The Policy Driven Data Center with ACI: Architecture, Concepts, and Methodology

Foreword

Looking at the history of network control, one can wonder why so much complexity emerged out of so simple concepts. Network management systems have traditionally focused on control of features, without thinking of networks as systems. Any network control scheme, at the heart, aims to solve two things: control of endpoint behaviors, where regulations are imposed on what sets of endpoints can communicate or not, also known as access control, and path optimization problems instrumented through management of numerous network control plane protocols. Unfortunately, this natural separation has rarely been honored, resulting in the control models that are both difficult to consume and operationally fragile.

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