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Many organizations are undergoing a significant shift towards cloud-based resources and a geographically dispersed workforce. This presents a major challenge as legacy network architecture may not be up to the task. These outdated systems often struggle to securely grant remote access and integrate seamlessly with today’s private cloud networks.

Here’s where modern approaches like microsegmentation come into play. Businesses are ensured their networks are adaptable, secure, and can support their evolving needs in the digital age. Let’s explore how businesses can rethink their network strategy to unlock greater agility and security.

Network Security And Agility At Top Of Mind

In today’s hybrid cloud world, networks are the foundation for modern applications, connecting everything from microservices to AI. Recent developments over the past few years have exposed the need for a holistic digital transformation with secure networking at its core.

To support these demands, software-defined networking (SDN) tackles network management challenges by offering a centralized, application-centric policy framework that streamlines data center network management. This allows for automated configuration, boosting agility across data centers and private clouds.

The framework extends seamlessly to private clouds, enterprise hybrid clouds, and even WAN environments, unlocking several key benefits:

• Microsegmentation cybersecurity: Granular policy control safeguards workloads, minimizes the attack surface, and strengthens an enterprise’s overall security posture.
• Dynamic network provisioning: Automated network provisioning streamlines application deployment to accelerate digital transformation initiatives.
• Consistent security across clouds: Consistent enforcement of security policies across multi-cloud environments ensures a secure foundation for any workload, regardless of location.

By rethinking networks with a focus on security and automation, organizations can unlock a new era of agility, enhance security, and improve efficiency, paving the way for a successful digital transformation journey.

A Policy-Based Approach

Traditional, manual network configuration is a complex and error-prone process, which hinders agility in today’s enterprise hybrid cloud environments. Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) offers a comprehensive SDN solution: policy-driven automation for microsegmentation in private cloud networks and beyond. Here’s how Cisco ACI simplifies network management:

1. Business-Driven Network Policy: Cisco ACI bridges the gap between business goals and network infrastructure. IT teams and stakeholders define high-level requirements, such as secure access to a CRM application. ACI translates this intent into a comprehensive network policy, including security measures, performance needs, and configuration details.
2. Automatic Provisioning: The policy becomes the blueprint for the network. Cisco ACI automatically provisions and configures network components (switches, firewalls, VLANs) and security services, eliminating manual configuration and streamlining deployment.

These benefits fuel faster application deployment, simplified management, and flexibility to ensure the network adapts to changing application requirements.

Building Secure And Agile Networks

Cisco ACI is designed to build data center networks around specific application requirements. This approach fosters microsegmentation cybersecurity, which is particularly valuable for private cloud networks and enterprise hybrid cloud deployments, enabling seamless application mobility across different environments.

Cisco ACI’s core architecture separates the data plane (packet forwarding) from the control plane (configuration and policy enforcement). This decoupling delivers enhanced agility for businesses by enabling rapid definition and application of network policies, which translates to faster application deployment and streamlined network changes. Additionally, the architecture inherently offers scalability to accommodate the growing data center needs of an ACI cloud environment. Let’s look at the components that drive Cisco ACI to empower your data center goals.

The Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) acts as the central brain of the ACI fabric. It offers:

• Unified Point of Automation and Management: The APIC simplifies network operations within the multi-tenant, scalable ACI fabric. It acts as a single point for policy configuration, automation, and health monitoring across physical, virtual, and private cloud network infrastructure.
• Policy Enforcement and Optimization: The APIC enforces network security policies (including microsegmentation) and optimizes overall network performance. This ensures consistent operations across enterprise hybrid cloud environments.
• Broad Ecosystem Interoperability: The APIC integrates seamlessly with various management, orchestration, and virtualization tools from diverse vendors and networks, including L4-L7 services.
• Open Programmability: An open, standards-based API exposes the ACI policy engine to external applications and orchestration tools, allowing for deep integration with existing workflows and automation frameworks.
• Web-Based User Interface: While automation is a core strength, the APIC also provides a user-friendly web interface for manual configuration and monitoring tasks when needed.

The Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches are designed to be the cornerstone of high-performance data centers, private cloud networks, and enterprise hybrid clouds – particularly within Cisco ACI cloud deployments.

These switches deliver wire-rate switching speeds of up to 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and are future-proofed for 800 GbE architectures. Moreover, the Nexus 9000 Series utilizes a “fat-tree” architecture to achieve low-latency, high-bandwidth connections between leaf and spine switches.

Offering both fixed-configuration and modular switch options, the Nexus 9000 Series also provides flexibility for deployment, scalability, and redundancy.

• Each leaf switch directly connects to all spine switches to create multiple efficient data paths.
• Leaf switches act as Top-of-Rack (ToR) switches, providing connectivity between servers and external networks. They are fully programmable to support specific application requirements and offer Layer 2/Layer 3 capabilities, Quality of Service (QoS), security features, and virtualization support.
• Spine switches function as Layer 3 aggregation points, interconnecting leaf switches and ensuring high-bandwidth data flow throughout the network. Like leaf switches, they are fully programmable and support all Layer 2/Layer 3 protocols.

The Nexus 9000 Series, furthermore, offers deployment flexibility through two modes:

• NX-OS Mode to ensure compatibility with existing network environments.
• ACI Mode to provide full access to Cisco ACI features for microsegmentation cybersecurity within private cloud or hybrid cloud deployments.

This modular architecture provides the following deployment options:

• On-premises for policy-driven management of existing data centers
• Cloud-based (including public, private, and hybrid) for consistent policy enforcement across the entire IT infrastructure
• SD-WAN edge for managing and securing branch office connectivity with the same policy-driven approach.

Policy-based automation streamlines operations, strengthens control and security, and empowers businesses to build agile and scalable enterprise hybrid cloud infrastructure. Businesses, especially IT teams, can then shift its focus to driving innovation and growth, while developers benefit from a consistent development experience across all environments, including private cloud networks and ACI cloud deployments.

Final Thoughts

The digital revolution has ushered in an era where adaptable and secure IT infrastructures are crucial. Businesses should re-evaluate their network design to remain competitive. A modern network foundation with microsegmentation cybersecurity principles in mind should seamlessly integrate with cloud environments. This streamlines operations and frees your IT team to focus on strategic initiatives.

Choosing the right Cisco ACI solutions provider is critical. WEI is a leader with a deep technical bench capable of understanding of your business goals. Our proven expertise in Cisco ACI unlocks the platform’s full potential, empowering you to harness the power of your enterprise hybrid and private cloud networks. This translates to seamless integration, robust security, and enhanced operational efficiency across your entire network landscape. Contact us today to get started.

Next steps: As businesses undergo digital transformation, the need for updated corporate networks and IT architectures becomes critical. Cisco ACI aids this shift by providing a network foundation that integrates with cloud environments and adapts to changing business needs.

It offers policy-driven automation to streamline infrastructure deployment and management, facilitates workload transfers across various frameworks, and enhances security. This technology simplifies and speeds up the application deployment process, helping organizations manage digital transformation complexities and prepare for future challenges.

Download our free white paper, Cisco ACI: A Catalyst for Digital Transformation, to find out more about this proven solution.