Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller Data Sheet

Data Sheet

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Updated:August 29, 2023

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About Cisco ACI

The Cisco® Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI®) is part of our intent-based networking framework to enable agility in the datacenter. It captures higher-level business and user intent in the form of a policy and translates this into the network constructs necessary to dynamically provision network, security, and infrastructure services.

Built on top of the industry-leading Cisco Nexus® 9000 platform, Cisco ACI uses a holistic systems-based approach, with tight integration between hardware and software, between physical and virtual elements, an open ecosystem model, and innovative Cisco Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) to enable unique business value for modern data centers.

Cisco ACI is the industry’s most secure, open, and comprehensive Software-Defined Networking (SDN) solution.

ACI enables automation that accelerates infrastructure deployment and governance, simplifies management to easily move workloads across a multifabric, multicloud framework, and proactively secures against risk arising from anywhere. It radically simplifies, optimizes, and expedites the application deployment lifecycle.

Modern data centers are dynamic. IT operations must meet the expectation of quality-of-service business needs in a rapidly changing environment. ACI transforms IT operations from reactive to proactive with a highly intelligent set of software capabilities that analyzes every component of the data center to ensure business intent, guarantee reliability, and identify performance issues in the network before they happen.

As application usage gets more pervasive across an enterprise’s network, IT professionals are looking to build solutions for consistent policy and encryption from the campus to the datacenter. With ACI integrations with SDA/DNA Center and SD-WAN, customers can now automate and extend policy, security, assurance, and insights across their entire networking ecosystem.

Cisco ACI components

The Cisco ACI solution consists of the following building blocks (Figure 1):

      Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC).

      Cisco Nexus 9000 Series spine and leaf switches for Cisco ACI.

      Cisco ACI Multi-Site Orchestrator.

      Cisco Cloud APIC.

Cisco ACI architectural building blocks

Figure 1.            

Cisco ACI architectural building blocks

Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) features

The infrastructure controller is the main architectural component of the Cisco ACI solution. It is the unified point of automation and management for the Cisco ACI fabric, policy enforcement, and health monitoring. The APIC appliance is a centralized, clustered controller that optimizes performance and unifies the operation of physical and virtual environments. The controller manages and operates a scalable multitenant Cisco ACI fabric.

The main features of the APIC include the following:

      Application-centric network policies.

      Data-model-based declarative provisioning.

      Application and topology monitoring and troubleshooting.

      Third-party integration.

    Layer 4 through Layer 7 (L4-L7) services.

    VMware vCenter and vShield.

    Microsoft Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), and Azure Pack.

    Open Virtual Switch (OVS) and OpenStack.

    Kubernetes, RedHat OpenShift, Docker Enterprise.

      Image management (spine and leaf).

      Cisco ACI inventory and configuration.

      Implementation on a distributed framework across a cluster of appliances.

      Health scores for critical managed objects (tenants, application profiles, switches, etc).

      Fault, event, and performance management.

      Cisco Application Virtual Edge, which can be used as a virtual leaf switch.

The controller framework enables broad ecosystem and industry interoperability with Cisco ACI. It enables interoperability between a Cisco ACI environment and management, orchestration, virtualization, and L4-L7 services from a broad range of vendors.

Cisco APIC cluster

The APIC appliance is deployed as a cluster. A minimum of three infrastructure controllers are configured in a cluster to provide control of the scale-out Cisco ACI fabric (Figure 2). The ultimate size of the controller cluster is directly proportionate to the size of the Cisco ACI deployment and is based on the transaction-rate requirements. Any controller in the cluster can service any user for any operation, and a controller can be transparently added to or removed from the cluster.

Cisco APIC cluster

Figure 2.            

Cisco APIC cluster

APIC appliance product specifications

The APIC appliance is available in different form factors (Table 1):

Table 1.        Cisco APIC sizes

Cisco APIC configuration

Part number

Description

Medium M3

APIC-M3

APIC with medium-size CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (up to 1200 edge ports)

Large L3

APIC-L3

APIC with large CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (more than 1200 edge ports)

Medium cluster M3

APIC-CLUSTER-M3

Cluster of 3 APIC-M3 with medium-size CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (up to 1200 edge ports)

Large cluster L3

APIC-CLUSTER-L3

Cluster of 3 APIC-L3 with large CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (more than 1200 edge ports)

Medium M4

APIC-M4

APIC with medium-size CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (up to 1200 edge ports)

Large L4

APIC-L4

APIC with large CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (more than 1200 edge ports)

Medium cluster M4

APIC-CLUSTER-M4

Cluster of 3 APIC-M4 with medium-size CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (up to 1200 edge ports)

Large cluster L4

APIC-CLUSTER-L4

Cluster of 3 APIC-L4 with large CPU, hard drive, and memory configurations (more than 1200 edge ports)

 

Table 2.        Specifications of the APIC M3 and L3 appliance. Note that at least three appliances need to be configured as a cluster.

