Application networking specialist A10 Networks announced the integration of its Thunder Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) fabric.
The joint solution is designed to help enterprises amplify their data center output by automatically provisioning application delivery and security services.
The open framework of Cisco ACI enables ecosystem partners such as A10 to interoperate with Cisco ACI fabric, and Cisco’s ACI and A10’s Thunder ADC solutions provide an automated approach to networking services based on application-specific policies that allow data center applications to dynamically scale on demand.
“Cisco and A10 share a common vision aimed to deliver automated infrastructure based on design tenants of policy and on-demand consumption,” Paul Nicholson, director of product marketing at A10 Networks, told eWEEK. “A10 and Cisco completed the joint integration effort over a period of three months—this included the development, testing and certification.”
Nicholson explained the A10 ACOS is completely application programming interface (API) driven and programmatically exposes rich services for rapid integration with SDN fabrics such as Cisco ACI.
The integration itself was made possible through the A10 device package, which allows ACI to automate the L4-L7 services on the physical, hybrid and virtual A10 Thunder appliances.
The device package has been tested by A10 Networks in the Cisco ACI environment and offers rich L4-L7 network application services.
“As Cisco and A10 continue to innovate, more advanced ADC and security functionality such as service chaining, Web Application Firewall (WAF), SSL Insight and Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) will be integrated with Cisco ACI,” he said.
Cisco ACI technology provides the ability to insert Layer 4 through Layer 7 services into the company’s Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) through simplified definitions.
The A10 APIC device package automates ACI service chaining and the insertion of physical, virtual and hybrid A10 Thunder appliances.
“Manageability is an important factor that businesses consider when evaluating application networking equipment,” Nicholson said. “Large enterprises and service providers need to deploy and manage numerous application delivery controllers in multiple locations, and they need a way to automate administration tasks.”
He explained A10’s restful aXAPI allowed customers to integrate Thunder ADC with their own management and monitoring systems.
“Our integration with Cisco ACI takes our manageability to the next level by supporting Cisco’s powerful SDN management framework,” he said. “With Cisco ACI integration, customers can deploy new Thunder ADC instances on demand and move workloads as needed.”
Nicholson also noted that modern data centers are increasingly focused on applications as the primary unit of currency.
“Current business trends like big data, mobility and cloud deployments are calling for a dynamic data center infrastructure that is secure, shared, flexible and capable of rapidly adapting to changing application needs,” he said. “As businesses look to IT as a point of strategic differentiation, agility in the data center becomes more critical than ever.”