Transition from ITIL to ACI regarding production-side

[simpty001]

Hello,

I've been busy with getting into ACI for the last weeks, did a lot of research on this topic and build a presentation for my company.

But there is one thing I'm dealing with and facing problems because I can't find much information about it. 

I want to know what changes in roles, policies and processes need to be made when you come from the traditional ITIL approach and want to transition into ACI in your data center, especially regarding the production side and the process of new applications on-boarding. So I want to compare these two approaches and find differences in both last-mentioned processes. 

ACI is a different attempt and new view of applications and the delivering of services and I want to figure out how these two processes are being executed under ACI so that I know what changes have to bed made when coming from ITIL. 

In the end I want to illustrate these differences and changes by the help of a blueprint.

I hope you can help me and give me some information I can use for my work. I really appreciate your help.

Best regards,

Tobias Meyer

[chhenson]

Hello simpty001

From a process perspective, ACI should be evaluated to understand how individual processes will be executed in ACI. For example, how will Change Management be governed in the fabric? The best approach would be to look at your existing processes (outside of whether ACI is in your DC or not) and look at how sound they are. Are they properly chartered? Process owners? Roles and Responsibilities defined? Are they properly executed and adhered to? If so, the next step is to educate those process owners and supporting staff on how ACI works and ask them how to apply individual processes to the larger solution. Obviously it's not as simple as a few sentences in a discussion blog but hopefully this is a good start. Cisco offers this exact service through its Advanced Services portfolio to customers interested in maximizing the output of ACI in the DC.

Hope this helps.

- Charles

[simpty001]

Hello chhenson,

thank you very much for your answer. I guess it needs a deeper look into the server and application structure than I thought. So I see that it can't be answered with a few sentences. 

But could you just give a general idea about how it would roughly look like to integrate a new application in ACI? I mean, what processes are involved in implementing and assigning policies and processes to the new application?

I already went trough the ACI Design Guide, but this paper is a little too complex for me.

Maybe this could help me to find differences towards ITIL and draw some simple processes. 

Best regards,

Tobias