Avi Networks today announced an integration of its software-based application delivery controller (ADC) with Cisco's Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI). The integration is now available through the 15.1 release of Avi's Cloud Application Delivery Platform (CADP) software.

"Through this integration, there is now SDN from Layer 2 to Layer 7," says Avi Vice President of Marketing Dhritiman Dasgupta. "Up and down the stack, SDN principles are deployed. Cisco does it with a controller, and and Avi does it at the network service layer. Together, we are bringing the full weight of SDN up and down the stack."

Using RESTful APIs, CADP works with ACI environments via RESTful APIs to provide functions such as security, load balancing, monitoring, and inline analytics for on-premises and cloud-based applications. Avi's ADC runs on x86 processors, meaning there's no hardware to install and scaling can be on-demand.

Combining Avi's Inline Analytics tool with the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) infrastructure gives network operators a clearer look at application performance, giving insight on how to provide action within the network, Avi says.

"Our integration with Cisco ACI is not the first ADC to integrate [F5 and Citrix were previously announced], but what we’ve developed is by far the best ACI integration out there," Dasgupta says. "It comes down to a software model versus an SDN model. VMs have scaling limitations, and even though it’s software, they still have individual devices that need to be managed."

Dasgupta says customers are finding that in ACI environments, older ADCs result in a "meltdown." With each device needing to be managed and configured, a sizable amount of networking mapping needs to happen. For larger customer environments, this model becomes too complex and can't scale as well as the Avi ADC, he says.

Other vendors also don't provide application and user visibility at Avi's depth, he claims. With more than 500 pieces of telemetry data per second, Avi is providing better and more insight of what's happening in real-time in the network, presenting all of that data to the user.

While the ACI integration is just one of many SDN integrations Avi supports, today's announcement means the young ADC company is now opening itself to a large customer base.

The Avi-ACI integration is now available, and the relevant code can be downloaded from the Avi Networks website. The integration will also be shown at next week's Cisco Live in San Diego, Calif.