it at six or seven data centers, and we've never had any issues with stability. It's a hundred percent reliable, but you have to consider some things. You can't deploy any version of your box and expect it to be stable because Cisco has some rules. For example, Cisco has a recommended version. It means that other versions may contain bugs.

Starting in 2000, if you open a switch, you will see a small motherboard, and the switch will work forever. There was no configuration. You just ran a few commands, and everything was done. Today, when you open a switch, you see a whole computer. For example, you can deploy the Cisco Catalyst 9000 with Python script. So there have been a lot of improvements and a lot of things.

Also, when they update ACI, you will face some bugs because this isn't a limited motherboard. Now, the motherboard is like a computer. You can expect some bugs, but you won't have that many issues compared to other solutions if you use the recommended version.

The initial setup is effortless. You can deploy ACI even if you have limited routing knowledge because everything is done automatically. The underlay network is IS-IS, while the overlay network is BGP. You don't need to know anything about IS-IS or BGP. 

You need at least two people to deploy ACI. More than two engineers might be required. Your VM engineer should join you if you're working with a virtualized environment,  and your storage network engineer should take part if the project involves storage. In total, it should be maybe two to three people.

I rate Cisco ACI nine out of 10.

In the last nine months, I have done two projects with Cisco ACI. Both of them were banking systems. I'm capable of selling, installing, and deploying Cisco ACI, so I know all the licenses and prices as well as how to compare the prices and establish a pre-sales team and also doing the deployment and supporting the ACA solutions. 

The most important aspect of Cisco ACI in my opinion is the ease of management. Other solutions, like traditional solutions and pricier solutions—or even fabric and PAT—you have to do many configurations on a box-to-box basis, With Cisco ACI, you go on the AP and do some "next, next finish" installer. Everything is done without having to know about the VXLAN, AVPN, MP-BGP, or ISI. In previous solutions, you had to know all these things and deploy all of them yourself, so you needed a deep knowledge of VRF and all the other BGP things. You would have to remember everything about the detail configuration, but now we just do some clicks and everything is there.

The other benefit to me is the white-listing solution that the ACI can handle. It's important to have a good knowledge of IPS and DDoS things. I always prefer to stop traffic mid-way instead of putting everything on the firewall and blocking it on the firewall. In my opinion, a firewall has very limited resources and it is possible to run out of resources easily with a simple attack, like HPing. But when you do white-listing, you just greenlight your needed traffic, not all the traffic. So this is a very big difference. And also of course, nowadays everyone is talking about the ACR tool Heat that allows customized configuration to style. These are the major things and some other things like very low latency and few hops. 

Before version 5, you could manage your firewall or load balancer from the AP. It was very basic and now they removed the whole features in the new version, so you cannot manage your load balance or firewall from your AP on L2, L4, and L7 services. They can improve this because it's a little bit hard to send traffic with PBR or EPB to the box. They're returning back. That's one area where they could improve.

I've mostly worked with Cisco solutions in the last 15 or 17 years. I do everything from deploying enterprise solutions and developing data centers to building cloud applications with Cisco ACI or data solutions at the center, like MPP, GPU, AVPN, and VXLANs. Security-wise, I started with ASA and IPS then upgraded to Five Power and Snort. I also have a lot of experience with Ice and Identity solutions as well as ESA and WSA.

I believe that Cisco ACI is highly scalable. Anytime that you want to add bandwidth, you just need to add a spine and anytime you need more ports, you just need to add that. And the very cool feature is the different typology that ACI can support now. Before that, it was a stretch, especially the typology. Nowadays, everyone is talking about the IPN and the multi-part.

For bigger operations with different data centers in different locations, you can deploy multi-site and it also offers some support remotely. I've never deployed it, but you can use a virtual peak that gives this and also enables a multi-tier. That's also very helpful with customers that don't want to spend a lot of money for the cable or transceivers. And the hardware is massive. I really love the hardware. The MTBF is huge. Everything is stable.

I was also in Malaysia for many years as a CTO at a company before COVID and was a Cisco partner. So I know how to create tickets. I've experienced how they respond and escalate tickets. I was the business owner and promised stability and availability to my customers. I asked and they opened a ticket for me, and I'd give it to my friend. I only needed to interact with Cisco techs very few times. But for licensing things and hosting, I use support all the time.

