Starting from ACI Release 5.0(1) Cisco has started supporting ACI SR-MPLS handoff for L3 Outs. If you are not familiar with Segment Routing concepts do not despair. Once you see the benefits of using Segment Routing you will realize why this is such a good way of doing L3 Outs. If you are familiar with … More ACI SR-MPLS Handoff for L3 Outs
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 had a number of folks reach out to me to discuss this. For that reason, I decided to do a short write-up … More ACI TEP Pool Discussion
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
In this blog post, I’ll discuss a method of moving from Network Centric ACI Deployment to APP Centric ACI deployment using combination of ACI Features: MicroSegmentation/PrefferedGroups/ContractMasters. When ACI Fabric is initially deployed, it is either deployed in a Greenfield or Brownfield method. Green Field means it’s a brand new deployment. Brown Field means that the … More ACI NetCentric 2 AppCentric Using MicroSegmentation
In ACI the external Routing Peer to the router is done through border leaves with a object called L3Out. L3Out has an object in it called the L3Out InstP also known as the External EPG. In the External EPG you can put in Prefixes and choose the scope based on your intended goal. Under the … More Understanding Scope Of Prefixes in L3Out External EPG in ACI
One of the most frequent topics that comes up when I am discussing ACI with customers, is, “How can we better operationalize ACI?”. In other words, how can we take what we have with ACI, and make it simpler to consume for not only ourselves, but for our Ops staff? For those new to ACI … More Operationalizing ACI: Enhanced Endpoint Tracker
The top question all new ACI customers have (or should have), is what are the configurations that should be enabled on my fabric from the beginning? With that in mind, we’re going use this post as a living document with configurations that are considered “Best Practice” to have enabled. We will keep this document updated … More ACI Best Practice Configurations
MisCabling Protocol (or MCP) detects loops from external sources (i.e., misbehaving servers, external networking equipment running STP) and will err-disable the interface on which ACI receives its own packet. Enabling this feature is a best practice and it should be enabled globally and on all interfaces, regardless of the end device. MCP limits the blast … More Using MCP (MisCabling Protocol) for ACI
This statement is especially true when it comes to naming objects inside of ACI. Naming your ACI objects in a meaningful and thoughtful way will increase the supportability of your fabric and even help the fabric to become “self-documenting”. Having naming conventions that are haphazard, will have an equally negative impact. To complicate matters, … More ACI Naming Convention Best Practices
The CIMC is Cisco’s answer to lights-out management for UCS servers, including the UCS servers that house the APICs. For troubleshooting the APIC, most engineers assume you must have direct console (i.e., physical access) or use the Java (or later HTTP)-based KVM Console to get true OOB access to your APIC, however, this is not … More Using Serial-over-Lan (SOL) on the CIMC to access the APIC (instead of KVM console)