ACI and NSX

[visitor68]

Hello - trying to come up with a scenario in which ACI and NSX would be deployed together. I know they can be, that's not what I am asking. But what functionality gaps does one have that the other fills? Has anyone run into an environment with both ACI and NSX deployed together? And if so, do you know why? Thank you. 

[Claudia de Luna]

Hi @visitor68,

I run into it more often than I care to and its always a case where the Server Team went in one direction and the Network Team went in another.

If your DR strategy was entirely based on VMware and everything was virtualized (no bare metal servers or appliances ..other than the ESXi hosts) and you were just using ACI for turnkey underlay...thats one scenario.

The other is that if your micro segmentation strategy had to be at the host level and you did not want to use any 3rd party vswitch.    I've never had that actually be a requirement backed by a rational argument.

See this message thread for more details.

https://community.cisco.com/t5/application-centric/design-consideration-for-cisco-aci-with-nsx/td-p/3382990

[visitor68]

Thanks, Claudia. I am going to check it out. I am also reading a document that tries to make some arguments for why ACI makes NSX "better."

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/switches/nexus-9000-series-switches/white-paper-c11-740124.html

Haven't read it all yet, but I have a feeling that there will not be any compelling argument to do anything too complicated in an NSX underlay.

[Claudia de Luna]

Good stuff there but I suspect you are looking at NSX-T and that white paper is predominantly about NSX-V. The deployments I've been involved with were V.