In most cases, you just plug in the cables and it even has the cable cave, a guard system, attached spine to spine. In my opinion, the initial part that involves creating the overlay is very easy compared to an MP-BGP or VPN solution. So in that case, it definitely takes hours, especially if the site that you are working with ACI is multi-tenant. If it's multi-tenant and you are not using ACI or an MPG EVP solution, then it's hard for you to take care of the road fillers. And a BGP road target must be very accurate, but here you don't deal with anything. This is also very great about ACI, which takes less networking. There's no port. Everything is tied to the object. So that's very easy. I believe that it is exactly the same environment and same thing that we face with the Cisco Blade system. You can create a foreign device and attach it to any server on the Blade and everything works fine. 

I would rate Cisco ACI nine out of 10. I'm always trying to push customers to use Cisco solutions. When I'm talking to my clients or anyone else who is thinking about using Cisco solutions, I always say 10 out of 10, but I believe that there is some space for improvement. 

Primarily, what we like is the ability to do micro-segmentation. We have many different application endpoints, and one of the key use cases for us was to be able to classify the application endpoints into arbitrary buckets of different silos. We need to be able to ensure that different endpoints will go into, let's say, a production silo, versus a development silo, versus a test silo. That was one of the use cases.

The function above and beyond that is that you get things like automation as part of the SDN framework. Therefore, you get the data center overlay that is built automatically and provisioned automatically from the automation capability that's built-in.

The solution has all of the baseline functionalities for any sort of SDN capability. 

The stability is quite good.

The initial setup is straightforward.

One of the areas that need work is feature flexibility. If you want to do things like routing policies it's not cookie-cutter, however, you want to customize routing policies. It becomes a little bit more constrained due to the feature set, the routing policy feature set within ACI, doesn't allow for you to get very customized when it comes to, let's say, failover type scenarios. However, that's just an artifact of the product maturity. It's going to take some time before the product becomes mature and they have the ability to have more customized features enabled. At version 4.0, these features were not yet available. We ended up having to basically export the routing functionality, the more advanced routing functions, outside of ACI and just put it into the routing infrastructure around it.

The initial setup is not intuitive.

Technical support needs to be more helpful. It's rare that you get a knowledgeable person.

It would be nice for them to provide visibility at a cheaper price point. Visibility is something that everybody wants to achieve with their workload. One of the benefits of SDN is supposedly the ability to collect all that telemetry and correlate it to something that is actionable and meaningful. That's a key requirement, however, the bar is so high in terms of costs. In our environment, we opted out of it as it's so expensive, however, it would be nice, as, if you don't have visibility, then how do you properly segment your workload? The minute you start segmenting, you kind of cut off workload communication. If your goal is micro-segmentation and putting your workload into arbitrary silos, and if you don't have the visibility, then it will be very difficult to achieve. Therefore, if you don't have visibility and you want micro-segmentation and you don't want to pay, then ACI is not your solution.

I've been using the solution for two years at this point.

The solution is stable. We don't have issues with it crashing or freezing.

While supposedly it's scalable, the program is not. I don't have any data point that I can provide for scalability within ACI, as our environment is fairly small.

Technical support is hit or miss. Sometimes you can open a ticket and you will not have to escalate it three or four different times before you get somebody that is competent. I would say that's 85% of the time, however, the other 15% of the time you get lucky and you get somebody that knows what they're talking about.

I have some experience with VMware. I'd describe it as more intuitive and easier to configure, however, it's a different solution as it's software-based as opposed to ACI which is hardware-based. 

The solution's initial setup is straightforward. It is not difficult. One other area that I would say is a negative is the way that they have their setup. It's not intuitive. It's very complicated and if you want to provision an interface or something like that and get that interface, it requires a bunch of steps that are very counter-intuitive. It's not user-friendly.

The pricing could be a bit cheaper.

If I compare ACI to a VMware NSX-T type solution, I don't know if there's a differentiator there compared to NSX. I will say that NSX has much higher numbers of differentiation, as they have visibility into the workload at the hypervisor. Having used ACI, we were looking at solution sets that will give us specific capabilities beyond that. The value of NSX is it will give you the visibility component.

The version that I was working on is a 40 version, however, the company is at a 50 version at this point.

