Introduction

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The following sections provide an overview of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) systems and the "Cisco: ACI" PowerPack:

Supported Versions

The "Cisco: ACI" PowerPack can be used to monitor versions of Cisco ACI 3.X, 4.X, and 5.X.

Cisco ACI PowerPacks

To monitor a Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) system using SL1, you must install the following PowerPack:

  • Cisco: ACI

The following optional PowerPack provides dashboards for ACI:

  • Cisco ACI: SL1 Dashboards

Content in the Cisco ACI PowerPacks

Cisco: ACI

The "Cisco: ACI" PowerPack allows you to discover, model, and collect data from a Cisco ACI system. The PowerPack includes:

  • An example credential you can use to create credentials to connect to the Cisco ACI system

  • Dynamic Applications that discover and monitor the Cisco ACI system
  • Run Book Automation Policies and Action Policies that create device records for ACI tenants and that convert a physical device to a virtual device with the same IP address and aligned Dynamic Applications
  • Events for alert conditions in the Cisco ACI system
  • Device Classes and Device Categories for each type of device in the Cisco ACI system
  • Device dashboards for each type of discovered device

The Run Book Actions included in the Cisco: ACI PowerPack can authenticate API requests using SHA256 hashing when running Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS)-compliant installations of SL1 version 8.4.2 and later. The actions also support OpenSSL MD5 hashing for non-FIPS-compliant installations. For more information, ask your ScienceLogic contact for access to the ScienceLogic API documentation.

Cisco ACI: SL1 Dashboards

The "Cisco ACI: SL1 Dashboards" PowerPack includes pre-defined and configured dashboards that allow you to view data collected from Cisco ACI systems.

What Does the Cisco: ACI PowerPack Monitor?

SL1 discovers and monitors the following Cisco ACI components:

  • Clusters of hardware-based servers that host the APIC. This is the hardware that hosts the APIC (Application Policy Infrastructure Controllers). An APIC manages the physical and virtual infrastructure of ACI. This hardware cluster has an IP address. Initially, SL1 uses this IP address to discover the ACI system. SL1 displays each cluster as a component device with an IP address.

  • Application Policy Infrastructure Controllers (APICs). These are virtual machines that run on a cluster of hardware-based hosts. Each APIC is the unified point of automation, management, monitoring, and programmability for the ACI system. APICs control the physical and virtual infrastructure of ACI. Among other tasks, each APIC:
  • Controls policies that define ACI deployment of applications

  • Controls policies that define all automation and management
  • Hosts the API for ACI
  • Monitors the health of each component of ACI

SL1 displays each APIC as a component device.

  • Spine Switches (Nexus 9K-family switches). These are hardware-based, stateless switches. These switches are the spine switches of the ACI infrastructure and provide switching and load-balancing across leaf switches. SL1 displays each spine switch as a component device.

  • Leaf Switches (Nexus 9K-family switches). These are hardware-based, stateless switches. These switches are the leaf switches of the ACI infrastructure and provide switching. All devices in the ACI network communicate via leaf switches. Traffic with the source and destination on the same leaf switch is handled locally; traffic with the source and destination on two different leaf switches travels through a spine switch. SL1 displays each leaf switch as a component device.
  • Fabric. A fabric is an instance of an ACI network. A fabric includes an APIC, spine switches, and leaf switches. SL1 displays the fabric name as the prefix to each tenant.
  • Pods. A pod is a virtual device that is a container for all the APICs, spine switches, leaf switches, and associated descendents in an ACI infrastructure. SL1 displays each pod as a component device.

  • Tenants. A tenant is a container for policies. These policies control domain-based access within the ACI network. There are three tenants for each fabric in ACI: Common, infrastructure, and management.
  • The common tenant contains policies for resources that are used by all tenants, including firewalls, load balancers, intrusion detection, and Layer 4 to Layer 7 services.

  • The infrastructure tenant contains policies that control the fabric resources (like the fabric VXLAN) and also policies that deploy resources.
  • The management tenant contains policies that control operations of the fabric and communication with the virtual machine controllers. SL1 displays each tenant as a virtual device.

SL1 displays each tenant as a virtual device. The name of each tenant is fabric::tenant. For example, ACI Fabric 1::common.

  • Endpoint Groups (EPGs). Endpoints are devices that are connected to the network directly or indirectly (e.g., servers, virtual machines, or network-attached storage). They have an address, a location, attributes (e.g., version or patch level), and can be physical or virtual. An endpoint group is a group of endpoints that have common policy requirements, such as security, virtual machine mobility (VMM), QoS, or Layer 4 to Layer 7 services. For example, an endpoint group could contain all the endpoints in an application's web tier. Rather than configure and manage endpoints individually, they are placed in an endpoint group and are managed as a group. SL1 displays each endpoint group as a component device.

  • Application Network Profiles. An Application Network Profile is a container that holds:
  • Multiple endpoint groups that are logically related to one another

  • The connections between the EPGs
  • The policies that define the connections between EPGs

Application Network Profiles can be organized by:

  • The application they provide, by the function they provide (e.g., “infrastructure”)

  • Their location in the data center structure (for example, “DMZ”)
  • Any organizing principle that is required by your ACI implementation

SL1 displays each Application Network Profile as a component device.

Installing the Cisco ACI PowerPacks

Before completing the steps in this section, you must import and install the latest version of the "Cisco ACI" PowerPack. Optionally, you can also install the "Cisco ACI: SL1 Dashboards" PowerPack.

By default, installing a new version of a PowerPack overwrites all content from a previous version of that PowerPack that has already been installed on the target system. You can use the Enable Selective PowerPack Field Protection setting in the Behavior Settings page (System > Settings > Behavior) to prevent new PowerPacks from overwriting local changes for some commonly customized fields. For more information, see the section on Global Settings.

Ensure that you are running version 12.1.2 or later of SL1 before installing this PowerPack. For details on upgrading SL1, see the relevant SL1 Platform Release Notes.

To download and install the PowerPack:

  1. Search for and download the PowerPack from the PowerPacks page (Product Downloads > PowerPacks & SyncPacks) at the ScienceLogic Support Site.
  2. In SL1, go to the PowerPacks page (System > Manage > PowerPacks).
  3. Click the Actions button and choose Import PowerPack. The Import PowerPack dialog box appears.
  4. Click [Browse] and navigate to the PowerPack file from step 1.
  5. Select the PowerPack file and click Import. The PowerPack Installer modal displays a list of the PowerPack contents.
  6. Click Install. The PowerPack is added to the PowerPacks page.

If you exit the PowerPack Installer modal without installing the imported PowerPack, the imported PowerPack will not appear in the PowerPacks page. However, the imported PowerPack will appear in the Imported PowerPacks modal. This page appears when you click the Actions menu and select Install PowerPack.