Implementing Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (300-620 DCACI)

The modern data center is expected to deliver applications faster, scale on demand, and remain secure, all while being managed by lean teams. Traditional, device-by-device network administration struggles to keep pace with these demands. Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) addresses this challenge by placing the needs of applications at the centre of network design, allowing organisations to define connectivity, security and service requirements as policy and apply them consistently across the entire fabric.

The Implementing Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (300-620 DCACI) course provides a thorough, practical introduction to this software-defined networking (SDN) approach. Learners explore the Cisco ACI fabric architecture, built on Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches in a spine-and-leaf topology, and discover how the Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) provides a single point of automation, management, and visibility. They then work with the core policy model, including tenants, VRFs, bridge domains, application profiles, endpoint groups (EPGs) and contracts, which together translate application requirements into precise, repeatable network behaviour.

Building on this foundation, the course examines fabric discovery and access policies, endpoint learning and packet forwarding, external Layer 2 and Layer 3 connectivity, virtual machine manager (VMM) integration and service graphs. Learners also gain experience with essential operational tasks such as health monitoring, fault analysis, configuration backup, role-based access control and fabric upgrades.

This Cisco DCACI training is aligned with the official 300-620 DCACI exam blueprint. It is an excellent choice for professionals who want to master policy-based networking, strengthen their command of data center automation and network virtualization, and confidently contribute to agile, scalable data center infrastructure.

Course Objectives

By the end of this course, learners will be able to:

• Describe the Cisco ACI architecture, including the spine-and-leaf topology, hardware components, the ACI object model, and the APIC’s role in centralised management.
• Configure tenants, VRFs, bridge domains, application profiles and endpoint groups to build an application-centric policy model.
• Implement communication policies using contracts, subjects and filters, along with vzAny, preferred groups and endpoint security groups.
• Configure fabric discovery and access policies, and connect bare-metal and virtual workloads to the ACI fabric.
• Implement external Layer 2 and Layer 3 (L3Out) connectivity, VMware vCenter VMM integration, and service graphs.
• Monitor fabric health using faults, events, audit logs, and health scores, and use these insights to troubleshoot connectivity and policy issues.
• Apply ACI management practices, including in-band and out-of-band management, configuration backups, AAA and RBAC, and fabric upgrades.