Updates: 01/21/2022: Added Notes on Multisite and Multipod parameters. Also, how to look at APIC initial setup parameters from ssh to APIC. This is a rather old topic, relevant only for day 0 setup of ACI. However, now that a lot of new customers are implementing ACI, this topic is again coming up and I’ve … More ACI TEP Pool Discussion
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
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
Changes: 11/30/2021 with updated information on Ansible and Terraform In a previous article, I had introduced and guided on how to install Cisco Nexus Dashboard. In this post I will discuss and do a short guidance on installing Cisco MSO on Cisco ND. Installation is really simple as you will see in a bit. It’s … More Cisco MultiSite Orchestrator on Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Updates: 5/18/2021: Deciphering ND Licensing 4/14/2021: Please use Release 2.0.1d, not release 2.0.1b (which got deferred) On CCO downloads, please search for Nexus Dashboard. 2.0.1d can be found at: https://software.cisco.com/download/home/286327743/type/286328258/release/2.0(1d) 2.0(2) should be out anytime now By Now you are probably already familiar with Cisco Application Service Engine. We had previously written some articles on … More Introduction To Cisco Nexus Dashboard And Installation, Integrating With Radius, Configuring Intersight And Site Onboarding
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
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.
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
In this post, I will cover a full Native Azure Kubernetes Service Integration Practical deployment with Azure Native 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 … More Cisco cAPIC / Azure Kubernetes Service Integration with Azure File Share Services for Apps
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?