 

Cisco APIC appliance

Medium configuration: M3

Cisco APIC appliance

Large configuration: L3

 

Description

Default units

Description

Default units

Processor

1.7 GHz Xeon Scalable 3106/85W 8C/11MB Cache/DDR4 2133M

2

2.1 GHz Xeon Scalable 4110/85W 8C/11MB Cache/DDR4 2400MHz

2

Memory

16GB DDR4-2666-MHz RDIMM/PC4-21300/single rank/x4/1.2v

6

16GB DDR4-2666-MHz RDIMM/PC4-21300/single rank/x4/1.2v

12

Hard Drive

1 TB 12G SAS 7.2K RPM SFF HDD

2

2.4 TB 12G SAS 10K RPM SFF HDD (4K)

2

PCI Express (PCIe) slots

Cisco UCS VIC 1455 Quad Port 10/25G SFP28 CNA PCIE

1

Cisco UCS VIC 1455 Quad Port 10/25G SFP28 CNA PCIE

1

Power supply

770W power supply

1

770W power supply

1

Table 3.        Cisco APIC M3 and L3 Physical and Environmental Specs

Cisco APIC M3 and L3 Physical and Environmental Specs

Overview

Description

Physical dimensions (H x W x D)

1 Rack Unit (1RU): 1.7 x 16.9 x 28.5 in. (4.32 x 43 x 72.4 cm)

Temperature: Operating

32 to 104°F (0 to 40°C) (operating, at sea level, with no fan fail and no CPU throttling, and with turbo mode)

Temperature: Nonoperating

–40 to 158°F (–40 to 70°C)

Humidity: Operating

10 to 90% noncondensing

Humidity: Nonoperating

5 to 93% noncondensing

Altitude: Operating

0 to 10,000 ft (0 to 3000m); maximum ambient temperature decreases by 1°C per 300m

Altitude: Nonoperating

0 to 40,000 ft (12,000m)

Table 4.        Specifications of the APIC M4 and L4 appliance. Note that at least three appliances need to be configured as a cluster

Related image, diagram or screenshot

 

Medium configuration: M4

 

Large configuration: L4

 

 

Description

Default units

Description

Default units

Processor

AMD 3.0GHz 7313P 155W 16C/128MB Cache DDR4 3200MHz

1

AMD 2.85GHz 7443P 200W 24C/128MB Cache DDR4 3200MHz

1

Memory

16GB RDIMM SRx4 3200 (8Gb)

6

32GB RDIMM DRx4 3200 (8Gb)

6

Hard Drive

480GB 2.5in Enterprise Performance 6GSATA SSD (3X endurance)

960GB 2.5in Enterprise performance 6GSATA SSD (3X endurance)

1 each

480GB 2.5in Enterprise Performance 6GSATA SSD(3X endurance)

1.6TB 2.5in U.2 WD SN840 NVMe Extreme Perf. High Endurance

1 each

PCI Express (PCIe) slots

Intel E810XXVDA2 2x25/10 GbE SFP28 PCIe NIC

Intel X710T2LG 2x10 GbE RJ45 PCIe NIC

None- Configurable Options

Intel E810XXVDA2 2x25/10 GbE SFP28 PCIe NIC

Intel X710T2LG 2x10 GbE RJ45 PCIe NIC

None-Configurable Options

Power supply

1050W (AC and DC) and 1600 W

1

1050W (AC and DC) and 1600 W

1

FAN

Eight hot-swappable fans

Airflow

Front to rear cooling

Table 5.        Cisco APIC M4 and L4 Physical and Environmental Specs

Overview

Description

Physical Specifications

1 Rack Unit (RU), Height (43.2 mm), Width 16.9 in. (429.0 mm), Depth (length) Server only: 29.5 in. (740.3 mm)

Temperature: Operating

10° C to 35° C (50° F to 95° F) with no direct sunlight

Temperature: Nonoperating

Below -40° C or above 65° C (below -40° F or above 149° F)

Humidity (RH): Operating

8 to 90% and 24° C (75o F) maximum dew-point temperature, non-condensing environment

Humidity (RH): Nonoperating

Below 5% or above 95% and 33o C (91o F) maximum dew-point temperature,
non-condensing environment

Altitude: Operating

0 to 10,000 feet

Altitude: Nonoperating

0 to 40,000 feet

Table 6.        Cisco medium form factor virtual APIC requirements

To use the APIC controller as a virtual form-factor or in AWS cloud, a DCN-vAPIC license is required. A minimum of three licenses are required for a cluster, and additional licenses can be ordered for expanding the cluster.

