This intensive 2-day Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) course will introduce students to the basic concepts behind Multi-Fabric topologies, design and deployment. Through a combination of lecture and hands-on labs configuring ACI policy-based architecture, students will learn the configuration and use cases behind Multi-Pod, Multi-Site, Remote Leaf, Virtual Pod and ACI Mini-Fabric designs and recommended best practices.
The course will include intense hands-on labs of all the key functions necessary to bring up a working ACI Multi-Site fabric using ACI APIC simulators. Students will be provided with their own ACI APIC simulator and will work in pairs to create their own fabric and then join that fabric into a Multi-Site topology with their partner.
Prerequisites:
The knowledge and skills that the learner should have before attending this course are as follows:
- DCACI – Implementing Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure
Module 1: ACI Overview and Review
- SDN/Network Overlay Primer
- ACI Terminology and Review
- ACI Policy Review
- Logical Model Review
Module 2: ACI Fabric Topologies
- Evolution of ACI Topologies
- ACI Multi-Pod
- ACi Multi-Site
- ACI Remote Leaf
- ACI Virtual Pod (vPod)
- ACI Mini-Fabric
- ACI Multi-Cloud
- ACI Anywhere
Module 3: Cisco ACI Multi-Pod Control and Data Planes
- APIC Database Design
- ACI Multi-Pod Inter-Pod Network (IPN)
- ACI Multi-Pod Control and Data Planes
- Multi-Pod External Routing
- Multi-Pod and VMM Integration
- Multi-Pod and Remote Leaf
Module 4: MultiPod vs. MultiSite
- Multi-Pod Use Cases
- Multi-Site Use Cases
- When to Use Multi-Pod vs. Multi-Site
- Typical Migration Scenarios
Module 5: Cisco ACI Multi-Site Deployment
- ACI Multi-Site Key Concepts
- ACI Multi-Site Orchestrator (MSO)
- MSO Deployment Considerations
- Inter-Site Connectivity
- ACI Multi-Site Control and Data Planes
- MSO Schemas and Templates
- Connecting Multi-Site to the External Layer 3 Domain
- Connecting Multi-Site to Network Services
- Multi-Site and Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) Integration
- Multi-Pod and Multi-Site Integration
Lab Outline:
Labs are designed to assure learners a whole practical experience, through the following practical activities:
- ACI Fabric Discovery for Multi-Site Deployment
- Demo MultiPod
- MSC Cluster Deployment for Multi-Site
- Adding Sites into MSO Clusters
- Multi-Site Day-0 Configurations
- Policy Deployment with MSO
- Deploying L3-Only Policies Across Sites
- Deploying Layer-2 Stretched Objects Across Sites
- Importing Tenant Configuration from Existing Sites
- Multi-Site External Communication
This course is designed for network and data center and cloud systems architects, server administrators, application developers and security engineers as well as virtualization administrators, network architects, systems engineers and field engineers who are selling, implementing and/or managing Cisco ACI Multi-Fabric solutions.