Q. Why is Cisco Cloud ACI changing to Cisco Cloud Network Controller?
A. Cisco Cloud ACI is being renamed Cisco Cloud Network Controller. Cisco is adding to the capabilities of Cisco Cloud Network Controller by adding connectivity with Cisco Nexus® Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) through routing management, and reflects that there is no direct dependence on Cisco ACI®.
Q. What is Cisco Cloud Network Controller?
A. Cisco Cloud Network Controller enables businesses to connect to and consume public clouds and unlock the efficiency, flexibility, and innovation of hybrid-cloud and multicloud environments. It enables observability and secure connectivity for any workload in any location in the network. It utilizes native-cloud constructs, enabling organizations to build on the features and capabilities offered by public-cloud providers. Cisco expertise in on-premises environments allows enterprises to fully align their cloud capabilities with their existing network policies and compliance requirements.
Cisco Cloud Network Controller enables:
● Seamless connectivity for any workload at scale across any location
● Operational simplicity and visibility across a vast multisite, multicloud data-center network
● Easy L4-7 services integration
● Consistent security and segmentation
● Business continuity and disaster recovery
Q. How does the controller work?
A. Utilizing native-cloud constructs, the solution enables automation that accelerates infrastructure deployment and governance, simplifies management to easily connect workloads across a multi-fabric, multicloud framework. The Cisco Cloud Network Controller vision is to support enhanced observability, operations, and troubleshooting across the entire IT environment.
Cisco applies its deep expertise in on-premises environments to augment the capabilities provided by public-cloud providers, to enable organizations to fully align cloud environments with their existing security policies, routing policies, and other requirements, to support multicloud transformation without compromise. Flexible deployment options let organizations configure routing separately from security. This allows enterprises to leverage Cisco Cloud Network Controller to connect their resources, while security is governed by separate teams.
Q. What deployment models are available?
A. Cisco Cloud Network Controller supports a variety of deployment models to align to diverse customer environments and use cases, including:
● Cloud-only
● Hybrid, with on-premises Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
● Hybrid with on-premises Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC)
● Connectivity to external networks
Q. What are the common components of the multicloud networking solution?
A. Cisco Cloud Network Controller is the main architectural component of this multicloud solution. It is the unified point of automation and management for the solution fabric, including network and security policy, health monitoring, and optimizing of performance and agility.
The complete solution includes:
● Cisco Cloud Network Controller
● Cisco Nexus Dashboard orchestration and visibility
● Cisco Catalyst® 8000V or a cloud-native router
Q. Why should I run Cisco Cloud Network Controller for Cisco ACI?
A. The Cisco ACI solution for an on-premises data center delivers on the software-defined-networking (SDN) promise of agility enabled by policy-driven automation. With Cisco Cloud Network Controller, customers can translate ACI policies into cloud-native constructs through public-cloud APIs to create a single, consistent policy across multiple on-premises and public-cloud instances. Once implemented, it will strengthen policy-driven connectivity between on-premises data centers and public clouds, simplify routing between on-premises data centers and public clouds, and ensure consistency of network security policies.
Q. Why should I run the Cisco Cloud Network Controller for NDFC?
A. Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) (formerly Cisco Data Center Network Manager (DCNM)) has helped address many of the challenges of managing Cisco NX-OS switches. NDFC empowers IT to move at the increasing speed required by your business. With NDFC, you get complete automation, extensive visibility, and consistent operations for your data center and extending into a hybrid-cloud environment.
Q. Which public clouds are supported by Cisco Cloud Network Controller?
A. The following:
● AWS
● Microsoft Azure
● Google Cloud
Q. What are some of the main benefits Cisco Cloud Network Controller provides in building a hybrid-cloud or multicloud environment?
A. It provides the following benefits:
● Optimize Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
● Ease multicloud adoption with automated connectivity and routing
● Secure multicloud connectivity with segmentation and network policy
● Single interface for simplicity
● L4-L7 services integration in the cloud
● Visibility and troubleshooting
Q. What are the key solution capabilities?
A. The key solution capabilities are as follows:
● Seamless connectivity for any workload and workload mobility at scale across any location
● Operational simplicity and visibility across a vast multisite, multicloud data-center network
● Easy L4-7 services integration
● Consistent security and segmentation
● Business continuity and disaster recovery
Q. What are some common use cases for Cisco Cloud Network Controller?
A. Use cases include the following:
● Intra-cloud connectivity
● Inter-cloud connectivity
● On-premises data centers to hybrid cloud connectivity
● External network connectivity with the cloud
● L4-L7 services insertion in the cloud
● Brownfield VPC onboarding
Q. What is Cisco Nexus Dashboard?
A. Cisco Nexus Dashboard offers a centralized management console that allows network operators to easily access applications needed to perform the lifecycle management of their fabric for provisioning, troubleshooting, or simply gaining deeper visibility into their network. It is a single launch point to monitor and scale across different fabric controllers, whether it is Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC), Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC), or Cisco Cloud Network Controller.
Q. Is Cisco Cloud Network Controller accessed through the Cisco Nexus Dashboard?
A. The Cisco Nexus Dashboard provides orchestration and visibility, network policy configuration, and connectivity across a multicloud environment, and policy segmentation definition and enforcement for multicloud deployments. Using Cisco Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator, customers get a single view across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud environments.
Q. Does Cisco Cloud Network Controller support integration with native-cloud extensions to the on-premises environments, such as Azure Stack, AWS Outposts, or Google Anthos?
A. Support for Azure Stack is coming soon, with AWS Outposts and Google Anthos on the roadmap for the future.
How do I buy?
Q. Where can I find Cisco Cloud Network Controller?
Q. What is AWS Pay-as-you-go (PAYG)?
A. AWS Pay-as-you-go is a flexible payment model that allows users to only pay for what they consume. CCNC meters based on VM usage and has two pricing tiers, Essentials (0.025usd/hr) and Advantage – CCNC with NDO (0.03usd/hr).
Q. Will both perpetual and subscription licenses be offered for Cisco Cloud Network Controller?
A. Cisco Cloud Network Controller will offer only subscription licenses; no perpetual licenses will be offered. Typical cloud-deployment models will use BYOL (bring your own license) and pay-as-you-go for AWS.
Q. What type of licensing does the Cisco Nexus Dashboard require?
Where can I find more information?
Q. Where can I find general Cisco Cloud Network Controller information?
A. You can find out information and watch related videos at the Cisco Cloud Network Controller
webpage.
Q. Where can I find information on deployments and release compatibility?
A. You can find information on deployments and release compatibility at this
webpage.