Jenkins /Ansible for ACI Orchestration and for Automated Configuration Sanity Check / Pre-verification with NAE/ND and Git integration

March 29, 2021

Jenkins is an open-source Continuous Integration server written in Java.  With Jenkins you can send configurations to devices using Ansible/Terraform/Bash/Shell/SSH and a variety of other methods / scripts to any device.  Jenkins is very commonly used by developers for creating/testing/deploying code and is an integral part of Infrastructure As A Code.  Jenkins can also orchestrate … More Jenkins /Ansible for ACI Orchestration and for Automated Configuration Sanity Check / Pre-verification with NAE/ND and Git integration

Using ESGs (Endpoint Security Group) in ACI fabric to migrate from Network Centric to Application Centric

February 24, 2021

In Release 5.0 of ACI a new feature, ESGs was released.  This feature effectively allows us to decouple the security policy construct FROM EPGs which have a relationship to BDs  TO  ESGs which have a relationship to VRFs. I had planned to read up on this feature and rewrite the previous article that I had … More Using ESGs (Endpoint Security Group) in ACI fabric to migrate from Network Centric to Application Centric

Introduction To Cisco Nexus Dashboard And Installation, Integrating With Radius, Configuring Intersight And Site Onboarding

January 25, 2021

By Now you are probably already familiar with Cisco Application Service Engine.  We had previously written some articles on them: Deploying MSO on Cisco Application Service Engine (OVA based SE) — updated 1/12/2021 Deploying MSO on Cisco Application Service Engine ( AWS AMI Based SE) Deploying Cisco Application Service Engine (SE) for ACI – Fabric … More Introduction To Cisco Nexus Dashboard And Installation, Integrating With Radius, Configuring Intersight And Site Onboarding

Understanding ACI TCAM Utilization & Optimization

January 6, 2021

Being organized and creating consistent configurations is a great virtue in the Networking / SDN / Cloud and computing field.  ACI is no exception to that rule.  Haphazard, Inconsistent and thoughtless configurations will increase your work and complexity/understanding of your infrastructure once your  Fabric grows.  In addition it will make it more prone to failures … More Understanding ACI TCAM Utilization & Optimization

Upgrading ACI Fabric and MSO, Please Read This first.

December 28, 2020

This article is meant to point out items that you should pay attention to before upgrading your ACI Fabric and MSO Controllers.  The items listed here have been gained through first hand experience where I got pulled in to help customers upgrade and in some cases escalations, where customers had a “not such a smooth … More Upgrading ACI Fabric and MSO, Please Read This first.

Cisco cAPIC / Native Azure API Management for serverless Architecture integration

November 6, 2020

In this post, I will show how to Integrate Cisco Cloud ACI Fabric with Native Azure APIM. From cAPIC release 5.1.2 Native Azure Services are supported for cAPIC integration. Previous to this release EPGs were identified by label matching only (ip /region/custom label). For that reason, Native Azure Service support was not possible. This meant … More Cisco cAPIC / Native Azure API Management for serverless Architecture integration

Cisco cAPIC / Azure Kubernetes Service Integration with Azure File Share Services for Apps

November 2, 2020

In this post, I will cover a full Azure Kubernetes Service Integration Practical deployment with File Share Services for Apps.   We will cover the following topics: Cisco cAPIC/Azure AKS integration (step by step) Creating File share to be used the K8s apps (we’ll spin up a simple nginx deployment with 2 replicas and load the … More Cisco cAPIC / Azure Kubernetes Service Integration with Azure File Share Services for Apps

How to apply a cert to the ASE version of MSO?

October 22, 2020

I was recently asked this question by a customer and I’m documenting how to do this for the benefit of everyone.  Before proceeding let’s gather all the items that we will need to make this happen. Update 10/23/2020:   For MSO (on SE) certs the last action is to activate the key-ring.   Unfortunately, that part will … More How to apply a cert to the ASE version of MSO?