If you are looking for a solution that will give you the ability to have really good visibility into your workload, how your workload performs and functions, ACI doesn't give you that level of granularity as compared to, for instance, a solution like VMware NSX. For them to provide visibility, you're going to have to spend a lot of money on Tetration, which is another solution that they try to force on you. If visibility is one of your key requirements, then you might want to rethink your data center SDN solution for ACI.

I'd rate the solution at a six out of ten.

We deploy Cisco ACI within our customer's data centers, providing them with the capability to configure the software-defined network as per their defined requirements. This solution empowers customers to centrally monitor and control the network without the need for individual edge management. Moreover, it offers scalability, allowing for easy expansion in the future.

The flexibility of adding new components with minimal impact on existing services running in the data center is a key benefit of this ACI-based solution. Customers appreciate the unified control and management provided by ACI, allowing them to oversee the entire data center centrally. This solution facilitates seamless communication between various services and ensures future scalability with minimal configurations and operational effort. The cost savings for customers are notable, particularly in instances where adding ports or making operational adjustments is a straightforward process, requiring minimal resources. ACI stands out as a state-of-the-art, high-performance, and highly scalable solution.

Its scalability and reliability capabilities should be enhanced.

We have been working with it for approximately eight years.

Occasionally, we encounter the need to reset certain programs due to bugs within one of the implemented data features. This requires performing upgrades approximately every six months to address and resolve these issues. I would rate its stability capability eight out of ten.

While I acknowledge that the solution is scalable, there are occasional bugs and the need for upgrades or adjustments approximately every five years. We operate on multiple levels, with small, medium, and high scalability organizations. Typically, we opt for the highest scalable level during our implementations. I would rate its scalability at seven out of ten.

I would rate its customer service and support nine out of ten.

Positive

Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

We use the solution’s microsegment for the security of the servers in the same VLAN.

Micro-segmentation is the solution’s most valuable feature.

We faced some issues while configuring the microsegment. 

The solution should provide a visibility tool for troubleshooting.

I have been using the solution for five years.

The solution's stability is okay.

When we contacted support for troubleshooting, the issue was escalated to the next level in four hours. However, the last time we had a problem, the support took a long time to investigate.

The initial setup is complex because it is a software-defined network.

I suggest that Cisco delete and add a new EPG. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We help customers obtain, renew, and upgrade. This is a multi-cloud software-defined data center. If a customer is in banking, we can separate and secure data centers for multiple sites.

I really like the usage of the application. It offers a good focus on applications and has a driven policy model. It is capable of automation and application-driven. Customers can focus on the applications, and this benefits the end customers.

We really like the GUI and the visibility we get in on the dashboards. You get real-time details on performance. 

The DevOps teams can integrate their own software in ACI. 

We can monitor which areas are working well. 

It can be used with Kubernetes.

We get a full holistic view of the ecosystem. 

Ideally, if it could be more aligned as a unit, it would be useful.

Compared to VMware, it needs more virtualization technologies. It cannot match that right now based on the hardware boxes that we use. It could be more virtualized. There is less flexibility as they have less virtualization.

The contract management could be better.

It needs to include log files.

The GUI could be better. The solution be more user-friendly.

We've seen a lot of trends in companies moving towards AI and cloud capabilities. If it could really focus on this area, it would continue to be a very good product. It would improve the cost-benefit of the product in the long run. They need to integrate with multiple cloud platforms. Better integration and compatibility across the board, in fact, would make it a better product.

I've used the solution for four to five years. The customers I work with use ACI.

I have found the stability to be good. I'd rate it nine out of ten. 

The scalability is pretty good. You should have two of the spines altogether. Then the leaves can expand when you want to have more bandwidth or more throughput requirement.

If you need more computing power or networking power in the data center, then you have to add the leaves. Of course, if you need more throughput power, it's a bit different. For example, if one spine has the power of 4GBs, the two spines, which are combined, give the power of 8GBs, if you want more throughput, for example, 50GBs, you just go and add a couple of spines to it to commit to that sort of power. 

We tend to work with medium to large organizations.

I'd rate the scalability seven out of ten.

Technical support has been good.

Positive

I haven't worked much with other solutions. I have worked with VMware NSX. It's similar, however, it is more flexible and is faster to set up.

