• How ACI lets you manage a network cohesively instead of box-by-box ?
• What a network looks like in ACI mode vs. stand-alone mode ?
• How ACI works with network protocols like spanning-tree and TRILL ?
• Upgrading the Nexus 9000 Series to ACI
• When does ACI make sense for your business ?

For this new episode of the podcast with Cisco Champion, we are fortunate to have a great technical (and casual) dialog between two active members of the data center and cloud social media sphere.

Colin Lynch (@UCSguru) based in London is a subject matter expert for Cisco UCS, Integrated Systems, Converged Infrastructure and writes also on SDN . Colin has an independant blog at UCSguru.com He was nominated ComputaCenter Consultant of the Year in 2013 .

Colin talked with Joe Onisick (@jonisick) who works for Insieme Networks, now part of Cisco. Joe writes an independant blog at DefineTheCloud.com. He talked about ACI in multiple videos and podcasts.

After attending Cisco Live Europe in Milan, Colin was at VMware PEX to have an in-depth analysis of NSX , and wanted to "challenge " Joe on several points, which makes this conversation even more lively !

I found this dialog extremely rich, as both participants were willing to address difficult and controversial aspects of the Data Center architecture today and tomorrow,  for instance around layer 2 and layer 3,  network programmability and management, or the future of networking certification ! You will also better understand, why Cisco is heavily investing in ACI solutions, when at the same type keeps developing other paths .
A very exciting 40 mn conversation between two great subject matter experts, really passionate by this topic, spiced  with additional questions from other Cisco Champions and...humor.

Listen now to our guests and enjoy the show hosted by @commsninja.

I also encourage you to read this very didactic explanation from Tom Edsall, Cisco Fellow and CTO of Insieme Networks, in this new blog from Shashi Kiran
ACI Design Principles : The Role of SDN Overlays in Application Centric Deployement . Shashi  will publish the second part tomorrow .

As a reminder, Cisco Champion is a community of  technical professionals who are passionate about sharing their knowledge and expertise. They are ready to offer their time to help others to learn about Cisco and connect with Cisco in unique way
For Data Center and Cloud , we have now more than 40 members, who have been nominated by peers for one year . We invite them to give their opinion on market trends, Cisco solutions and products . We encourage also them to participate to our Cisco Live events , webcasts, podcasts , Google + HOA , blogs and tweet to share their experience and wisdom.