Cisco ACI – Creating Contracts

Part of the beauty of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure is the idea of contracts. In ACI we talk a lot about the idea of the policy driven network. Those policies are what we call contracts. Contracts aren’t totally unlike ACLs, but there are some big differences. First, ACLs usually go between IP addresses or subnets,…

Adding Phsical Servers to Cisco ACI Fabric

This article describes how we connect physical, or bare metal, servers to the ACI Fabric. A while ago I wrote an article about adding VMware integration to your ACI fabric. This is of course a very important step, as about 70% of people’s workloads are virtual. However, that number has been pretty static over the…

Cisco ACI – Application Virtual Switch

This article takes a closer look at the Cisco Application Virtual Switch. Introduction In my last article I talked about VMM integration with VMware vSphere and Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure. I only covered using the traditional vSphere Distributed Switch, but there is another option: the Cisco AVS (Application Virtual Switch). For those familiar with the…