Juniper Apstra vs. Cisco ACI

Apstra provides intuitive workflows with extensive built-in templates and tools that streamline the network operator’s experience from Day 0 Design and Day 1 Deployment through Day 2+ Operations.

ACI is overly complex and time consuming for even simple, routine tasks. Network teams can’t keep up with new business requirements and the pace of change demanded by DevOps teams.

Apstra includes built-in automation for the entire network life cycle from Day 0 to Day 2+, including upgrade, rollback and migration, and it includes proven, fully-supported integrations with VMware, Ansible and Terraform.

ACI’s GUI complexity does not scale, especially for larger networks, and its built-in automation capabilities are limited, without support for Day 0 design. Operators are forced to build or buy external automation tools.

Apstra intent-based networking is inherently multivendor, decoupling vendor-independent descriptions of network intent from vendor-specific configurations. Apstra is certified with a wide range of switches including Juniper, Arista, Dell SONiC and, yes, even Cisco. Many ACI customers can migrate seamlessly to Apstra while extending the useful life of their existing Cisco hardware investment.

ACI is not only proprietary to Cisco, but it also only works with specific Cisco switching products, creating a vendor lock-in effect.

Apstra’s vendor-independent operational model turns every network engineer into an expert—without requiring decades of experience and advanced vendor certifications.​ Apstra generates and validates vendor-specific configurations, dramatically reducing reliance on vendor training.

ACI operations require specialized training and skills that are unlike any other networking product in the market. Many network operators find that ACI is hard to master, leading to challenges in hiring and retaining ACI-trained staff.

Apstra includes full life cycle management from Day 0 to Day 2+, including automated upgrades and simplified migration. Apstra’s Time Voyager capability reduces risk even further with a one-click, automated, fabric-wide rollback in the event of a problem encountered during an upgrade or any other configuration change.

Cisco ACI’s time-consuming and risky upgrade process is infamous. Operators who try to manage upgrades on their own often run into service-impacting outages, so many resort to high-cost professional services from Cisco or another firm. And operators who avoid the problem and delay upgrading too long may find they cannot obtain support. Migrating AWAY from ACI may actually be less risky or costly.

The Apstra intent-based networking platform, with its powerful graph database, built-in telemetry and flow monitoring, and open API, is an ideal foundation for AI-enabled applications. Apstra works with the Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA) for Data Center to provide end-to-end network visibility and natural language query assistance and will enable a range of emerging AI operations applications such as application-aware, predictive, and proactive troubleshooting.

AI-enabled operations are coming quickly to data center networks, but they require a foundation that is more open and flexible than ACI.