Learning the Cisco Application-Centric Infrastructure (ACI)

Automation is revolutionizing networking! Traditional networks are giving way to innovative solutions centered around automation, objects, and policies. Are you familiar with the differences between North-to-South and East-to-West traffic flows? This course provides a clear understanding of these critical concepts.

Modern campus networks often struggle with scalability due to their static nature. In contrast, data centers demand agility. Today's data center architecture requires robust scalability, geo-redundancy, security, multi-tenancy, and speed. Ensuring high availability and predictable data center traffic flow is paramount.

The demand for skilled ACI engineers and architects is soaring. Mastering the foundational aspects of Software-Defined Networking (SDN)-based architectures and gaining practical implementation skills are essential for career advancement.

This fast-paced course utilizes a whiteboard-based approach with clear, handwritten explanations. We'll begin with an introduction to fabric data center designs, including Spine and Leaf architectures and ACI. You'll then participate in hands-on implementation, deploying a fabric from the ground up, followed by building a multi-tenant environment.

By the end of this video training, you'll have a solid understanding of how to administer an Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI).

About the Author:

Rene Cardona is a seasoned Network Solutions Architect with over 8 years of experience in designing, architecting, consulting, and implementing core data center and security infrastructure. He's performed numerous infrastructure refreshes for major corporations across logistics, retail, healthcare, and education. Rene has extensive experience with datacenter migrations (Campus to VXLAN, ACI, and UCS environments) and multi-pod/multi-fabric architectures.

His expertise spans hyper-converged data center environments, VXLAN, SDN, SD-WAN, Multi-Datacenter High Availability (MDHA), and comprehensive network security (firewalls, network admission control, and network security architectures). He has successfully deployed VXLAN, BGP, EVPN, and ACI for major corporations.

Rene is a CCIEx2 #62050 and holds two CCIE certifications (Data Center and Service Provider track). He's passionate about explaining complex concepts in simple terms and avoids a bookish approach, focusing on practical understanding. He is the author of the Packt video course, Mastering Palo Alto Networks.