ACI Design and Deployment (4 Day)

Course Description
This is a 4 day online course designed for engineers who will be implementing and managing the Cisco ACI solution. This is a hands-on course in which attendees will bring-up and using ACI constructs deploy applications on an ACI fabric.

Prerequisites
The knowledge and skills that you must have before attending this course are as follows:

  • L2 and L3 Networking Concepts
  • Familiarity with Server Virtualization
  • VMware Administration and Networking (vSwitch, DVS) Concepts
  • L4-7 Services Concepts
  • Familiarity with Cisco UCS

Course Objectives
After this course you should be able to understand:

  • ACI Concepts and Architecture
  • Describe ACI hardware components
  • Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC)
  • Fabric bring up and Operations
  • Application Deployment using ACI constructs
  • VMM domain (VMware) Integration
  • Programmability features available on ACI
  • Describe Integrating L4-7 services
  • ACI connectivity to external (L2/L3) networks
  • Programmability features of ACI for DevOps

Course Type
Instructor-Led Training, Online Class with Hands-on Lab

Duration: 4 Days

Who should attend
The primary audience for this course is as follows:

  • Data Center Architects
  • Cloud Infrastructure Architects
  • Network Engineers
  • System Administrators
  • Storage Administrators

Register [San Jose]

Register [Chicago]

Course Content

  • Module 1: ACI Overview
    • SDN Primer
    • ACI Overview and Terminology
    • What is ACI trying to solve

  • Module 2: ACI Fabric Switches
    • Nexus 9000 Hardware Overview
    • Hardware Installation

  • Module 3: ACI Policy Model
    • Understanding the ACI Policy Model
    • Enforcing Policy through Contracts

  • Module 4: Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC)
    • APIC Software and Hardware Architecture
    • Fabric Discovery and Initialization
    • OpFlex – Declartive policy informaiton model
    • APIC Northbound API
    • APIC GUI / CLI Familiarization

  • Module 5: Fabric Forwarding and Operations
    • Fabric Overview
    • Fabric Addressing
    • Endpoint Learning and Lookup
    • Fabric Forwarding
    • Fabric Innovations
  • Module 6: ACI Hypervisor Integration
    • ACI VMware Integration
    • Microsegmentation
    • ACI Hyper-V Integration

  • Module 7: Fabric and Access Policies
    • Fabric Policies
    • Access Policies

  • Module 8: APIC APIs and Open Source Initiatives
    • ACI APIs Overview
    • REST API
    • UCS Director Integration
    • Integration with OpenStack

  • Module 9: Connecting to External Networks
    • Concept of Inside and Outside
    • Connecting to external Layer-2/3 Networks

  • Module 10: Integrating L4-7 Services with ACI
    • Service Insertion Overview
    • Device Packages

  • Module 11: ACI 2 Day Operations
    • Monitoring
    • Management
    • Troubleshooting

  • Labs
    • ACI Fabric Discovery and GUI Familiarization
    • Application Network Profile Creation (GUI)
    • Application Network Profile (CLI)
    • VMM Integration with VMware
    • Extending EPG to Bare Metal Host Shared Services
    • Programability Labs
    • Configuring external L2 connection
    • Configuring external L3 connection
    • Service Graph
    • Day 2 Ops