Recently I had the pleasure to work with the fine folks at the Cisco Proof of Concept labs in Research Triangle Park, NC. Because of the unique times we live in, this normally onsite event was constrained to a virtual event, where we set on WebEx meetings throughout the week and ran through various test scenarios and tested features.
In order to get the most out of the event, I asked if I could record a subset of the tests that we conducted on their ACI MultiPod setup, and they graciously agreed. With these videos you’ll see how much work they put into this lab setup; its not just ACI. It’s external devices (i.e., Cat9000s, ASRs, ISR routers), UCS C-series and B-series servers for the VMware environment; and finally, Spirent traffic generators. This was a huge undertaking, and it was a privilege to play in the lab for a week with this stuff!
Below is a diagram of the CPOC ACI MultiPod lab. Feel free to download and follow along.
I hope you enjoy these videos half as much as I did working with Luis, Javad, Stefan, and the rest of the wonderful team @ Cisco’s CPOC labs in RTP.
While we tried to make these videos independent and standalone, I do find that you’ll probably get the most out them in you follow them in an order. I’ve suggested the order below, but feel free to jump back and forth if you feel you find a topic you want to dive into.
Establishing Layer-2 Connectivity between the traditional network and ACI
CPOC Series: Establishing L2 connectivity into ACI
Migration into ACI: Layer-2 and Layer-3 GW migration
CPOC Series: L2 and L3 Migration into ACI
L3outs in ACI
CPOC Series: L3out configuration in ACI
VMM Integration
CPOC Series: VMM integration from ACI to VMware vSphere
CPOC Series: vMotion and vKernel configuration considerations between ACI and vSphere
vMotion from Pod1 to Pod2 in ACI
CPOC Series: ACI MultiPod with Live vMotion from one Pod to another
ACI MultiPod Architecture, Design Considerations, and Configuration Considerations
CPOC Series: ACI MultiPod Architecture
Using Host-based routing to Optimize Ingress Routing
CPOC Series: Using the Host-based routing feature in ACI to optimize ingress routing for MultiPod
Using HealthScores to troubleshoot inside of ACI
CPOC Series: Using Healthscores in ACI to troubleshoot issues
APIC Failure Testing – Taking out all of the APICs in the cluster
CPOC Series: APIC Failure Testing with No active APICs in the cluster