Cisco ACI Reviews

We are using it for application centric infrastructure (ACI). It is the evolution of the current data center setup from the legacy design to something programmable with some automation features which are missing today. The key challenge is to set up a new data center, then move all the legacy stuff into the new design. 

We need to understand how to do it, as are already under way. We already have products, but we need to go farther in the design and development of the platform.

Financially, it should be an improvement because we expect everything will converge in the tool. Therefore, we can change the way that we invest money in resources. Today, we have to keep a very wide range of skill resources in the company. Going forward, we will be able to focus in more specific skills that will allow us to keep the new tool up and running. It's a big change of approach, but in the long run, it will provide us a lot of benefits. The benefit is the finance of our IT will change.

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. 

Interoperability with third-party products always seems so straightforward, but every time you need to invest a lot to add an external element to the ACI Fabric technology. A good improvement would be to have an easier integration with external building blocks in the customer's environment.

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. I recommend that they provide more customer focused blueprints to fix this. They should try to learn and understand what are the real needs of each customer.

Now, we are running behind releases. However, with each new release of a new design, you have to test it and validate it. So, we aren't going operational, which is not good. This support was not offered to us with the product.

I would not want to see any additional features at this point. We have had enough additional features. We still have a lot to learn and don't want anything extra.

The hardware is not stable. We have switches failing.

We are not that big to reach the limit (or edges) of this technology. Its scalability is fine. It is very easy to scale. 

Today, doing changes to the infrastructure is a nightmare. Every single device has different programs and programmatics. However, with this tool, you simply plug and play. When you want to scale, you add one piece, and it's done. It works.

We are buying support services from a Cisco partner, and they have not always worked perfectly. Sometimes, we have to open many types of tickets. We have to make them very clear what we need and just exclusively ask them to forward a request to Cisco. Once we get to Cisco, the support works.

Since the product is new, it is difficult to get the partners onboard. Other companies are not able to provide effective support for this technology yet.

We switched to ACI because there came a time to make the decision to either stay with another 10 years with the technology that we had in place or go through this challenge and bet on the future with better, new technologies (and also new skill sets and new setups for our teams). We also try to resell internally to our internal customers and other departments. We help them find new ways to facilitate their core business. We do IT for them, so they need the best possible solutions from us to make their lives easier.

Today, it is sort of a nightmare for them too. Every time we have to do maintenance, for instance, on the infrastructure, we have to break their business continuity, which is not always good.

The initial setup was easy. At the time that we did our setup, the design was easy. The original design was easy to set up. Then, Cisco changed it, and it was more complex. They should not have changed it.

Cisco's partner did the implementation. The experience was great. They came and helped us to do a zero day setup. In a few weeks, we were up and running with the pro console.

The business case is not a complete success today, because we still have the two environments running. We want to switch down the first environment while we have everything up and running on the new one, but it's taking ages. This is a big challenge.

We bought a package for hardware, software, and support. At that time, Cisco was simply selling that package to distributors, then we opted for it directly.

VMware is one of ACI's competitors. We considered VMware because we also have it in our infrastructure.

We chose Cisco ACI, because VMware is just focusing virtual infrastructure and microsegmentation. The idea was to use Cisco for the physical infrastructure and integrate with VMware for the virtual infrastructure.

I would recommend the solution to anyone with a similar use case, though try for a greenfield solution or project instead of migrating your previous infrastructure.

In principle, what we are looking for is to have one gigantic tool which can be programmable, making our lives easier in terms of troubleshooting and management.

Our primary use case for Cisco ACI is to connect data center devices. 

It helps us to drive consistent ACI policies and operational best practices to our cloud instances.

The most valuable feature of Cisco ACI is that it is easy to manage. We can automate and it can be scripted. Virtual ACI is very good.

They should make it easier for the network people to do automated solutions. 

It is stable. We don't have any complaints.

The scalability of Cisco ACI is good so far.

I would give their technical support an eight out of ten.