The initial setup isn't too complex, depending on the user's background. If a person is comfortable with Cisco products, it won't be too hard. You do have to use the command line, which makes it a tedious task. That said, you have more advantages with configuration capabilities. 

I'd rate the process eight or nine out of ten in terms of ease of setup. For the most part, it takes five to six steps.

It doesn't take too long to set up the entire product. It's easier than the other areas of the Cisco portfolio. Cisco is also making deployments easier to handle in general. It might take a few days since it is software-defined. 

On a high level, if the customer has a lot of devices, it might take two to three hours, and then you need to integrate everything. It shouldn't take more than 30 minutes after that to deploy and get the devices integrated. It's just working on it and reviewing tasks, which takes some time. It's an ongoing process.

Cisco solutions are pretty pricy as you have to buy the AP controllers, leaves, spines, and hardware. I'd rate the pricing six out of ten in terms of affordability.

We are resellers and consultants. We provide insights to clients regarding this product. We don't use the solution ourselves; we help the customer use it and realize its value. We're Cisco partners. 

We don't use a specific version of the product. Typically, we use the latest when it comes out.

I'd recommend the solution for users that have a traditional setup and need a dashboard. Many banks have complex data centers. They'd benefit from moving to this solution.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

The pricing factor is an issue. It's also not as good as VMware as it is not as virtualized. However, the Cisco portfolio is quite strong.

We use this solution to achieve a properly defined data center, so we basically use it for SDN. 

The basic functionality that is the most useful is creating a virtual network on a physical device. We use it for Software-Defined Networking where we have a centralized controller, and the rest of the switches are just for packing traffic. When you have a centralized controller, it's easy to manage.

The virtualization part of it is still all hardware-based. You have to buy the switches, and they have to be Cisco switches. You cannot roll the Software-Defined Network and network virtualization over onto any other product. For example, if I have a mix of Juniper and Cisco in my network, they are of the same physical fabric layer, but when I want to virtualize, it's quite difficult. You cannot do it. There are solutions like NSX that can sit pretty on any physical layer, but Cisco SDN will only work with its own devices, so that's a downside. They need to be able to achieve virtualization end-to-end with Cisco ACI.

I have been using this product for over four years.

I rate the solution a nine and a half out of ten for stability. 

You can scale the solution, but you cannot scale to other products. I rate the solution an eight out of ten for scalability. 

For backup you might want two people, but one person can handle all of the maintenance. Everything is managed centrally. This is a backend product, so not everyone knows they are using Cisco ACI. The organization I currently work for has over 10,000 employees, and practically everyone is involved in usage of the solution. 

If you have the right license and premium support, the tech support is a nine out of ten.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the initial setup as a nine. It was very easy. There are some external factors you need to connect, like cables. However, with the push of a button, in less than 15 minutes, you can roll out the basic Cisco configuration.

It's a graphic installation. You will see buttons: "Next," "Next," "Next." It's very easy to get up and running, just like setting up a phone. "Do you want to install this?" "Yes." "Do you want to enable this?" "Yes." "Do you want to configure this?" Unlike before where you had to configure Cisco switches one at a time, now you manage and configure it centrally, and you have a template to work with.

Sometimes we handle the deployment ourselves, but for the current deployment we are rolling out, we have a system integrator. We have Cisco itself involved. 

The good thing about Cisco is that you can trade in your old products to replace them with ACI. On a scale of one to ten, where one is inexpensive and ten is expensive, I would rate them a two. 

We considered VMware NSX, but some believe that VMware is vulnerable, so we stuck with Cisco. 

I would 100% recommend Cisco ACI to other users. I would rate this solution as a ten out of ten. 

Cisco ACI is primarily used for automation of the data center networking environment.

Cisco ACI's best features include its network-centric approach and micro-segmentation.

Cisco ACI would be improved by providing a cloud offering; otherwise, it risks becoming a niche product.

I've been working with Cisco ACI since 2017.

Cisco ACI has matured and is a very stable product.

Cisco ACI is scalable.

Cisco's technical support is very responsive and quick to resolve issues.

Positive

The setup can be complex if you take an application-centric approach, but a network-centric approach is relatively straightforward.

Cisco's pricing is very expensive.

I'd give Cisco ACI a rating of eight out of ten.