Is Assurance module Included in DCN Advantage for Cisco ACI ?

[i-bouchtita]

Hello Community,

I hope you're doing well.

I'm currently reviewing licensing options for Cisco ACI and would like to clarify whether the Assurance Module and 360° Visibility features are included as part of the DCN Advantage license tier? And what's the difference between DCN Advantage and DCN premier in terme of assurance module? 

Could anyone confirm if these features are bundled with DCN Advantage or if they require a separate license?

Does Spines now also need a license in Cisco ACI ? i heard cisco changed to this.

Appreciate your guidance—thank you in advance.

Best regards,

[Wassim Aouadi]

Hello @i-bouchtita ,

To answer the question about Assurance and Visibility for ACI: You can deploy Nexus Dashboard Insights with no additional costs and benefit from some of its features, since you have DCN Advantage.

As far as I know, Nexus Dashboard Insights provides some Visibility features at the DCN Advantage level, like EoL/EoS inventories, hardware and software inventories, Policy TCAM usage. But Assurance features like the Pre-Change Analysis are available starting with the DCN Premier licensing tier.

[i-bouchtita]

Hello @Wassim Aouadi 

Thank you very much for the information and support.

Our client requires an ACI solution with the following characteristics:

• A centralized orchestration system that ensures the complete management cycle, namely: "Design," "Provisioning," and "Maintenance" of all DC infrastructure services, following a "Policy" and "Automation"-oriented model. This system must be based on a "Policy Plan" capable of providing a level of abstraction for infrastructure language elements. The orchestration system should also be open to the integration of other central orchestration, security, reporting, and other systems via API calls.

• An "Assurance" module that provides a 360° view of the overall health of services, as well as quality and performance indicators for the various application flows. It should have the ability to proactively detect and self-analyze issues, with built-in remediation mechanisms.

As you mentioned, I believe I should proceed with the DCN Premier solution to meet all these requirements, particularly for providing a 360° view of service health, performance indicators, and proactive problem detection and remediation?

[Wassim Aouadi]

This is additional data. I am not aware of a component within ACI that provides Design services (the first sentence in your reply). But automation and "policy-oriented" are definitely provided by ACI. ACI can also integrate with orchestration solutions, since ACI is based on REST API.

As I wrote before, it sounds to me that Nexus Dashboard Insights would be a good fit up to the "built-in remediation mechanisms" you asked for, to which I unfortunately have no answer. You should try experiment with DCN Premier features before formulating a final answer to your customer.

Please be aware that the final decision lays with you and that the information provided in these forums are merely informative.

I hope this helps.

[i-bouchtita]

Hello Wassim,

Thank you very much for your detailed response and clarification.

I appreciate your input regarding the lack of a dedicated design component within ACI and the confirmation about its strong automation and policy-based capabilities through REST APIs.

Your suggestion to explore Nexus Dashboard Insights (NDI) as a means to achieve 360° visibility and analytics is very helpful. I understand that while NDI provides comprehensive monitoring and telemetry correlation, the aspect of built-in remediation may be more limited or require manual intervention based on the insights it generates.

The problem is there is no more details about the difference between DCN advantage and DCN Premier in terme of features about insights.

Thanks again for your time and guidance. Your input has been very valuable in helping me move forward.