Introduction

Cisco® Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI®) is a comprehensive Software-Defined Networking (SDN) solution to enable agility and resiliency in the data center. It captures higher-level business and user intent in the form of a policy and translates this policy into the network constructs necessary to dynamically provision the network, security, and infrastructure services.

The Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure Fabric (ACI) includes Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches with the APIC to run in the leaf/spine ACI fabric mode. These switches form a “fat-tree” network by connecting each leaf node to each spine node; all other devices connect to the leaf nodes.

We need to discover and monitor performance metrics and collect configuration data for Cisco ACI devices. All of the elements making up a Cisco ACI system. Specifically we see the leafs, spines, and APICs. The controller for ACI is the Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC), Cisco ACI comes with default performance management tracking to pinpoint areas that hinder the network performance.


The following helps you get started.

Usecases

Discovery

  • Discovers all Cisco ACI components. The components include Cisco ACI Fabric Pod, Controller, Leaf, Spine, Tenant, VRF, Contract, Bridge Domain, External Route Network, External Bridge Network, Application Profile, and Endpoint Group.
  • Publishes relationships between resources to enable a topological view and simplify maintenance.
  • Refer to the Resource Hierarchy for detailed structure.

Monitoring

  • Provides metrics related to availability, capacity, performance, and usage.
  • Generates alerts when metric thresholds are breached to notify administrators of potential issues.
  • For a complete list of supported metrics and details on the default monitoring configurations, see Supported Metrics and Default Monitoring Configuration.

Supported Target Version

  • Cisco ACI Version 4.2

Hierarchy of Cisco ACI

  • Cisco ACI
    • Cisco ACI Fabric POD
      • Cisco ACI Controller
      • Cisco ACI Leaf
      • Cisco ACI Spine
    • Cisco ACI Tenant
      • Cisco ACI VRF
      • Cisco ACI Contract
      • Cisco ACI Bridge Domain
      • Cisco ACI External Route Network
      • Cisco ACI External Bridge Network
      • Cisco ACI Application Profile
        • Cisco ACI Endpoint Group

Integration Version History

Application VersionBugs/Enhancements
1.1.0This implementation introduces third-party CI alert mapping and OpsQL-based enhancements. Configure alert mappings to target CI systems through the application configuration. After configuration, the system automatically forwards alerts to the corresponding third-party platforms and maps them to the specified CIs, ensuring consistent integration and efficient alert management.
Previously, resource filters in the app configuration required manual entry of resource core and custom attributes. With this enhancement, the configuration is moved to OpsQL-based filtering, where users can see the keys auto-populated as needed.
1.0.2Modified the child resource MOIDs by including the ACI root resource's MOID to avoid resource reconciliations. After the upgrade, the integration impact leads to all discovered resources being deleted and recreated. The previous monitoring data will be removed, and new monitoring data will begin.
1.0.1Added code support for Get Target Response command for each native type. On demand latest snapshot support and Activity logger changes.
1.0.0Initial Development of Discovery and Monitoring changes