Hybrid and multi-clouds have become a reality when it comes to deploying applications, software, infrastructure, security and other critical network functions at scale. While hybrid and multi-cloud solutions provide flexibility that can help our customers optimize costs, they can also introduce their own risks and operational complexities.

Application-centric infrastructure (ACI) And Nexus dashboard, two of Cisco’s core data center solutions, are designed to reduce this complexity. ACI enables customers to automate, secure and accelerate the deployment of their networks. Nexus Dashboard allows customers to accelerate and simplify network orchestration with built-in features Infrastructure as code and automation tools, they can gain comprehensive visibility and minimize downtime by leveraging the platform’s powerful analytics, and they can ensure business compliance and keep their networks running smoothly by taking advantage of embedded software recommendations. Most importantly, Nexus Dashboard enables users to unify their operations by consolidating a powerful and consistent operating model under a single interface.

In general, Cisco develops solutions that ensure high application availability and performance as we strive to create good experiences for developers and users. Additionally, Cisco’s APIs, open platforms, ecosystem technology partnerships and integrations, such as our decade-long strategic partnership with F5, make these tools even more powerful. More than half of ACI’s install base has F5 BIG-IP on their data center networks, and the integration between BIG-IP and the Cisco toolset helps our mutual customers benefit from improved application availability and performance.

Another important use case of this integration is to simplify deployment and troubleshooting of BIG-IP and ACI. Our teams have worked together to create resources like this ACI BIG-IP Design Guideas well as Red Hat Ansible playbooks and HashiCorp Terraform resources to automate deployment processes. We have also developed and continue to add new features F5 ACI ServiceCenter app. ServiceCenter is a unified solution that enables our shared customer base to share network and application delivery services. It serves as a central automation point for managing L2-L3 and L4-L7 infrastructure and provides improved visibility into Cisco ACI and BIG-IP.

Announcing global server load balancing across locations

We are now excited to take the next step in our partnership with F5 with support for global server load balancing across locations. We are introducing F5 BIG-IP DNS integration with Cisco ACI Multi-Site/Multi-Pod. This is critical for organizations that rely on multiple locations to deliver apps locally to users for the best performance and experience, and therefore require more sophisticated redirection capabilities to reliably serve a global, distributed audience.

Figure 1: Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) for Cisco ACI Multi-Site
Distributes user traffic to the best LB based on location

This is one step of many steps to come, and I look forward to our partnership continuing to pave the way for more successful hybrid multi-cloud deployments and superior application performance for our mutual customers

Together, F5 and Cisco support network and application teams with the solutions they need to ensure applications are available and performing at all times and under all circumstances – from overloaded servers to down sites. We ensure our customers can operate successfully in our new hybrid multi-cloud reality.

Our latest White paper explains global server load balancing for Cisco ACI Multi-Site/Multi-Pod and F5 BIG-IP deployments in detail and provides several design recommendations to support a wide range of business requirements for application performance and resiliency. Also once BIG-IP DNS Deployed into your environment, you’ll have access to a wide range of features, including superior DNS performance, increased security layers, reporting and analytics, and health monitoring.

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