The Policy Driven Data Center with Aci: Architecture, Concepts, and Methodology (Networking Technology) 1st Edition

This book does a very good job of describing the concepts and architecture of ACI. The subjects covered will allow you to discuss ACI intelligently and understand new terminology. It is not meant to be a deployment guide. ACI is changing rapidly and even Cisco is changing deployment recommendations on a regular basis.

The following limitations exists in the book from my point of view:1. Missing a practice lab. Nexus 9000 series isn't a "network toy" that can be played down in the reader home / business.2. Its highly recommended to re-order the book content. The design information should appear in the first paragraphs and only after it, the paragraphs that contain the configurations steps should appear.3. A pre-requisite to this book should be set to excellent knowledgebase/control on NX-OS and Overlay protocols.A short feedback to Cisco: The ACI is an excellent solution. However, the solution require a highly expertly and its a very costly solution.

Excellent overview of ACI, read it a couple of years back and it helps grasp all the moving parts involved with ACI. A must read prior any ACI planning or implementation.

This book covers a lot and is great for the company doing a greenfield approach to ACI

The Policy Driven Data Center with ACI - Architecture, Concepts and Methodology by Lucien Avramov and Maurizio Portolani is a “must read” manual for the Information Technology professional. The technology backgrounds of Mr. Avramov and Mr. Portolani ensures that the reader can rely that the information presented in the book can help them design and maintain high available data centers utilizing Cisco’s ACI methodology.As the author’s state, “Cisco’s ACI is a data center fabric that enables you to integrate virtual and physical workloads in a highly programmable multi-hypervisor environment that is designed for any multi-service or cloud data center”. Utilizing and implementing ACI in your data center will safeguard your environment and help product your information technology investments in the future.The book is a fast paced walkthrough in order to understand the concepts to build and maintain the Cisco ACI environment. The reader will quickly understand the underlying methods of utilizing ACI. The material presented by the authors begins with the general parameters that are typically found in the modern data center to include the cloud. Thereafter, the information presented dives into a very through and technical presentation of the design and services to implement, operate and maintain ACI within the data center.I would consider this material a resource to be placed within your technical library and referenced often. The only two suggestions for possible improvements that may be able to be utilized in future editions, are to include resources/references to examples of data center designs in order for the reader to leverage in their environment, as well as a soft-copy of the book and materials that would include additional case studies. I rate this book 4 out of 5 stars.

Are you a networking professional? If you are, then this book is for you. Authors Lucien Avramov and Maurizio Portolani, have written an outstanding book that explains the architecture design principles, concepts and methodology to build new data center fabrics.The authors begin by describing the network requirements of different server environments and how to meet them in terms of network design. Then, they illustrate the design and technology requirements of building a cloud. Next, the authors elucidate the Cisco ACI approach to modeling business applications. In addition, they then cover the key technologies and tools that new administrators and operators must be familiar with, and it explain how they are used in an ACI-based data center. The authors then describe the networking requirements and design considerations when using hypervisors in the data center. They continue by explaining in detail OpenStack and its relation to Cisco ACI. The authors then describe the topology of an ACI fabric and how to configure it both as an infrastructure administrator and as a tenant administrator. Next, they describe the service graph concept and how to design for service insertion with the service graph.Then, the authors explain centralized troubleshooting techniques that ACI offers for isolating problems. Finally, they provide a clear explanation of the data center switching architecture.This excellent book also covers the topics of segmentation, multi-tenancy, connectivity to physical and virtual servers, and external connectivity as part of the tenant configuration. Also, this great book explains what OpenStack is and present the details of the Cisco ACI APIC OpenStack driver architecture.

I really enjoyed this book. I had heard about ACI, which included watched a couple of youtube videos and read a couple of articles. After doing all this research, I felt like there were a lot of unanswered questions and this book was excellent in not only filling in the gaps in understanding for ACI, but datacenter networking in general. Thanks to this book, I feel much more knowledgeable in how datacenter networks were built in the past, how they are being built now, and how ACI will take advantage of these improvements. The authors expertly towed the line between exposure and over-exposure by introducing XML, JSON, and python without going into levels of depth that are just well beyond my comprehension. I also particularly enjoyed the last chapter on the switching architectures. I did not expect to learn so much and the authors should feel really good about creating a book that does such a good job advancing not only ACI, but datacenter concepts in general.

Good read.

Great book

Too high level to make real use of this book