Cisco ACI Implementation for Field Engineers

This four-day ILT Cisco ACI Implementation course is designed to take Field Engineers and System Architects with no ACI-specific experience and prepare them to design and build an ACI fabric. Students will learn what they need to know to take Cisco switches from the loading dock and build an operational, functioning ACI fabric that includes servers, virtual machines, external networks and service devices.

Cisco ACI Implementation Description

Specific topics addressed in this course are ACI configuration and basic operations, including rack-and-stack initial installation, application profile configuration, ACI under-the-hood, VMware & other hypervisor integration, external connectivity, layer 4-7 service device integration, operations and troubleshooting. There are detailed labs for each step of the course.

The curriculum is delivered as Just-In-Time learning, designed to provide Engineers just what they need to know, just when they need to know it. Students are not given training that they are not able to apply immediately. With this production-focused training, the student will be ready for the technical requirements of today. With the included library of curated references, the student is also poised to meet the requirements of the future.

The course provides insight from subject matter experts and over 100 production installations. These subject matter experts have insight because they've been in the students' shoes.

Prerequisites

Cisco Nexus and Data Center Layer 2/3 Concepts
Basic Cisco UCS B Series Networking
Basic VMware administration and networking
Firewall and Load Balancer Principles
Basic Management and Security Protocols
Basic Linux System administration

Cisco ACI Implementation Objectives

Upon completion of the course, students will be familiar with:

Understand ACI architecture and concepts needed to get an ACI fabric into production
Describe the hardware that makes up ACI
Install and bring up an ACI Fabric
Configure foundational Access Policies
Configure Application Profiles
Describe ACI fabric operations
Integrate VMware and other hypervisors with ACI
Configure Layer 2 and 3 outside connectivity to the ACI Fabric
Integrate Layer 4-7 service devices with ACI
Provide fundamental Day 2 fabric support
Quickly find information on more advanced or detailed ACI features
Familiarize themselves with the whole of ACI to formulate any next steps in their ACI training needs to support their company's business goals

Target Audience

This course is for Engineers and Solution Architects who need to quickly learn how to design and implement more complex ACI fabrics. This can be customer engineers who support a production fabric with multiple hypervisor vendors, Partner engineers who need to design and build a customer fabric with firewalls and load balancers, or any engineer who needs comprehensive, hands-on, production-focused ACI training.

Duration

4 Days

Delivery

Interactive Instructor Led Training

Course Type

Lecture + Hands-on Lab
Live onsite
Live online

Course Outline

Module 0 Agenda / Intro / Logistics

Module 1: ACI Overview

ACI Architectural Overview
ACI Fabric Fundamentals
ACI Fabric Packet Flow

Module 2: APIC Initial Setup

APIC Overview
APIC Installation
APIC Initial Setup and Fabric Discovery

ACI OOB and NTP Configuration

APIC Login Settings and Search Features

Naming Conventions

Lab Connect to Remote Lab site

Lab APIC-SIM Initial Setup

Module 3: ACI Port Configuration

Fabric Access Policies
ACI Pools, Domains, AEPs
VPC Configuration in ACI Fabric

Lab APIC-SIM_VPC Config

Module 4: ACI Tenant Configuration

ACI Logical Model - What is a Tenant?
Tenant Configuration
Contracts / Subjects / Filters
Application Profiles and End Points Groups
Additional Contract Options
Lab Tenant Configuration
Appendix: Additional Features
• Endpoint Security Groups
• Microsegmentation
• ACI Quality of Service

Module 5: Hypervisor Integration

Virtualization Primer
ACI VMM Integration
Virtual Endpoint Discovery
VMM Policy Coordination

Lab vCenter Integration
VMM Supplement:
• ACI vCenter plugin

• OpFlex

• Cisco ACI Virtual Edge (AVE)

• VMware NSX

• ACI Integration with Microsoft
• ACI Integration with OpenStack
• ACI Integration with Containers

Module 6: Configuring VLAN Trunking

Creating a Physical Domain
Design Considerations
Lab External L2 Phydom

Module 7: Configuring L3Out

L3 Integration Overview
L3 Integration & Configuration
Shared L3Out

Lab L3out OSPF

Module 8: Operating ACI

APIC Management Access

Viewing Events

Monitoring Ports

Firmware Upgrades

ACI Smart Licensing

Backup & Restore ACI Configuration

Lab ACI Backup

Module 9: Troubleshooting ACI

Troubleshooting Tools
SPAN in ACI

Lab Tenant SPAN

APIC Troubleshooting

Faults and Audit Log in ACI

Troubleshooting Endpoint Connectivity

Verification Commands

Fabric Node Recovery

Troubleshooting Challenge Exercise

Module 10: ACI L4-L7 Service Graphs

Policy-Based Redirect (PBR)
ASAv Deployment with ACI
Lab L4-L7 ASAv PBR

Module 11: ACI Automation

Designing an Application Profile
RESTful API Review
Learning Network Programmability
ACI Toolkit
Lab Postman/Runner Tool

The content was engaging and the instructor was an expert in the technology.

Outstanding instructor, fantastic venue, rock-solid lab with great exercises! All-around top-notch training experience - good job, everyone.

The instructor was excellent. Field experience showed and real-world example and problems are most useful.

Great training! Very worthy. The instructor has an excellent balance between experience and teaching skills. LABs worked perfectly.

One of the best course I've taken.

The Instructor was amazing and will see him again soon!

Dan is an expert instructor. He knows the technology and makes it easy to understand.

Dan was an amazing presenter, and VERY thoroughly knew the subject material. I want to be like Dan when I grow up!

Great class, I learned more than I thought I would coming in!

I was very impressed on his knowledge of ACI, very impressive.

I thought the instructor was very knowledgeable and took the time to work with the individuals.

The presenter had a good detailed knowledge around ACI and could reference several deployments.

The instructor was excellent - his knowledge was superb and he has been a very good mentor throughout the course and definitely went the extra mile.

I found Jon Torrez absolutely first class, hugely Knowlable, very good teacher/instructor, experienced with ACI.

The instructor knows his stuff and presents it well.

Great teaching! ACI complexity simplified!

Online worked very well

It was effective because it was video so we could see the whiteboard and instructor. That helped more than just a regular webex.

The ACI FEI class was great! I love Dan's style of teaching. I also appreciated his experience in the field along with the teaching. He was able to give us some real-world examples of the concepts, rather than just teaching from a book.

BTA is the Gold Standard in ACI training.

Talking with BTA about ACI is like finding someone who speaks your language in a foreign country.