Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC)

Programmatically Automate Network Provisioning

The Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (Cisco APIC) is the unifying point of automation and management for the Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) fabric. The Cisco APIC provides centralized access to all fabric information, optimizes the application lifecycle for scale and performance, and supports flexible application provisioning across physical and virtual resources.

Features and Capabilities

• Centralized application-level control for network, security, and network services automation
• Common policy and management framework across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure
• Open architecture (open APIs and standards) to integrate Layer 4 - 7 service, virtualization, and management vendors
• OpenStack to allow development operations to easily implement policy visibility and control
• Application awareness, mobility, integrated visibility, and control
• Robust implementation of multi-tenant security, quality of service (QoS), and high availability

Designed for automation, programmability, and centralized management, the Cisco APIC itself exposes northbound APIs through XML and JSON. It provides both a command-line interface (CLI) and GUI which utilize the APIs to manage the fabric holistically. The system also provides an open source southbound API which allows third-party network service vendors to implement policy control of supplied devices through the Cisco APIC.

Cisco APIC provides:

• A single pane of glass for application-centric network policies
• Fabric image management and inventory
• Application, tenant, and topology monitoring
• Troubleshooting

Cisco APIC is completely removed from the data path. This means the fabric can still forward traffic even when communication with the Cisco APIC is lost.

Related Products

• Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches
• Cisco Application Centric Intelligent Security
• Learn more about Application Centric Infrastructure

Additional Resources