Introduction to Cisco APIC Hardware

 --> Cisco APIC Appliance comes in two flavors from Cisco:

i) Medium Configuration ( Can handle upto 1200 Edge Ports)

ii) Large Configuration ( Can handle more than 1200 Edge Ports)

--> Each Cisco ACI deployment requires at least three Cisco APIC M3/L3 servers configured in cluster.

--> Each and every Cisco APIC appliance comes with Trusted Platform Module (TPM), Certificates and Cisco APIC product ID(PID).

--> Trusted Platform Module ensures the Cisco APIC OS runs in specific UCS Hardware.

--> Every Cisco APIC Controller contains following interfaces:

i) Fabric Interfaces

--> Every Cisco APIC appliance comes with 4 Fabric Ports ( Virtual Interface Card 1445)

--> Port1 and Port2 makes a pair which can be managed using Eth2-1 Interface and Port3 and Port4 makes a pair which can be managed using Eth2-2 Interface

--> It is not allowed to connect two cables on the same pair, You can connect one cable on Eth2-1 and one cable on Eth2-3

--> All the ports can be configured to operate at 10Gbps or 25Gbps

--> It is recommended to connect the Fabric Interfaces to different Leaf Switches or Vpc Pair

ii) OOB ( Out of Band) Management Interfaces

--> OOB Management Interfaces are used to manage the Cisco APIC Controller Application.

--> Every Appliance comes with two OOB ports configured in Active/Standby Failover.

--> The default setting for OOB Ports is configured in dedicated mode.

--> OOB Interface can be only accessed after the Initial configuration is done on the APIC Controller

iii) Cisco IMC (CIMC) Interface

--> Every Cisco APIC Controller comes with one Cisco IMC interface.

--> CIMC Interface in Cisco APIC Controller provides information about hardware (UCS), Manage APIC Operating System ( Power ON/ Power OFF) and we can configure SNMP.

--> We can configure the CIMC Interface IP address and other parameters by using Serial Console and keyboard.

--> Once the CIMC Interface is assigned with the IP address then you can perform the Initial configuration of APIC using the IP address of CIMC.

Note: Following command can be used to verify the Initial configuration of APIC Controller once it is done:

APIC# cat /data/data_admin/sam_exported.config

Note: To check hardware/discovery/state issues on the Leaf/Spine switch:

Leaf/Spine# show discoveryissues