March update on ACI / Nexus 9000 news

Hi there,

I hope you had a happy Easter! For the ones having trouble keeping up with the fast and steady news flow on Cisco ACI and Nexus 9000, here my personal compilation of news in March. Enjoy!

• Breaking news: Cisco acquiring Embrane: http://blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco-announces-intent-to-acquire-embrane
• ACI passed the PCI DSS certification!
• Feature Navigator is there for the N9K in NXOS mode! Check your familiar link http://www.cisco.com/go/fn
• A bunch of books for reading:
  • “Operating Cisco ACI”, PDF (21MB): http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/switches/datacenter/aci/apic/sw/1-x/Operating_ACI/Cisco_OperatingApplicationCentricInfrastructure.pdf
  • “Troubleshooting Cisco ACI” (HTML/PDF/EPUB): https://readthedocs.org/projects/aci-troubleshooting-book/downloads/
  • “SDN for Dummies”: http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/solutions/collateral/data-center-virtualization/application-centric-infrastructure/sdnfordummies.pdf
• Customer success stories:
  • Yet anoher ACI customer success story, with Tieto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwmAC5pa5QM
  • Key Info (ACI): http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/solutions/collateral/data-center-virtualization/application-centric-infrastructure/greater-networking-visibility-control.pdf
  • A compilation of 3 success stories in sdxcentral: https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/featured/cisco-aci-use-cases-videos/2015/03/
• Cisco DC announcement of the new level of the Microsoft partnership – the “Integrated Cloud Platform”:
  • http://newsroom.cisco.com/release/1608152/Cisco-and-Microsoft-Extend-Relationship-with-New-Cloud-_2
  • http://www.businesscloudnews.com/2015/03/12/cisco-microsoft-partner-on-aci-azure-architecture-mashup/
  • http://www.zdnet.com/article/cisco-microsoft-target-cloud-vendors-in-expanded-partnership/
• ACI applications in Github:
  • Snapback: configuration snapshot and rollback for ACI: http://acitoolkit.readthedocs.org/en/latest/snapback.html
  • Do you know what the ACI End Point tracker is? Check it out here: http://datacenter.github.io/acitoolkit/docsbuild/html/endpointtracker.html
• VXLAN and EVPN control plane (in NXOS mode):
  • EANTC Interoperability Tests in MPLS World Congress, including VXLAN EVPN: http://www.eantc.de/fileadmin/eantc/downloads/events/2011-2015/MPLSSDN2015/EANTC-MPLSSDN2015-WhitePaper_online.pdf
  • Is VXLAN a valid Data Center Interconnect technology? Read Yves’ perspective, very educational: http://yves-louis.com/DCI/?p=648
  • Adding on the previous one: can VXLAN be enhanced with a control plane, so that it becomes a valid DCI technology? http://yves-louis.com/DCI/?p=965
  • A blog entry by Lukas from February, but I didnt know it. Great summary on VXLAN+EVPN: http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/vxlanevpn-standards-based-overlay-with-control-plane
  • I keep learning on the great solution VXLAN EVPN is. Here my latest learnings (I apologize if this is old stuff for you):
    • IPv6 supported today (no ND suppression yet though)
    • Local VLAN ID significance today: great for migrations
    • VPC support today: as with classic VPC (as opposed to ACI-based VPC) you need a peer link, plus an anycast IP address for both peers
• Cisco blog entries on the Disaster Recovery use case for ACI:
  • http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/federated-aci-fabrics-for-dual-data-center-deployments-a-disaster-recovery-aci-use-case
  • http://blogs.cisco.com/cloud/aci-simplifies-networking-for-business-continuity
  • BTW, have a look at the demo here, just awesome: https://www2.wwt.com/video-aci-active-active-demo/
• Some public link compilation here, useful to start on ACI: http://adaptingit.com/where-to-go-for-cisco-aci-information/
• With 1.0.3f the Cobra (Python SDK for ACI) download links have changed:
  • https://<apic>/cobra/_downloads/index.html
  • http://<apic>/cobra/_downloads/acicobra-1.0_3f-py2.7.egg
  • http://<apic>/cobra/_downloads/acimodel-1.0_3f-py2.7.egg
