Cisco ACI- Partner Ecosystem

[Raviraj Velankar]

Dear Experts, 

Would like to know Cisco strategy for network service components which are not compatible or not in the list of partner ecosystem of Cisco ACI

For example, Customer has FWs, LBs from non-Cisco ACI compliant vendor then can we still use these components along with Cisco ACI ( whether it can co-exist) . What would be Cisco recommendation for such situation. 

Thanks 

[mikriple]

Hey Raviraj,

You can definitely get them working with ACI it just requires a bit more configuration. Our ecosystem partners whether it's for FW or LB create a device package that allows our APIC to communicate with the device and push configuration to the service device based on parameters configured. It's meant to streamline insertion of these service devices so instead of going to each device we can provision it from a single GUI/CLI/API.

I'm really not at liberty to make recommendations since I am unaware of customer environment. I can however say that you should have customer contact their FW and LB makers to reach out to us about becoming Ecosystem partners. From what I understand it doesn't sound like the process takes that long. 

I hope this helps. Just out of curiosity, would you be able to share the FW and Load Balancer maker? We may support them already but just haven't added them to the list.

Thanks,

Mike Ripley

[Raviraj Velankar]

Thanks a lot Mike for quick reply. 

Customer has Crossbeam Physical FWs & checkpoint virtual appliances, Imperva WAF & Juniper Firewalls/SSL appliances. Would like to know Cisco ACI strategy 

[Robert Burns]

Raviraj,

The ACI ecosystem is always growing, but we obviously don't include all vendors.  If the vendor in question is not part of the ACI ecosystem, all that means is the APIC can't manage the device as part of the fabric through a vendor-provided device package.  That being said, any device not part of the ACI ecosystem can still be connected to the ACI fabric just as you can connect Cisco to non-Cisco devices, assuming they follow industry standards.  From a support perspective if you ran into any issues, Cisco TAC would not be able to assist with troubleshooting on the 3rd party device, but we would definitely assist on a best-effort basis to help resolve any issues.

This policy would be similar to connected any Cisco and non-Cisco device together.  As long as the devices adhere to IEEE standards, there shouldn't be any issues.

Regards,

Robert