Cisco® Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI™ is an innovative architecture that radically simplifies, optimizes, and accelerates the entire application deployment lifecycle. Cisco ACI uses a holistic systems-based approach, with tight integration between physical and virtual elements, an open ecosystem model, and innovation-spanning application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), hardware, and software. This unique approach uses a common policy-based operating model across a network that supports Cisco ACI along with security elements (and computing and storage in the future), eliminating IT silos and drastically reducing cost and complexity. The main benefits of Cisco ACI include: Simplified automation with an application-based policy model Common platform for managing physical, virtual, and cloud-based environments Centralized visibility with real-time application health monitoring Operation simplicity, with common policy, management, and operation models across application, network, and security resources (and computing and storage resources in the future) Open software flexibility for development and operations (DevOps) teams and ecosystem partner integration Scalable performance and secure multitenancy Fault, event, and performance management Cisco Application Virtual Switch (AVS), which can be used as a virtual leaf switch Health scores for critical managed objects (tenants, application profiles, switches, etc.) Implementation on a distributed framework across a cluster of appliances Cisco ACI inventory and configuration Image management (spine and leaf) Third-party integration (Layer 4 through Layer 7 [L4-L7) services and VMware vCenter and vShield) Application and topology monitoring and troubleshooting Application-centric network policies Data-model-based declarative provisioning
