Automated App Services in Cisco ACI - F5 Private Cloud Solution

Henry Tam is Sr Product Marketing Manager for F5’s Cloud Solutions and BIG-IP application delivery controller (ADC) platforms (hardware and software). Henry is responsible for the outbound marketing and go to market strategy of these solutions. We are publishing this Blog on behalf of Henry.

Today’s software-defined economy requires businesses to move faster than their competitors. Speed and agility are critical to keeping up with competitive demands for new applications, as well as maintaining existing infrastructure. Because an inability to scale and service networks can lead to escalating costs and increased time-to-service, many IT groups deploy private clouds to help them respond aggressively to business needs. As part of the private cloud initiative, automating the network stack requires a solution that addresses not just the L2-3 switching and routing complexity, but the associated L4-7 services as well—for each application. Not surprisingly then, organizations are looking for a SDN solutions like Cisco ACI that fully integrate with advanced L4 – L7 services, all driven by single app policy and can be orchestrated by higher level orchestration tools like Ansible.

Today, following the introduction of our previous solution package for OpenStack, we’re announcing the F5 Private Cloud Solution Package for Cisco Networking. This package leverages the existing supported and certified APIC integration with BIG-IP through iWorkflow^TM and F5 Device Package and now includes the BIG-IP iSeries appliances and Virtual Editions, the advanced application delivery and security software, and F5 professional services, simplifying your procurement and deployment processes. This package has been engineered, tested, and certified to run in Cisco ACI Service Manager (Managed), Network Policy (Unmanaged), and standalone Nexus 9K NX-OS modes. The last two modes also includes deployment architectures that utilize Ansible for orchestration and automated configuration. By supporting multiple modes, F5 allows customers to operationalize the entire network and start migrating to the policy-based, application-driven network architectures or full private cloud, for both existing and new applications. By leveraging this package with Cisco ACI and Ansible playbooks, we provide a full stack orchestratable SDN solution that enables agile and consistent app services delivery, security, all within a DevOps-ready solution that enables collaboration between IT and app owners.

Figure 1: Integrated F5 and Cisco ACI fabric multi-tier architecture

The adoption of cloud-based software defined network solutions like Cisco ACI is accelerating. Now with the F5 solution package, you can confidently deploy a private cloud with Cisco ACI fabric fully integrated with F5 scalable app delivery services delivering the automated policy-driven application deployments you need. Combining the advantages of the F5 and Cisco market leading solutions, organizations can deploy versatile, elastic network and application services—ultimately leading to quicker and more successful application rollouts. Engineered. Tested. Validated. Certified.

Availability of this new solution package will be in calendar Q3 2017.

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