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Cisco ACI pros and cons

Vendor: Cisco
4.0 out of 5
Badge Ranked 1
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Pros & Cons summary

Cisco ACI offers automation that reduces human error and boosts efficiency, integrating with virtual environments like VMware, Hyper-V, and KVM. While centralized management simplifies infrastructure oversight and micro-segmentation enhances security, its complex configuration process poses entry challenges. Scalability allows quick expansion, but improvement is needed in cloud integration, third-party support, and troubleshooting capabilities. Cisco ACI's deployment demands significant effort to learn new technologies and standards.

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Automation is a vital feature that reduces human error and facilitates swift deployment and changes within the data center.
The programmability feature offers flexibility in managing policies, allowing seamless integration of devices and new components.
Stability and reliability are consistently high, ensuring a robust and continuous performance with no reported issues.
The scalability capabilities allow easy expansion of infrastructure, enhancing overall network performance and management.
Integration with virtual environments like VMware and Azure enhances total network automation and management capabilities.

CONS

Cisco ACI is complex, requiring a steep learning curve and making initial setup challenging.
Technical support for Cisco ACI lacks adequate knowledge and responsiveness.
Integration with third-party clouds and tools needs enhancement for better flexibility.
Cisco ACI's troubleshooting features are inadequate, complicating issue resolution.
Network-centric setup and management with Cisco ACI can be difficult and cumbersome.
 

Cisco ACI Pros review quotes

Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 10, 2024
Cisco ACI's multi-tenancy has been most beneficial for our network management.
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SA
Mar 5, 2019
We are doing automation from ACI and we have integration with Azure. With the Azure stack integration we can have total automation. We can configure the EPGs from there, and we can configure load balancing functionalities from there as well. The most useful feature is that you don't need to configure anything on ACI itself. You can configure on Azure and it will provision your application.
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IA
Mar 3, 2019
The best part of ACI is that it can integrate with a lot of virtual environments like VMware, Hyper-V, and KVM.
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Cisco ACI
January 2025
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VP
Oct 29, 2022
What's most valuable in Cisco ACI is that it isn't like the legacy infrastructure where you have a lot of complexity in a TTR architecture. What I like most about Cisco ACI is that you can control those devices from a single console, even if you have three hundred devices. You can manage the entire infrastructure from a single point of contact, so Cisco ACI is a time saver. Another exclusive feature of Cisco ACI is its API interface that lets you enhance automation within the environment. You can manage your entire data center from a single interface through Cisco ACI. If you want to upgrade three hundred devices in one click, you can do that, and within one hour, all three hundred devices will be upgraded. I also like that Cisco keeps enhancing the product by adding different features, so there have been five major releases of Cisco ACI. Another valuable feature of the solution is that it's more user-friendly than Aruba and Juniper.
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DataCent582b - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 19, 2019
In a very general way, the ease of access, ease of use, and ease of connecting the system is a valuable feature in itself. The solution doesn't really increase detection rates as that is not what it was created for. Threat prevention comes in from other devices that might be connected into the Cisco ACI that monitors external traffic. It maintains what end-of-life products would be doing and offers other opportunities to unify solutions.
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DG
Mar 3, 2019
One area where it has an advantage... is that you're able to reuse a specific integration. If you add another server, you can use a specific integration and assign it to another port.
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ITEvolutd7ab - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 5, 2019
Once we have it running, it should be easier for us to program our IT rather than going case-by-case, by switches and different elements, or program it by hand.
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SystemsNd760 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 17, 2019
It is a complete re-write of everything that you've ever thought of from a networking standpoint.
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MH
Jun 19, 2019
It's improved the static configuration of our data center switching environment. But it's added some challenges to our ability to operationalize it and make it easier for people to manage.
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Ehsan Emad - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 25, 2021
The most important aspect of Cisco ACI in my opinion is the ease of management. Other solutions, like traditional solutions and pricier solutions—or even fabric and PAT—you have to do many configurations on a box-to-box basis, With Cisco ACI, you go on the AP and do some "next, next finish" installer.
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Cisco ACI Cons review quotes

Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 10, 2024
I would really appreciate it if Cisco came up with something centralized to monitor everything.
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SA
Mar 5, 2019
Where there is room for improvement from ACI is for Layer 2 and Layer 7 packages. Normally, when you're updating your ACI fabric or you're introducing new Layer 4 to Layer 7 devices, there are some constraints, there are some limitations... When you are doing device packages you will not have the functionality of ASM. It's like WAF, web application firewalls. So you need to configure it manually.
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IA
Mar 3, 2019
Better troubleshooting features would be helpful. In ACI, it can be a big mess, a real headache to troubleshoot a single issue... The troubleshooting part, and the information that ACI gives you, sometimes don't give you a proper, inside picture of what's going on within the fabric.
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Buyer's Guide
Cisco ACI
January 2025
Free Report: Cisco ACI Reviews and More
Learn what your peers think about Cisco ACI. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
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831,609 professionals have used our research since 2012.
VP
Oct 29, 2022
An area for improvement in Cisco ACI is security, which Cisco needs to enhance in the solution. Though Cisco ACI uses a whitelist model, you must purchase an external product, such as a security firewall solution, to make whitelisting work, which the customer could find expensive. For example, you're a customer who has Cisco ACI, and the solution doesn't have IP-based filtering, so as a customer, you've purchased Cisco ACI. However, you still need to buy another product for security, and some customers wouldn't like that. However, some customers prefer to go with Cisco ACI because of its scalability and flexibility versus other solutions such as Juniper and Aruba. Technical support for Cisco ACI also needs improvement, particularly in product knowledge.
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DataCent582b - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 19, 2019
Figuring out how to implement the product for clients is the area we struggle with the most every day. Perhaps an enhancement would be artificially intelligent solutions, but that would be further down the road.
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DG
Mar 3, 2019
One of the things that makes it a lot more complicated is the way contracts are handled in ACI. Contracts are like their own access lists. They can improve the setting up of contracts between devices a lot. It can be simplified.
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ITEvolutd7ab - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 5, 2019
Biannually, there is a new design delivered by Cisco. Thus, you are always running behind the new design, and it never stops. With Cisco ACI, this has been a nightmare.
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SystemsNd760 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 17, 2019
It would be nice if I could specify network-centric in my design, and the system would organize and set itself up in that way.
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MH
Jun 19, 2019
So far we've had very few issues, a couple of routing things that were glitches within ACI.
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Ehsan Emad - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 25, 2021
Before version 5, you could manage your firewall or load balancer from the AP. It was very basic and now they removed the whole features in the new version, so you cannot manage your load balance or firewall from your AP on L2, L4, and L7 services.
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Product Categories

Product Categories
Network Virtualization
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
Cloud and Data Center Security

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Product Categories

Product Categories
Network Virtualization
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
Cloud and Data Center Security

Popular Comparisons

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