Cisco ACI Reviews

I am an implementer. Whenever a customer purchases this solution, I go on-site and deploy it for them.

From my point of view, troubleshooting issues relating to ACI can be a little bit complicated to perform.

I have been using Cisco ACI for roughly six months.

This solution is both scalable and stable.

Cisco's technical support team is very good.

If you know the steps, then the initial setup is quite straightforward. You need to know how to configure it. You're looking at a minimum of at least five working days to build the infrastructure. After that, it depends on how many devices you want to connect.

I don't believe there is any licensing required.

Normally ACI is implemented in the data-center — It's not an end-user product.

I would absolutely recommend this solution. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

There are some issues regarding the orchestration of vendors and integration that need to be addressed.

It is a progressive tool. You can automate things with it. It is for a new generation of data centers.

The previous generation of networking, everything was slow, taking days to deploy and run a script. With Cisco ACI, I can deploy things with a script, then run it in five minutes.

• Automation
• Developing

Cisco should provide more examples of code in their website. Something that other people can use. There is a great place in the development area.

The stability is not bad, but could be improved. In the beginning, we had integration problems, but now, it is more stable.

There is a scalability path on the Cisco website. We are currently working on scaling the product.

Cisco has a powerful technical team, which is very useful for us.

The initial setup was complex.

We used an international company for the deployment. My colleagues were very happy with them. The deployment happened before I joined the company.

The thing that I like the most from Cisco is the support and all the documentation that they have. We do have to pay for it though.

We also considered Juniper.

I would recommend Cisco ACI.

It is used in data centers.

It gives us a new way of providing the network.

Building the ACI Fabric is its most valuable feature. 

It needs to be able to function on the cloud.

I am not using it day-to-day at the moment. My impression is it is working fine.

On paper, it scales.

We did the deployment.

Start now with this technology.

The primary use case for this product is to enhance the speed of certain tasks in the network. We get faster deployments of network policies based on applications that we need to provide.

The centralized management of the entire network data center, in this case with ACI, is the most valuable feature. By having access to some powerful APIs you can build your own tool to speak to the ACI controller, then with that, you can deploy things really fast. Having the option to build your own tools and then using the centralized management of the ACI to push the configuration to the network devices is very valuable.

The error messages should be improved. Sometimes we want to remove an error message so we acknowledge an error and we would then like to remove it but there's no real way of doing that. If we need to do it, we need to open a tech case. That could use improvement. 

From my experience, it seems like a really stable product. The only thing that concerns me a bit is the fact that you have a lot of errors. It gives you a lot of error messages and they mostly don't really influence the functionality, so it still works. It just notifies that there is some misconfiguration and I think it will scare people with these kinds of messages that don't really have an influence on the functions. Operating the ACI fabric is a concern I have. 

I have seen the guide for scalability and I think it's great. I have no complaints. 

We had some problems so we opened a tech case and we got help. We could do the things we couldn't do so their support is great.

Everyone is getting faster and if you want to compete with other companies then you have to bring services to your customers that are at the level of the other companies. ACI is a way of doing things faster by automating. That's the reason why we have it in our company. We chose Cisco because it was based on certain conditions that had to be met, and of course, also because of the price. It was the best product in terms of price and what comes with it.

At first, the setup was really complex because we did everything with the GUI first. We had to figure out how to do that and it was frustrating because we had a lot of errors which didn't really tell us anything because we're used to other kinds of messages from the old school networking. That was kind of frustrating but then once we got it, it got easier. Now, there are new challenges that we are facing when we want to do certain configurations but it totally gets better with the help of online communities.

We have someone coming from Cisco once a week. We ask him questions and he helps us integrate this new technology in our company.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. Not a ten because of the error messages. In order to get to a ten, they need to have a better way of telling if something is really important. They shouldn't have the message in the same window or in the same menu, they should be separated. The guys who looks at it should be able to tell really fast if it's a problem they have to look at right away or if it has time. Also, they should have the option to delete the messages if you acknowledge them and don't want to see them anymore. 

Advice I would give to someone considering this solution would be don't be too frustrated about trying to do certain things because it needs time and you need to learn the GUI and what it does in the background. Take the time and ask the community or ask a Cisco employee to help you integrate and then with time it will get better.  

We are putting ACI into replace the customer's legacy networks, so it's a migration project. 

We have been able to deploy new applications more efficiently and faster. 

We can support policy based on our intent, then that gets rendered into the policy that we will be using for Fabric.

It is more about resolving bugs early on in the code. Otherwise, as the product gets more mature and those bugs get discovered sometimes by the customer, then Cisco will resolve them.

It is pretty good once it is in, then up and running. The stability is fine. I haven't had many issues.

The product is scalable. You can scale east-west by adding in additional leaf switches. I haven't experienced any scale issues so far, which is good.

The technical support is good. We have Cisco SEs assigned to this project, and we have used them. They are pretty responsive. We have been happy with them. 

That decision would have been made by the customer internally, but they would do a LAN upgrade and an RFP. In this case, Cisco ACI came out as the winner.

It took quite a bit of time to get the design completed in advance. However, once the core ACI Fabric was in and migrated on, the initial setup is fairly easy. It's the same with any new deployment.

We are the supplier to the customer and the Cisco partner. We are actually doing the implementation, and the customer hired us to do it.

It saves time and resources.

The only real competitor to this product is VMware NSX.

We have purchased this solution for our network, but we have not deployed it yet.

The most valuable feature of the solution is the Call Manager.

Technical support needs improvement. I can get stuck with a rep who will just have me scan the logs to look for the problem. I think that technical support tickets should be escalated sooner. 

This solution is pretty stable.

I would rate the scalability about a ten.

Sometimes I get stuck with somebody from technical support who does not understand the problem. If they are having trouble then they need to get help with it more quickly.

We are still in the pre-deployment stage of this solution.

The only complaint that I have so far is in regards to technical support.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I worked with this solution in my lab to prepare it for deployment.

I don't use it at the organizational level, but in my lab, it has helped me to visualize everything in one click.

This solution is easy to configure, and it is done in an object-oriented manner.

I would like to see a smoother transition from existing systems. The configuration from what we had earlier, compared to ACI, is completely different. 

The stability of this solution is ok.

Our deployment is very small, so I'm not the right guy to speak with about scalability.

I have not contacted technical support.

The initial setup of this solution is not straightforward. We had our standard configuration running, but when we moved to ACI it was a completely different dimension. It was a slow migration, and you need to completely change the way you think about things. This took me about three months to completely understand.

We implemented the solution in-house. I went through the specifications and documentation and then handled it myself.

Things are moving towards the ACI model, so it is good to try out this next generation solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

It is used in our data center.

Automation is its most valuable feature.

• The way the objects are oriented on it are not as straightforward as they should be.
• The learning curve of this product is very steep. It is not what I'm used to.
• I miss having the CLI. I am old-fashioned.

It seems fairly stable. We have not had any major hiccups.

It is pretty scalable.

The technical support is good. We had an issue where we had to talk to Cisco's technical assistance, and it worked out.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We just moved from one platform to another.

We use consultants for the deployment, and they were very helpful. They had experience that we didn't.

There was only one logical way to go, and that was with the Cisco ACI.

Just go for Cisco ACI.