One thing I have been working on for a long time is to create a set of PowerShell modules for Cisco ACI.

For those that don’t know ACI is Cisco’s Next Generation DataCentre switching fabric. Kind of the next step after Nexus in NX-OS mode. It uses modern tecnniques such as hardware controllers (APIC’s – C220 servers) along with Nexus 9500 and Nexus 93xxx switches to form a leaf-spine deployment.

Whilst ACI has a GUI, MO and NX-OS like CLI (not perfect at all !) along with Python and even Ansible, these quickly run out of steam. Whilst Python is a great language it still takes some learning. Its also not so intuative when passing results between methods.

I realised there is nothing for ACI to utilise PowerShell in a similar way that VMware’s NSX has the most excellent PowerNSX

Hence, my first cut of ACI-PoSH published to GitHub. There is a ton of work to do on this – documentation being a biggie – but it works.

Development Process

I am quite lucky to have been involved in some large scale ACI deploments however when offline from these I have two enviroments that I use.

  • The Cisco DevNet ACI Sandbox availible at https://developer.cisco.com/site/sandbox/ This is a site that contains working examples of most Cisco products, one being the ACI Simulator (Always on) which in an Internet connected APIC. No charge but you do need to register or login. Just the job for testing, learning and development.
  • The Cisco ACI Simulator (see here) You need a valid CCO account and ACI software support to download. It will run in most Hypervisors (I use VMware Workstation and ESXi) but need at least 80GB HDD, 8 cores and 16GB RAM availble. You will also need your friendly Cisco Account Manager to authorise the activation code

Ill be adding more info here in later posts about just how to use it.