• Make sure you read this Cisco blog entry about new app architectures and Linux containers: http://blogs.cisco.com/cloud/open-framework
• About the N3K family: the new 3548-X (and its small brother 3524-X, which is the same hardware but only 24 ports enabled) is orderable. The main additions to the current portfolio are multicast NAT and latency monitoring
• Another blog entry, this one about the role of N9K and ACI in VCE’s Vblocks and VxBlocks: http://blogs.cisco.com/cloud/convergedsolutionsforcloud
• News from dCloud: the vSphere demo has been upgraded: amongst other things, the 1.0(3) APIC software is now used. That makes it my favorite ACI dCloud demo, next to the ACI+UCSD one.
• Learn ACI Toolkit in a Linux container! (kudos to Kevin Corbin). ACI toolkit is now available as a Docker container. The container image is automatically rebuilt whenever there are changes made to the toolkit, so it can help you and your customers stay up to date with the latest improvements to the toolkit. There are primarily two use cases:
  • Learning the ACI toolkit: The container can be used interactively to practice/learn. From any linux host (including boot2docker) run the following commands
    • docker pull dockercisco/acitoolkitdocker run –t –i
    • dockercisco/acitoolkit
  • As a base image for developing applications that run as docker containers: In your Dockerfile
• From the web
  • ACI for dummies: http://lucarelandini.blogspot.com/2015/03/aci-for-dummies.html. Thanks to Luca!
  • Ivan Pepelnjak on ACI stretched fabric: “a stretched fabric that actually works”: http://blog.ipspace.net/2015/03/cisco-aci-stretched-fabric-that.html
  • Post by Teren Bryson on “Cisco ACI in the real world”: http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/datacenter/cisco-aci-in-the-real-world.html
  • Lippis report on GBP, intent and automation: http://lippisreport.com/2015/03/lippis-report-223-an-open-approach-to-network-automation/?r=t
  • Blog in cisco.com by F5: http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/how-you-integrate-network-services-matters
  • STC and ACI in the press: http://www.pressreader.com/saudi-arabia/arab-news/20150308/281908771612047/TextView
  • Etisalat in Egypt joins the party too: https://www.arabfinance.com/news/newsdetails.aspx?id=294949&lang=en&repcat=egngc
  • Wipro launches ACI center: http://www.enterprisechannels.com/Moduleid/13392/ModuleType/News/Detail/Wipro-Launches-%E2%80%98Cisco-ACI-Lab%E2%80%99#.VQbr32R4ozA
  • White paper on integration between AVI Networks’ ADCs and ACI: https://avinetworks.com/media/pdfs/Avi_Networks_CADP_Cisco_ACI_TB.pdf
  • Interwiew to Scott Clark on ACDC (Application Centric Data Center, I love the acronym): http://cdn.coverstand.com/23209/248023/645db4e70f8900cd604c14778814b7f2ebe099ff.1.pdf
• Videos
  • Official Learning Network learning videos on ACI here: https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/learning_center/aci-training-videos
  • Using Ansible with ACI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGBYIxEsqU8
  • Citrix and ACI how-to videos (6 modules). Check Module 1 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLWQ1zwGni8
  • ACI troubleshooter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm9vvHj3LGM (thanks Igino)
  • Demo of Microsoft Azure integration with ACI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-2S5Fo98cIEmbrane and ACI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAJsYhNr8qc
  • How AVIT uses ACI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrzzkjbcbkkF5 discusses ACI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAjlQUCdwrQ
  • Demo on Disaster Recovery with ACI, using Python for transforming policy from one site to the other: https://communities.cisco.com/community/developer/blog/2015/03/11/federated-application-centric-infrastructure-aci-fabrics-for-dual-data-center-deployments
  • ACI API deep dive, by Paul Lesiak (1h): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-LJDPnKNfU
  • The people behind ACI: http://www.slideshare.net/Cisco/the-people-behind-cisco-aci
  • And you can this on Cisco BiDi, I love it (1:40): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKSGmgrDcV8