
Cisco ACI 4 Day Field Operations Course
Description:
This intensive 4-day Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) course will guide students through the key concepts behind Software Defined Networking in the Data Center and the positioning of ACI up through advanced ACI topics. Through a combination of lecture and hands-on labs configuring ACI policy-based architecture, students will learn the configuration and uses of access and fabric policies, tenants, application network profiles, contracts, endpoints, VMM integration and how to connect the ACI fabric to external Layer-2 and Layer-3 networks, migration scenarios, ERSPAN, transit routing, service graphs, micro-segmentation, multi-fabric topologies and designs and recommended ACI best practices. ACI troubleshooting methods including methodology, ACI tools, command line and GUI troubleshooting, configuration validation and tracking and common technical issues are discussed in depth on day 4 to introduce students to more efficient methods of troubleshooting and maintaining an ACI fabric.
The course will include intense hands-on labs on real physical hardware of all the key functions necessary to bring up a working ACI fabric. Students will be provided with their own ACI Tenant, vCenter Server, ESXi Hosts and numerous virtual machines on which to work.
Pre-requisites: None
Target Audience
This course is designed for network and data center and cloud systems architects, server administrators, application developers and security engineers as well as virtualization administrators, network architects, systems engineers and field engineers who are selling, implementing and/or managing Cisco ACI solutions.
Agenda
DAY 1
- Module 1: ACI Overview
- Module 2: ACI Switching Hardware
- Module 3: Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC)
- Module 4: APIC Fabric Discovery and Configuration
- Module 5: ACI Polices and Resource Pools
- Module 6: ACI Tenant Logical Polices
Labs:
- Lab 1: Initial Configuration of ACI Polices and Pools
- Lab 2: Configuring ACI Tenant and Access polices
DAY 2
- Module 7: Fabric Operations and Forwarding
- Module 8: Hypervisor Integration with ACI
- Module 9: Routing with ACI
Labs:
- Lab 3: Configure VMM and Validate End Point Learning
- Lab 4: Communication Using Contracts
- Lab 5: Routing Outside of ACI
- Lab 6: Advanced Contract Communications
DAY 3
- Module 10: Application Centric vs. Network Centric Design
- Module 11: Extending Layer 2
- Module 12: L4-L7 Devices
- Module 13: Microsegmentation, Security and Analytics
- Module 14: Multi-Fabric, Multi-Pod, Multi-Site, Remote Leaf & Virtual Pod Topologies
Labs:
- Lab 7: Extending Layer 2 to Existing Networks & ERSPAN
- Lab 8: Policy Based Redirect (PBR) in ACI
- Lab 9: Creating Microsegmentation in ACI
DAY 4
- Lab 10: Fabric Discovery for Multi-Site Deployment
- Lab 11: Multi-Site Orchestrator Cluster Deployment
- Lab 12: Adding Sites to Multi-Site Orchestrator
- Lab 13: Day-0 Infrastructure Configuration
- Lab 14: Policy Deployment Using the Multi-Site Orchestrator
- Lab 15: Multi-Site Troubleshooting