According to Cisco: "Its application policy infrastructure controller (APIC) is the unified point of automation and management for the ACI fabric, policy programming, and health monitoring. It optimizes performance, supports any application anywhere, and unifies management of physical and virtual infrastructure. The APIC is a highly scalable, clustered software controller capable of managing 1M endpoints.
"Unlike traditional SDN controllers, the Cisco APIC operates independently of switch data and control planes allowing the network to respond to endpoint changes even when the APIC is offline. It enables tremendous flexibility in how application networks are defined and automated and is designed from the ground up for programmability and centralized management."
Earlier this week, I received the following 3 doubts with regard to the new Cisco application policy infrastructure controller (APIC) from a source at a Cisco competitor:
Doubt #1
"The new APIC SDN controller will only work with Cisco equipment."
Cisco ACI: Cisco application policy infrastructure controller, application network profile and fabric that supports Cisco ACI
Doubt #2
"The advanced features on the Nexus 9000 will only work with the APIC SDN controller and that won't be ready until mid-2014."
Infrastructure components of Cisco APIC
Doubt #3
"The APIC SDN controller won't even work with the Nexus 7000 and you need to use the onePK toolkit with it."
