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Source: Own illustration
Every year, the ACI expert panel meets – as we have already reported to you in previous years. Each time the focus is different. And now, there has been another meeting: On June 21 and 22, 2023, the ACI expert panel met in Ehingen on the Danube. Once again, the meeting was attended by employees of the IT Center as well as representatives of the manufacturer Cisco and Cisco customers from the public and private sectors throughout Germany.
Find out what this year’s meeting was all about.
A Brief Review of the Topic
ACI stands for “Application Centric Infrastructure”: This is the data center network solution used by the IT Center. It provides the network connectivity for the more than 1,500 virtual machines of the IT Center and its customers.
The ACI is the tool for the DataCenter and consists of three components: DataCenter Admin, Controller and Switches.
The DataCenter-Admin is a proprietary development of the IT Center and enables the admins to manage the data independently. This allows controlled access to the controllers and thus to the configuration of the network for the customer’s VMs. The controller manages the configurations and distributes them to the switches. These take over the routing, switching and firewalling and forward the data packets to the end systems.
Next Step: Network Automation
This year’s meeting focused on network automation. The goal: to transfer the cloud idea to the local data center. This creates the possibility of making settings in an agile self-administration.
Complete network automation would enable customers to place and receive orders for virtual machines in the shortest possible time.
The big advantage is that users can configure the virtual machines themselves according to their wishes, and processing is fast and automatic.
At the same time, silos are to be broken down – in other words, cross-departmental collaboration is to be promoted. The interfaces that are necessary in the network for this should not be ignored.
Ideas and approaches were played out together in simulation games, points of criticism of the product were collected and various implementation options were considered. Because, as always, there is not just one way – many scenarios are conceivable and possible.
Future Outlook
Our IT Center employee Benedikt Paffen is part of the ACI expert panel and has taken away many interesting impressions. These will now be discussed internally, coordinated and checked for implementation. The input should lead to improvements in customer experience and services at the IT Center.
The next meeting of the ACI expert group is already being planned. We are looking forward to seeing how things develop between now and then.
Responsible for the content of this article are Linda Jörres and Benedikt Paffen.
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