ACI Advanced Monitoring and Troubleshooting

Advanced real-world Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) monitoring and troubleshooting

This expert guide and reference will help you confidently deploy, support, monitor, and troubleshoot ACI fabrics and components. It is also designed to help you prepare for your Cisco DCACIA (300-630) exam, earning Cisco Certified Specialist–ACI Advanced Implementation certification and credit toward CCNP Data Center certification if you choose.

Authored by three leading Cisco ACI experts, it combines a solid conceptual foundation, in-depth technical knowledge, and practical techniques. It also contains proven features to help exam candidates prepare, including review questions in most chapters, and Key Topic icons highlighting concepts covered on the exam.

The authors thoroughly introduce ACI functions, components, policies, command-line interfaces, connectivity, fabric design, virtualization and service integration, automation, orchestration, and more. Next, they introduce best practices for monitoring and management, including the use of faults, health scores, tools, the REST API, in-band and out-of-band management techniques, and monitoring protocols. Proven configurations are provided, with steps for verification. Finally, they present advanced forwarding and troubleshooting techniques for maximizing ACI performance and value.

ACI Advanced Monitoring and Troubleshooting is an indispensable resource for every data center architect, engineer, developer, network or virtualization administrator, and operations team member working in ACI environments.

• Understand Cisco ACI core functions, components, and protocols
• Apply the ACI Policy-Based Object Model to develop overall application frameworks
• Use command-line interfaces to manage and monitor Cisco ACI systems
• Master proven options for ACI physical and logical fabric design
• Establish connectivity for compute, storage, and service devices, switches, and routers
• Gain visibility into virtualization layers through VMM, and integrate hypervisors from multiple vendors
• Seamlessly integrate Layer 4 to Layer 7 services such as load balancing and firewalling
• Automate and orchestrate for fast deployment with the REST API, scripting, and Ansible
• Minimize downtime and maximize ROI through more effective monitoring and configuration
• Thoroughly master concepts and techniques for advanced ACI and VXLAN forwarding
• Build deep practical expertise for quickly troubleshooting critical events
• Gain quick visibility into traffic flows and streamline problem isolation with the ACI Visibility & Troubleshooting Tool
• Walk through multiple real-world troubleshooting scenarios step-by-step
• Forewords written by Yusuf Bhaiji, Director of Certifications, Cisco Systems; and Ronak Desai, VP of Engineering for the Data Center Networking Business Unit, Cisco Systems.

This book is part of the Networking Technology Series from Cisco Press, which offers networking professionals valuable information for constructing efficient networks, understanding new technologies, and building successful careers.

Sadiq Memon, CCIE No. 47508, is a Lead Solutions Integration Architect (Automotive) with Cisco Customer Experience (CX). He has over 30 years of diversified experience in information technology with specialization and expertise in data center and enterprise networking. Sadiq joined Cisco in 2007, and as a Cisco veteran of over 13 years, he has worked with various large enterprise customers, including automotive, financials, manufacturing, and government in designing, implementing, and supporting end-to-end architectures and solutions. Sadiq was part of the Cisco Advanced Services Tiger Team during the early ACI incubation period. He has published a series of short videos covering ACI configuration on YouTube and has presented ACI/Cloud-related topics at Cisco Live! Sadiq was the technical editor for the Cisco Press book Deploying ACI and possesses multiple IT industry certifications from leading companies such as Cisco (CCIE, CCNA), VMware (VCP-DCV), Microsoft, and Citrix. Sadiq holds a bachelor's degree in computer systems engineering from NED University of Engineering & Technology, Karachi, Pakistan.

Joseph Ristaino, CCIE No. 41799, is a Technical Leader with the ACI Escalation Team in RTP, North Carolina. He joined Cisco in 2011 after graduating from Wentworth Institute of Technology with a bachelor's degree in computer networking. Joseph started with Cisco on the Server Virtualization TAC team, specializing in UCS and virtualization technologies. He has in-depth knowledge of compute/networking technologies and has been supporting customers for over eight years as they implement and manage data center deployments around the globe. Joseph now works closely with the ACI Technical Support teams to provide assistance on critical customer issues that go unsolved and has been working on ACI since its inception in 2014. Joseph lives with his wife in Durham, North Carolina.

Carlo Schmidt, CCIE No. 41842, is a Data Center Solutions Architect. He works with global enterprises, designing their next-generation data centers. Carlo started at Cisco in 2011, on the Data Center Switching TAC team. In that role, he focused on Nexus platforms and technologies such as FCoE, fabric path, and OTV. In 2016, he migrated to the ACI TAC team, where he specialized in customer problem resolution as well as improving product usability. In 2019 Carlo decided to take his knowledge and lessons learned from his eight years in Cisco TAC to a presales role as a Solutions Architect. Carlo is based out of Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.