Cisco ACI helps dramatically accelerate application deployment

Enterprise business is driven by applications. Their proper functioning and speed are a prerequisite for customer satisfaction. Based on this, customers either choose to use your services again or run away to your competitors. Dozens more apps are used by your employees to push your business machine forward. If a company uses a traditional network infrastructure, the machine is starved for air anytime you need to deploy new applications or change the network configuration. Reducing the time required for such a change from weeks to hours (or minutes) can only be done in a software-defined network environment.

Taking your foot off the brake

Cisco responded to the “reign of applications” by developing Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI). As the name suggests, this is a solution focusing on applications. The key benefit is summarized by Josef Venzhöfer, the Technical Solutions Architect at Cisco:

“A typical situation in a company is one where the launch of a new application in IT is slowed down not so much by the app development or by getting the computing environment ready, but rather by implementing the network environment for the new application. With ACI, app deployment is dramatically accelerated because the network can keep up with all the other areas.”

The controller plays the main part

The key idea behind a software-defined network is to separate the data and the control layer from one another. In the software-defined control layer, the administrator applies all the operating instructions, security policies, user access settings, and updates without having to interfere with individual network elements.

On the hardware side, the key building blocks are the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC), which takes care of the operation of all physical switches and virtual or container network environments and top-of-the-line Nexus 9000 switches. APIC ensures the consistent application of all configuration changes in respective parts of the ACI infrastructure – i.e. Nexus 9000 switches running in ACI mode. This radically streamlines infrastructure deployment and management and speeds up the application deployment cycle.

APIC-based control is the key to acceleration and automation. The administrator uses it to model their intended setup, which is subsequently “translated” by the controller into the network language (e.g. VLAN, VRF, ACL, and BGP) and programmed into the Nexus 9000 switches. The second important component is analytics (Nexus Dashboard Insights), which can analyse the APIC configuration and the status of the Nexus 9000 switches at set intervals and model the effect of the intended configuration even before implementation, pointing out any potential problems.

The strong four

Cisco ACI provides all the general benefits of network virtualization. This includes improved network traffic performance, better security control, reduced cost of hardware, better connection scalability, and centralized network and configuration management. In terms of practical application, these four strong features stand out:

• There is an optional centralized security policies deployment for individual layers of applications (e.g. web, applications, and database). ACI makes it possible to segment the application environment to elevate security. This is to separate the front end accessed by users – and potentially exposed to online threats – from the application logic and the database, which must have the maximum level of security. Centralization allows for the rapid deployment of new applications while also freeing resources when the application is no longer needed.
• Since we live in the cloud era, the ability to extend network and segmentation policies with ACI to all platforms used in the public cloud is an invaluable benefit for companies. Network operators with ACI at their disposal do not have to study the details of individual clouds and puzzle over whether it is Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud, because they communicate with the network using the same ACI “language”.
• There is a faster scaling and deployment of new resources (such as servers). If I need to extend the infrastructure to increase capacity or improve performance, ACI automatically configures the newly connected servers in line with the existing policies applied throughout the rest of the network. The same goes for policy changes and upgrades. When new policies are introduced, they can be quickly applied throughout the infrastructure using ACI.
• Unified ACI management provides administrators with an overview of their network from a single point. With Nexus Dashboard Insights (NDI), the administrator receives an analytical tool for monitoring the operation of the entire infrastructure, which significantly speeds up troubleshooting and prevents many problems. The environment can proactively simulate the impact of a specific change in the network configuration. If NDI detects that the change would have a negative impact, it can easily identify and modify the part of the configuration change that would cause it. Without NDI, the administrator can roll back to the previous functional ACI configuration stored in the APIC. But then they would need to identify the negative impact and the configuration problem themselves.

Cisco ACI lets administrators achieve significant savings in costs and operating time. Automation helped by APIC takes care of most of the routine activities, and Nexus Dashboard Insights makes it easier to keep the environment alive. Network operators do not have to run between servers; instead, they can focus on more important and strategic activities.

“No major project in any data centre can do without a detailed mapping of application flows and dependencies. Clarity is a by-product appreciated by both application owners and infrastructure managers,” adds Marianna Richtáriková, Network Business Unit Manager at Soitron.

For more information about Cisco ACI, including an explanatory short video, please visit this website. For more practical experience and specific ACI implementation case studies, visit us at Soitron. We have clearly summarized the main benefits of Cisco ACI in our webinar, which we have recorded for your convenience.