Tag: ACI

[DC] ACI and APIC

ACI > Contructs

Tenant VDC
Context VRF
Bridge domain Subnet / SVI
EPG Broadcast domain / VLAN
Contract ACL
L2 External EPG 802.1Q trunk
L3 External EPG L3 Routed link

Fundamentals:

  • Open and Secure
  • Apps and Infrastructure
  • Physical and Virtual
  • On-Site and Cloud

Bringing up the Fabric:

  • Physical requirements
    • Power
    • Cabling + mgmt0
    • Rack and Stack
  • Power on/Connect to APICs
    • How many APICs
    • Fabric Name
    • Admin Password
    • Setup Fabric Network ( IP & VLAN)
  • Log into the APIC (HTTP out of band)
    • NTP
    • Route Reflectors
    • MGMT IP Fabric
    • Leaf and Spine Name/#

Fabric Discovery

  • Zero touch fabric, the controller does everything
  • APIC uses LLDP to get information about the leaf switches it’s connected to
  • First the leaf is dicovered and will be named (101)
  • Then the Spine is connected and named  (201)
  • Then the leafs are discovered (103,104)

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Datacenter Design VI ( SDN )

Software Defined Networking

  • Advantages SDN
    • Automatic Infrastructure Provisioning
    • Multi-tenant enviornments
    • Flexible Placement of servers ( Mobility )
    • Health monitoring of applications
    • Application to NET ( Southbound ) and NET to application ( Northbound ) communication
  • Cisco’s SDN implementation: Application Centric Infrastructure ( ACI )

Three key ingredients for ACI

  • Nexus 9000 series / 9300 / 9500.
  • Aplication Policy Infrastructure Controller ( APIC ).
    • Cisco recommends a minimum of three APIC servers.
  • Policy Model ( “What talks to what and how” ).

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