Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure Operations and Troubleshooting (DCACIO)

In this Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure Operations and Troubleshooting course focuses on operational excellence in Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), covering the full lifecycle from Day-0 deployment through Day-2 operations. It is designed to help network and data center professionals understand how to maintain, monitor, and optimize an ACI fabric after initial deployment, with an emphasis on visibility, assurance, and best practices.

The course begins by explaining Cisco ACI Day-0 to Day-2 operations, establishing how planning, deployment, validation, and ongoing operations differ and how responsibilities evolve over time. It then introduces Day-2 operational tools, highlighting how administrators use built-in and external tools to gain visibility, validate intent, and troubleshoot issues in a production ACI environment.
Configuration management is covered next, focusing on how Cisco ACI maintains consistent, policy-driven configurations and how export and import operations support backup, recovery, and change control. The course also addresses Cisco ACI monitoring, explaining how telemetry, syslog, SNMP, and real-time troubleshooting tools are used to observe fabric health and application performance. Best practices are discussed throughout to reinforce stable, secure, and scalable operations.

Hands-on labs reinforce these concepts by safeguarding ACI operations with the Network Assurance Engine, exploring Cisco Network Insights through Nexus Dashboard, configuring SNMP, syslog, and configuration export and import, and using advanced troubleshooting tools such as ELAM Assistant, the Management Information Tree, and SPAN. Together, these exercises prepare learners to confidently operate and troubleshoot Cisco ACI in real-world environments.

How You'll Benefit

This course will help you:

• Quickly ramp up on Cisco ACI® operational knowledge, skills, and best practices honed from real-world production deployments
• Gain hands-on troubleshooting techniques
• Optimize the benefits of using Cisco ACI, such as streamlined operations

After taking this course, you should be able to:

• Describe the Cisco ACI built0in tools for operating and monitoring the fabric.
• Describe the complex challenges related to monitoring and Cisco tools that address them: Cisco Nexus Dashboard and Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights.
• Describe fabric installation upgrade, backup, restore, and best practices for Cisco NX-OS-to-ACI migration and Cisco ACI management access.
• Describe the tools and best practices for monitoring ACI fabric.
• Describe best practices for Cisco ACI naming conventions, Day-0 configuration, VMM integration, and Cisco ACI migrations.

This course is ideal for developers and engineers including:

• Network Engineer
• Systems Engineer
• Data Center Engineer
• Consulting Systems Engineer
• Technical Solutions Architect
• Cisco Integrators/Partners
• Field Engineer
• Server Administrator
• Network Manager

To fully benefit from this course, you should have the following knowledge and skills:

• Understanding of ACI architecture and concepts need to get an ACI fabric into production
• Familiarity with data center infrastructure operations
• Familiarity with management of Cisco data center switches
• Data center operations

The following course will provide you with the required ACI skills:

• Implementing Cisco Application-Centric Infrastructure (DCACI)
• Implementing and Administering Cisco Solution (CCNA)
• Understanding Cisco Data Center Foundations (DCFNDU)

Course Outline

Module 1: Describing Cisco ACI Day-0 to Day-2 Operations

Module 2: Describing Day-2 Operational Tools

Module 3: Describing Cisco ACI Configuration Management

Module 4: Describing Cisco ACI Monitoring

Module 5: Cisco ACI Best Practices

Lab Outline

• Lab 1: Safeguard ACI Operation Using Network Assurance Engine
• Lab 2: Explore Cisco Network Insights and Nexus Dashboard
• Lab 3: Configure SNMP and Perform Export/Import Operations
• Lab 4: Monitor Cisco ACI and Configure Syslog
• Lab 5: Configure ELAM Assistant
• Lab 6: Explore the Management Information Tree
• Lab 7: Configure SPAN