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Cisco ACI Multisite : Cisco APIC Controller Vs ACI Multisite Orchestrator

Here in this article, We are going to talk about the difference between the APIC controller and ACI Multisite Orchestrator. As you know various models of ACI like ACI pod, ACI Multipod, ACI Stretch Fabric. Every time to deploy any of this you need to have the ACI APIC controller to manage the fabric but if the requirement to have a single console for two or more different ACI fabric which is addressed in ACI Multi-Site required ACI Multi-site Orchestrator ACI MSO.

Let's talk about both APIC and ACI MSO as below.

APIC Controllers
As many of you know, Cisco APIC or so called Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller is one of the key component for any fabric from where the policies will be pushed towards the network.

The APIC appliance is a centralized, clustered controller that enhances efficiency and combines the operation of physical and virtual environments. The controller accomplishes and drives a scalable multitenant Cisco ACI fabric.

Below are the key features of APIC controllers in ACI infrastructure
  • Central point of management and configuration for the Fabric
  • Responsible for all Fabric local functions like Fabric discovery and bring up, Fabric access policies, Service graphs and Domains creation (VMM, Physical, etc.)
  • Integration with third party services
  • Maintains runtime data (VTEP address, VNID, Class_ID, GIPo, etc.)
  • No participation in the fabric control and data planes
Fig 1.1- Cisco ACI APIC and MSO design

ACI Multisite Orchestrator ( ACI MSO)
When we talk about the ACI MSO, it is called as manager of managers which can Monitoring the health-state of the different ACI Sites. It can provide Provisioning of day-0 configuration to establish inter-site EVPN control plane. 

It also defining and provisioning policies across sites and also Day-2 operation functionalities. ACI MSO can handles various APIC controllers and pushed policies on all the ACI fabrics so it is complementary to APIC controllers.

Below are the key features of ACI MSO in ACI infrastructure
  • Complementary to APIC
  • Provisioning and managing of “Inter-Site Tenant and Networking Policies”
  • Granularly propagate policies to multiple APIC clusters
  • Can import and merge configuration from different APIC cluster domains
  • End-to-end visibility and troubleshooting
  • No run time data, configuration repository
  • No participation in the fabric control and data planes