Course Overview
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) has evolved from the original concepts of SDN to providing centralised automation and policy-driven application profiles. This delivers speed and agility in the data centre when deploying applications and business services.
This dynamic one day course is designed to provide an understanding of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) for Account Managers, System Engineers and Data Centre Architects.
The morning session is for AMs and SEs while the afternoon session for SEs, dives deeper into the Cisco ACI architecture and components, Nexus 9000 product family, ACI protocols and open APIs. Learn about the business drivers for SDN and how it differs from a traditional Data Centre architecture. Learn also how Cisco ACI compares with other SDN solutions and the business benefits of deploying Cisco ACI within the Data Centre.
Course Objectives
Objectives of the class:
- Understand the business drivers behind a Software Defined Networking approach to defining an application centric environment
- Understand the Cisco ACI architecture and how Cisco ACI has evolved from the original SDN concepts
- Compare Cisco ACI to traditional 2-tier and 3-tier Data Center architectures
- Compare Cisco ACI to competing solutions including VMware NSX
- Learn how to handle objections to an SDN architecture and respond to FUD about Cisco ACI
- Identify typical use cases and describe how a traditional Data Center can be integrated with Cisco ACI
- Understand the business benefits of deploying Cisco ACI in the Data Center
- Describe the value proposition for Cisco ACI to the application owners
- Understand how application policies and contracts are used to provide services and define data flow in an ACI environment
- Describe the ACI protocols and open APIs used for communication within an ACI environment
- Describe the Cisco ACI components, including the APIC and Nexus 9K product family
- Describe the Cisco ACI partner ecosystem and how it helps to provide an open architecture