The Cisco API and ACI

Cisco systems, as the 800 pound gorilla in the networking space, have not missed on the trend of network automation. The problem has always been the confusion surrounding Cisco's various product lines and the level of technology support. With product lines spans from routers, switches, firewall, servers (unified computing), wireless, the collaboration software and hardware, and analytic software, to name a few, it is hard to know where to start.

Since this book focuses on Python and networking, we will scope the section to the main networking products. In particular, we will cover the following:

• Nexus product automation with NX-API
• Cisco NETCONF and YANG examples
• The Cisco application-centric infrastructure for the datacenter
• The Cisco application-centric infrastructure for the enterprise

For the NX-API and NETCONF examples here, we can either use the Cisco DevNet always-on lab devices or locally run Cisco VIRL. Since ACI is a separate product and is licensed on top of the physical switches, for the following ACI examples, I would recommend using the DevNet labs to get an understanding of the tools, unless, of course, you are one of the lucky ones who has a private ACI lab that you can use.