Top 10 Cisco ACI Learning Resources

If you are a Network Engineer, you have probably heard of Cisco ACI. Its a bit of a paradigm shift from traditional networking. Most people require some training in this new paradigm.

If you don’t have the time or resources to go for over priced Cisco ACI training , we have listed what we consider the best resources (on and off line) to help you learn ACI. Hope you find them useful.

• (1) Cisco’s Official documentation : Always best tokeep an eye the manufacturers own documentation of their product. Read the marketing documents to get Cisco’s position on “Why ACI” . The technical documents make for pretty dry reading, but most of the information you’ll need is in there.

• (2) Adam Raffe’s 12 part Learning ACI tutorial : This has been around for a few years and the topic is no longer being updated on the website, but as at the time of this writing, there is no better starting point for learning ACI, and its free.

• (3) Red Nectars Blog This Blog has also been around for a few years. Its not a tutorial as such. The author gives a lot of practical tips that I can only assume come from his own real life experience. Of particular note here is his series on configuring in-band management access to ACI.

• (4) UCS Guru : If you ever need to integrate UCS and ACI, you should read this blog. Most of the Tutorials are Videos. This one also has a lot of practical hands-on tips.

• (5) Unofficial ACI Guide : Catchy name, lots of great tips, not quite as in-depth as items 2, 3 and 4.

• (6) Deploying ACI (Book) : At the time of this writing, there are only 2 published books on Cisco ACI. This one is by far, the better one. Its a nice thing to have if you want a lot of the information in a single place and/or you need to read offline and don’t want to print out web pages. Items 2, 3 and 4 which are free resources, contain more information.

• (7) Udemy ACI Course : If you like learning with Videos, then this ACI course on Udemy by Jason Lunde is a good one to get. Its about 9 hours of Videos.

• (8) Cisco Live Breakout Videos : If you have access to Cisco Live Videos, use them. There is no set sequence unfortunately, so you’ll have to search on the Keyword ‘ACI’ and go from there. There are lots of introductory videos, as well as Videos for advanced topics.

• (9) Cisco dCloud : ACI equipment is pretty expensive and is pretty hard for most people to come by. dCloud has some ACI equipment that you can access remotely, for free.

• (10) Cisco ACI User Group on Facebook : If you use facebook, you should join this group. It is moderated by a Cisco employee named Robert Burns. The group is very active, the members super helpful, and you’ll often learn about new ACI features here.

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