 

Cisco Virtual APIC Requirements

 

Description

Processor

16 vCPU of 3 GHz or Higher

Memory

96 GB of RAM

DiskSpace

Disk 1: SSD or NVMe – 120GB (root disk)

Disk 2: SSD or NVMe – 360GB (data disk)

I/O latency of 20ms

ESxi

7.0

Cisco Network Controller Product Specifications

The Cisco Cloud Network Controller is a virtual appliance deployed in public cloud environments for Cisco Cloud ACI deployments. The Cisco Cloud Network Controller virtual appliance will provide policy translation, multicloud connectivity, and cloud-networking functionalities.

Cisco Cloud Network Controller

Figure 3.            

Cisco Cloud Network Controller

The Cisco Cloud Network Controller is available on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace as an AMI image. A single instance of the Cisco Cloud Network Controller can provide networking, visibility, and policy-translation functionalities for workloads deployed across multiple AWS regions and availability zones. This enables IT organizations to simplify their operations and governance in multicloud environments. The solution enables ease of application deployment across any location and any cloud. The Cisco Cloud Network Controller specifications are listed in tables 3 and 4.

Table 7.        Cisco Cloud Network Controller requirements for Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud

AWS native resources

Cisco Cloud APIC requirements

 

Description

Amazon EC2 Instance Type

m5.2xlarge (recommended), m4.x2large

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)

100G gp2 SSD, 300G gp2 SSD

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

Standard S3 storage

AWS CloudTrail

Management events. Single copy.

Table 8.        Cisco Cloud Network Controller requirements for Azure public cloud

Azure Resource Name

Resource Type

Minimum Requirement

Instance type

Compute

D8S_V3

Virtual Networks

Network

2

Static Public IP Addresses

Network

9

Total Public IP Addresses
(Static Public IP Addresses and Dynamic Public IP Addresses)

Network

12

Network Security Groups

Network

5

Application Security Groups

Network

5

Application Gateways

Network

1

Virtual Machines

Compute

8

Standard DSv2 Family vCPUs

Compute

16

Standard DSv3 Family vCPUs

Compute

8

Premium Storage Managed Disks

Compute

4

Cisco environmental sustainability

Information about Cisco’s environmental sustainability policies and initiatives for our products, solutions, operations, and extended operations or supply chain is provided in the “Environment Sustainability” section of Cisco’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report.

Reference links to information about key environmental sustainability topics (mentioned in the “Environment Sustainability” section of the CSR Report) are provided in the following table:

Sustainability topic

Reference

Information on product material content laws and regulations

Materials

Information on electronic waste laws and regulations, including products, batteries, and packaging

WEEE compliance

Cisco makes the packaging data available for informational purposes only. It may not reflect the most current legal developments, and Cisco does not represent, warrant, or guarantee that it is complete, accurate, or up to date. This information is subject to change without notice.

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For more information

Use the following links for additional information:

      Cisco ACI solution data sheet: Click here.

      Cisco Cloud ACI solution brief: Click here.

      Cisco ACI ordering guide: Click here.

      Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches data sheet: Click here.

      Cisco Application Services Engine data sheet: Click here.

      Cisco ACI Virtual Edge data sheet: Click here.

      Cisco ACI solution general details: Click here.

      Technical white papers: Click here.

      Case studies: Click here.

      Solution overviews: Click here.

      YouTube video tutorials: Click here.

      Release notes for Cisco ACI and APIC solutions: Click here.

      Release notes for Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches: Click here.

      Download Cisco ACI software: Click here.

Document history

New or Revised Topic

Described In

Date

Remove XS Cluster, Medium Spare and Large Spare PIDs.

Update the table with APIC-M4/L4 PIDs

Table 1

February 1, 2023

Change the heading to "Cisco APIC M3 and L3 Physical and Environmental Specs

Table 1

February 1, 2023

Added additional specs

Table 2-6

February 1, 2023

Revised name for Cisco Cloud APIC to Cisco Cloud Network Controller

Cisco Network Controller Product Specifications

February 1, 2023

 

 

 

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