Cisco ACI, Cisco Viptela SDWAN & Cisco SD-access- Compare the design & Flow

It is important to understand the protocol used for any solution you deployed and and if you have multiple solutions in different environment then you may compare these protocols. 

Here in this article we are going to talk about the solutions ACI, Cisco Viptela SDWAN and Cisco SD-Access technology and the comparison between them 

Cisco ACI: 
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is a datacenter software defined solution. With Cisco ACI, an application deployment lifecycle can be simplified, optimized, and accelerated by having network infrastructure defined based on network policies.

The Cisco ACI system combines software and hardware; Cisco Nexus 9000 family switches act as the hardware for Cisco ACI, and two software and integration points are included in the system: Additional Data Center Pod, Data Center Policy Engine, and Non-Directly Attached Virtual and Physical Networks.

Fig 1.1- Cisco ACI Infrastructure

With Cisco ACI, end users can specify what they want an application policy infrastructure outcome to be, and the network devices will interpret that definition and respond accordingly.

If you want to learn more about Cisco ACI solution, have a look on below link for more details:

Cisco ACI deep dive design

Cisco SDWAN: 
Cisco SD-WAN so called Software Defined WAN solution, where control plane or management plane is separated from the physical devices. Same as Cisco ACI solution, the policies, configurations with security has been driven through the Cloud based Management plane called vManage. 

Fig 1.2- Cisco Viptela SDWAN Design

In the Viptela solution we have following architecture, where we have data-plane on the physical devices (obviously), Control Plane by VSmart or VBond Management tool, Management Plane via VManage and Orchestration plane.

If you want to learn more about Cisco SDWAN solution, have a look on below link for more details

Cisco Viptela SDWAN deep dive

Cisco SD-Access:
SDA ( Software Defined Access) in the campus which is purely a intent based networking. So with the help of Cisco SD-Access you can leverage the various functions on top of the fabric. Customers want a network that is programmable and can take the necessary actions to deliver on that intent. 

With the help of the SD-Access customer will get the programmable network which can be amended as per the customer's need. As same like Cisco ACI and Cisco Viptela SDWAN, Cisco SD-Access has centralized management plane and policies are drive through that management plane.

Fig 1.3- Cisco DNA Center in SD-Access Environment

If you want to learn more about Cisco SD-Access solution, have a look on below link for more details

Cisco DNA Center & SD-Access

So if we compare these solutions on what's the base structure to say that these all are software defined next generation solution with more security and features inbuilt.

Fig 1.4- Cisco ACI, SDWAN & SD-Access

Hope it will help you to understand all these 3 solutions with respect to the Architecture, Control, Data & Management Plane with other parameters defined above.