Nutanix AHV Cisco ACI Integration as a VMM solution announced!

Great news for those using ACI in their environments, who might be used to ACI having visibility into their virtualized VMWare environments -- this functionality is coming to Nutanix! 

​From Cisco's release notes: "You can now integrate the Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV) with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI). The Cisco APIC integrates with Nutanix AHV and enhances the network management capabilities. The integration provides virtual and physical network automation and
VM endpoints visibility in Cisco ACI." ​https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/dcn/aci/apic/kb/cisco-aci-nutanix-integration.pdf

You need to be running:
Cisco APIC 6.0(3) -- (released August 2023) or newer
Nutanix: To use current vSwitches without creating a NEW vSwitch (no vSwitch creation):

• AOS 6.5
• Prism Central 2022.6

To be able to create vSwitches

• AOS 6.6+
• Prism Central 2022.9+

Benefits of the integration are:

• visibility into the cluster from the Cisco APIC
• network statistics collection into APIC
• support for Cisco EPG's (endpoint groups) to configure networking support on Nutanix
• support for intra-EPG policies (intra-EPG contract is not supported) 

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The image above shows a sample topology. The Cisco APIC manages the ACI fabric and policies. The VMs connected to the virtual switch are managed by the Nutanix Prism. ACI fabric provides network connectivity for VMs in AHV Hosts with the uplinks (Uplink1 and 2).

How it works:
Cisco ACI uses EPGs, or end-point groups, to deliver policy to sets of defined endpoints (i.e. VMs) within
ACI to NCP AHV with Flow Network Security as a VMM solution.

Documentation from Cisco here:
Inclusion on Cisco’s ACI VMM solution webpage:
https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/Website/datacenter/aci/virtualization/matrix/virtmatrix.html
. Cisco ACI 6.0.3 release notes mention the new Nutanix integration:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/dcn/aci/apic/6x/release-notes/cisco-apic-release-notes-603.html
. Cisco ACI and Nutanix AHV VMM Integration Guide/Tech Note:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/dcn/aci/apic/kb/cisco-aci-nutanixintegration.
html?dtid=osscdc000283