We used Nexus 7000, 5000, and 2000 previously. The future is going to be on the data center.

The initial setup of the Cisco ACI platform is a little complex. The migration was a little tough in the beginning but once we got it, it wasn't so hard. 

We used a consultant for the deployment. Our experience with the consultant was good.

We always use Cisco. They are our main vendor. We didn't have any competition to compare. 

On a scale from 1-10, I would rate this product an eight. It's not 100% accurate yet.

Our main use case is for building data center stuff, putting in equipment and provisioning it.

It has saved me a couple of times, as just a backup feature.

It can easily do a snapshot before you do any change, and if something goes wrong, you can just rollback. It's pretty smooth, and it helps.

The UI is quite intuitive.

It is still not mature and has room to grow. As with any product out there, it requires time to develop.

We run into bugs from time to time. It is more from the perspective that we're not running the default configuration, so when we try to tweak it that is where we hit issues.

The transition period when you go from standard networking to the application centric tool can be difficult because you need to understand the new terminology, but you will get through it.

Previously, the product has had its stability issues. Now, it seems more or less okay.

In the past, there were some bugs we ran into, but those have been solved. They took some time, and we had downtime due to them. However, we have quite a good connection with Cisco tech support.

It is scalable. We have a lot of devices. Our network have tens of thousands of devices.

The technical support is good. We have a dedicated team from Cisco.

We were moving from one data center to multiple pristine data centers. We started looking into what can we do better operational-wise. We wanted to save time when we needed to implement stuff, etc., and were looking at the latest and greatest solutions.

We used a reseller for the deployment.

It depends on your vision and what you want to achieve, I would recommend going for Cisco ACI. Just make sure you have time to learn and get used to the new terminology.

We are pretty satisfied with what we have.

We use Cisco ACI within our four data centers, and it has been deployed in all four. They are the backbone within our data centers.

We have an old switches and catalysts. This product makes things easier. Once everything is on Fabric, their routes are bounced around within the Fabric, so you don't have to configure new switchboards or parts. It does makes it that much easier.

Its programmability: You can do stuff to policies to make them more flexible, allowing you to connect devices in new ways. 

I would like Cisco to simplify the interaction of the controller. 

I would also like them to simplify the way you configure the Fabric. The process is quite complex. This can be a barrier to entry. For anything, where it should take two or three steps, you have ten steps.

It took quite a bit of time to learn how to use it. The learning curve is very steep.

Since I joined, we have had about two or three outages. Sometimes the controller to the device interaction can be problematic, but otherwise, it has been quite stable.

It is very scalable and easy to add new devices on, which is very good.

It is possible because we have a contract with them, they are always available. Whenever I have had to talk to them, they are very responsive. When issues have happened, there have been about four or five issues, they were able to have them solved within a day or two.

The initial setup was complex since these are brand new data centers. The topology for the network was different in the way it was set up.

Cisco did the integration. They are still adding new things and deploying. They are doing a very good job.

You can push scripts that you are writing now to set up connections in less than five to ten minutes.

We also evaluated IBM.

With the Cisco ACI technology, the programmability enables interaction. The other solutions are not really built for programmability. They don't interact with their databases directly, where Cisco ACI makes this possible. This is one of the many reasons that our organization selected it.

It is a fantastic product, but train up first. In the first six months before you deploy, if you can get your hands on a demo and attend some classes or do some studies, get yourself to a place of being competent before you start.

My customers use Cisco ACI to replace the legacy networks that they have. Most of the time, however, they don't seem to be using the functionalities that are specific to ACI. They just use the base consumer functionalities similar to what they were using in the old solution.

One of the most valuable features is centralized management. The other is the ability to create policies by routing.

The learning curve is long. It's very difficult to learn Cisco ACI. As a result, our customers usually have difficulty working with this solution.

I started working with Cisco ACI about two years ago.

It's stable.

It's scalable.

They have good technical support, and I would give them an eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial deployment is not difficult, but the migration from old networks to Cisco API is not easy. However, migrations are usually not easy.

