1 00:00:01,140 --> 00:00:04,710 When it comes to the data center, Cisco has countless solutions, 2 00:00:04,710 --> 00:00:07,440 both hardware and software. 3 00:00:07,440 --> 00:00:11,130 We'll focus on four products in this clip. 4 00:00:11,130 --> 00:00:16,210 First, we have the Unified Computing System, or UCS Manager. 5 00:00:16,210 --> 00:00:19,550 This product is designed for managing Cisco computing hardware, 6 00:00:19,550 --> 00:00:24,410 such as rack and blade servers, inside of a private data center. 7 00:00:24,410 --> 00:00:30,120 It can also manage Cisco's popular hyperconverge solution, known as HyperFlex. 8 00:00:30,120 --> 00:00:32,880 The product enables administrators to apply server 9 00:00:32,880 --> 00:00:35,840 policies in a centralized way. 10 00:00:35,840 --> 00:00:41,010 UCS Manager has an RPC‑based XML API that describes methods 11 00:00:41,010 --> 00:00:44,690 for programmers to interact with the system. 12 00:00:44,690 --> 00:00:48,080 Cisco Intersight is a cloud‑based Software as a Service 13 00:00:48,080 --> 00:00:51,330 offering for Cisco compute management. 14 00:00:51,330 --> 00:00:56,890 Like Meraki, it comes with built‑in high availability and unlimited scale. 15 00:00:56,890 --> 00:01:00,910 Intersight can also leverage information from other customers. 16 00:01:00,910 --> 00:01:01,750 For example, 17 00:01:01,750 --> 00:01:06,590 if another company uses Intersight and their data center crashes due to a bug, 18 00:01:06,590 --> 00:01:08,860 Intersight can notify all other tenants, 19 00:01:08,860 --> 00:01:11,120 such as Globomantics. 20 00:01:11,120 --> 00:01:16,940 Sometimes, it can even take proactive action to remediate these faults. 21 00:01:16,940 --> 00:01:22,410 Intersight supports a modern REST API for programmatic access. 22 00:01:22,410 --> 00:01:26,570 UCS Director has a somewhat misleading name because it does much 23 00:01:26,570 --> 00:01:30,610 more than just manage Cisco UCS platforms. 24 00:01:30,610 --> 00:01:35,100 It's comparable to DNA Center except focused on the data center. 25 00:01:35,100 --> 00:01:37,310 It can interact with many other vendors, 26 00:01:37,310 --> 00:01:40,930 such as F5 load balancers, VMware vCenter, 27 00:01:40,930 --> 00:01:44,530 NetApp storage appliances, and many more. 28 00:01:44,530 --> 00:01:47,380 It is excellent for initial provisioning of new services, 29 00:01:47,380 --> 00:01:51,040 as well as workflow orchestration. 30 00:01:51,040 --> 00:01:57,720 Last, UCS Director has a REST API with extensive documentation. 31 00:01:57,720 --> 00:02:02,200 Another popular Cisco data center product is application‑centric infrastructure, 32 00:02:02,200 --> 00:02:04,940 or ACI. 33 00:02:04,940 --> 00:02:09,780 ACI is somewhat similar to SD‑WAN in that it manages an entire collection 34 00:02:09,780 --> 00:02:14,420 of network devices as a single application‑aware fabric. 35 00:02:14,420 --> 00:02:18,600 ACI is based on the Cisco Nexus 9000 hardware platform, 36 00:02:18,600 --> 00:02:21,240 a data center networking device. 37 00:02:21,240 --> 00:02:25,780 Here's a sample connectivity diagram of how they might be interconnected. 38 00:02:25,780 --> 00:02:29,900 If you remember the SD‑WAN vSmart controllers, 39 00:02:29,900 --> 00:02:33,740 ACI uses an application policy infrastructure controller, 40 00:02:33,740 --> 00:02:36,810 or APIC, which serves a similar purpose. 41 00:02:36,810 --> 00:02:41,300 It communicates to all the network devices in the fabric and controls 42 00:02:41,300 --> 00:02:44,800 how they forward traffic within the data center. 43 00:02:44,800 --> 00:02:48,740 Imagine distributed applications that follow the MVC design 44 00:02:48,740 --> 00:02:51,340 pattern discussed in the previous course. 45 00:02:51,340 --> 00:02:54,880 Large‑scale apps would probably have different components spread 46 00:02:54,880 --> 00:02:57,760 across different racks that need to communicate. 47 00:02:57,760 --> 00:03:01,980 ACI can enforce policies to ensure the view never talks 48 00:03:01,980 --> 00:03:05,440 directly to the model or vice versa. 49 00:03:05,440 --> 00:03:06,370 Additionally, 50 00:03:06,370 --> 00:03:11,540 ACI can govern what traffic is allowed to enter and exit the data center at the 51 00:03:11,540 --> 00:03:14,660 interconnect points with the rest of the enterprise network. 52 00:03:14,660 --> 00:03:17,290 Users should be able to access applications, 53 00:03:17,290 --> 00:03:19,860 but not manage the fabric directly, 54 00:03:19,860 --> 00:03:23,640 as only the APIC administrator should be doing that. 55 00:03:23,640 --> 00:03:27,650 Let's explore four big capabilities of ACI. 56 00:03:27,650 --> 00:03:31,140 Centralized management is a recurring theme. 57 00:03:31,140 --> 00:03:34,750 The industry is demanding solutions that have nice‑looking dashboards, 58 00:03:34,750 --> 00:03:37,320 plus strong API support. 59 00:03:37,320 --> 00:03:43,040 ACI has a REST API, which we'll be exploring in the next clip. 60 00:03:43,040 --> 00:03:48,640 ACI introduces a number of new network concepts, but I'll explain two key ones. 61 00:03:48,640 --> 00:03:50,790 An endpoint group, or EPG, 62 00:03:50,790 --> 00:03:54,640 is a collection of hosts with similar security attributes. 63 00:03:54,640 --> 00:04:00,210 A contract defines the communications that are allowed between two EPGs. 64 00:04:00,210 --> 00:04:03,360 This is a segmentation technique to ensure EPGs 65 00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:09,840 only exchange authorized traffic, improving the organization's security posture. 66 00:04:09,840 --> 00:04:13,030 Initially, ACI was limited to a single data center, 67 00:04:13,030 --> 00:04:18,040 but has since been expanded to reflect modern enterprise computing requirements. 68 00:04:18,040 --> 00:04:21,630 ACI can be extended across multiple sites to enable 69 00:04:21,630 --> 00:04:25,740 increased availability and resilience. 70 00:04:25,740 --> 00:04:30,040 Much like SD‑WAN, the API fabric is plug‑and‑play. 71 00:04:30,040 --> 00:04:32,270 The fabric can be physically interconnected with 72 00:04:32,270 --> 00:04:34,840 the APIC hanging off at the edge. 73 00:04:34,840 --> 00:04:39,140 The APIC will automatically begin discovering all nodes in the fabric. 74 00:04:39,140 --> 00:04:47,000 Once complete, the APIC will manage the fabric, allowing administrators to configure application‑specific policies.