Implementing Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (300-620 DCACI)

Data center networks were once built one switch at a time, with VLANs, ACLs, and routing configured by hand on every device. As application estates grow, that model becomes slow to change and hard to keep consistent. Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) replaces it with a policy-driven fabric, where you describe what an application needs and the controller applies that intent across the network.

The Implementing Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (300-620 DCACI) course teaches you to deploy and operate Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches in ACI mode, managed by the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC). This Cisco ACI training starts with the spine-leaf architecture and the ACI object model, then moves into fabric discovery, access policies, and the logical constructs that define application connectivity: tenants, VRFs, bridge domains, application profiles, endpoint groups (EPGs), and contracts.

From there, the course covers how traffic is forwarded inside the fabric, how to connect ACI to existing networks through Layer 2 and Layer 3 external connections, and how Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) integration extends policy to virtualized workloads. You will also work with faults, events, audit logs, and health scores to monitor and troubleshoot the fabric, along with day-to-day management tasks such as role-based access, backups, and configuration snapshots.

The course aligns with the 300-620 DCACI exam, which leads to the Cisco Certified Specialist – Data Center ACI Implementation certification and serves as a concentration exam for CCNP Data Center. Whether you are preparing for certification or supporting an ACI rollout, this application-centric infrastructure training gives you practical Cisco ACI configuration skills grounded in how software-defined networking (SDN) is run in real data centers.

Course Objectives

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

• Describe the Cisco ACI spine-leaf architecture, APIC cluster roles, and the ACI management information model.
• Bring up and expand an ACI fabric through fabric discovery, and configure access and fabric policies for physical connectivity, including port channels and vPCs.
• Build tenant constructs — VRFs, bridge domains, application profiles and EPGs — to model application connectivity.
• Control communication between EPGs using contracts, subjects and filters, and apply provider and consumer relationships correctly.
• Explain ACI packet forwarding, endpoint learning and bridge domain settings such as unicast routing and ARP flooding.
• Connect the ACI fabric to external networks with L2Out and L3Out, and integrate virtualized environments through VMM domains.
• Monitor, manage and troubleshoot the fabric using faults, events, audit logs, health scores, RBAC, and configuration backups.