New Training: Describe ACI Manageability

In this 6-video skill, CBT Nuggets trainer Jeff Kish unpacks Cisco ACI’s management environment, including northbound and southbound APIs, ACI’s object model, and a demo of the GUI and CLI. Watch this new Cisco training.

Learn Cisco with one of these courses:

• Data Center Networking with Cisco Nexus Switches

• Cisco CCNP Data Center

This training includes:

• 6 videos

• 53 minutes of training

You’ll learn these topics in this skill:

• Intro

• Northbound APIs

• Southbound APIs

• ACI Programmability and Object Model

• GUI and CLI Demo

• Review and Quiz

What is a Northbound API for Cisco ACI?

Cisco is arguably the leader in the software-defined networking world. They provide a lot of tools to help make the process of implementing and managing software-defined networks much easier for network engineers. One of those tools is the ACI Management Environment. This tool itself provides additional resources for network engineers to use. One of those resources is the northbound APIs.

The northbound API is a restful API that applications or developers can use to communicate with and configure the software-defined network. Those northbound APIs allow communication between the SDN controllers and the services and applications running over the network. It's arguable the most moldable API set for Cisco's ACI management environment. By using the northbound APIs, applications can tell the network what it needs in terms of data, storage, bandwidth, etc… These APIs can also be used with orchestration apps, like Puppet or Chef, to automate the management of a software-defined network.