If I were to rate the deployment on a scale from one to five with one being the most difficult and five being the easiest, I'd give it a two.

It's not difficult to maintain, but it's difficult to learn how to maintain it. Once you learn it, however, it's easy to maintain.

You should spend a lot of time learning the solution. I recommend Cisco ACI because right now, there is no other solution like it. It's a good solution with central management, and I would give it a rating of seven out of ten.

It is an upgrade from our previous data center technology.

The solution has allowed us to redesign our data center environment into more of a zone-based network where we can section off areas. It definitely gives us a lot more security and control in our data center.

The most valuable feature is that we have centralized management and control of pretty much the entire data center and the architecture of it. It gives us a genuine single pane of glass to look through to manage all of our devices.

We're still in the process of doing the migration. We haven't migrated completely all of our applications out of our legacy into it yet. It was challenging at first, but getting easier now that we're starting to get into it.

I haven't been using the product long enough to really be looking for additional features as I haven't exhausted learning about the features that are available.

The stability seems great. It's stable so far and we haven't run into too many issues at all.

The scalability of the product seems great. It doesn't seem to have too many limitations if you want to scale out. We haven't run into any issues yet.

Technical support has been pretty good. I haven't worked with them too much with the ACI stuff, but some of my coworkers have and they said they've had good support experiences.

I wasn't there for the driving factor behind the switch because I started when it was already being implemented. However, the company was already using Cisco before implementing Cisco ACI. The previous environment was an older version of the data center — 9Ks and 5Ks. Migrating over to the more centralized management of the newer ACI just makes sense.

I wasn't there for the initial setup, so I can't really comment on the initial setup. The only thing I can say is that the setup seems to be an ongoing process.

We had a consultant company help us deploy and it was a good experience.

We're still in the process of implementing the product, so I don't know if I'd be able to tell about an actual ROI already or define what that is.

I don't think there were considerations of any other products when we went to upgrade as it was just an upgrade from the previous architecture.

In rating the product, I'd give it an eight out of ten. It is a pretty stable product and gives us really good central management structure.

It was challenging at first, but getting easier now that we're starting to get into it.

Our primary use case for the Cisco ACI solution is the data center.

This product has improved our organization through automation.

The most valuable feature is the unified fabric.

I recommend to customers that they meet a knowledgeable vendor to help them with it.

Cisco ACI customer service is very good.

Cisco ACI was sold to us. Everybody is using it now.

With the initial setup of Cisco ACI, it is new, so you need to make sure issues pop up. You have to work through those issues. I would like to see included how-to videos.

We went with a consultant, i.e. a third party vendor: HCL. They're very good.

Arista was one of the main alternatives that we evaluated.

On a scale of one to 10, I would rate this product at an eight based on everybody else's experiences. It's pretty good. I don't have a full review.

More how-to videos and instructional information is required. We need to simplify it.

Our primary use case is to provide a replacement for our existing infrastructure in the data center. It's part of our lifecycle management.

The ability to integrate with other systems is the most valuable feature. 

We designed it from scratch which contributed to the complexity. They should have better information about the deployment requirements.

We haven't had any issues with stability so far. This is going to be concluded after doing some DR testing. 

We have had two calls with technical support. They are not the best. We opened a case to diagnose issues and it's taken weeks to get someone on the case and to move forward. 

The setup is simple in the beginning but complex when you get to the tiny details that need to be taken care of. I would say the initial public deployment is easy, but the migration part is more complex. 

We used Cisco services to help with the implementation. They were involved in the design phase but the rest we tried to keep in-house. Our experience with Cisco was that they were very helpful. 

We also looked at VMware NSX. We went with Cisco because they are the most cost effective compared to the other options. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. Not a ten because it has a steep learning curve. 

I would advise someone considering this solution to watch the ACI presentations because they are packed with details and experience that comes from the trainers. It's very beneficial to get real-world experience.