Connect. Secure. Manage.
Cisco ACI Multi-Site Design
Assess and design supported ACI multi-site connectivity, reviewing policy consistency, inter-site routing and the impact of site failures.
Devices supported
across the UK
Client locations
supported
Traffic handled
at peak time
Average
response time
Average response is not a resolution time or a contractual guarantee. Support scope and response commitments are agreed for each engagement.
Cisco ACI Multi-Site design connects separate fabrics across sites. We decide which services and rules need to be shared and which should stay local. It differs from Multi-Pod and from extending one open network everywhere. Your apps and recovery needs guide the plan, including what happens when the link between sites fails.
Workload-led design
Start with application, compute and storage dependencies rather than the switch model.
Clear failure domains
Understand which links, devices and sites can fail together.
Operational clarity
Make fabrics, external routing and management responsibilities supportable.
Define the reason for connecting fabrics
The need may involve workload placement, app continuity, shared services or consistent policy across locations. We find the actual apps and the dependencies that need inter-site network access. A general desire for active-active operation is not enough to justify extending every network. The app and storage teams must explain what their platforms can support and what recovery behaviour they require.
We also establish admin ownership. Separate fabrics may have different teams, maintenance windows or security needs. The design needs to respect those boundaries while providing agreed coordination. This prevents a shared management capability from becoming unintended authority to make broad changes across every site without the appropriate review.
Standards & partnerships
Confidence in the team behind your network.
Cisco Partner
Cisco Meraki
Cyber Essentials
Cyber Essentials PlusMCI Network Services is operated by Proxar Ltd. Certifications apply to the certified legal entity and the scope of its certificates. View accreditation information
Verify the supported architecture and components
We review the ACI releases, switches, controller setups and orchestration capabilities involved. Feature eligibility and compatibility are checked for the exact combination, including any planned upgrades. Product-family names alone do not prove that a particular inter-site service is supported. The design records prerequisites and distinguishes available capabilities from roadmap expectations.
The inter-site transport is assessed independently. Routing, MTU, capacity, reachability and physical resilience need to meet the needs of the chosen architecture. The orchestration layer does not on its own provision or repair every external transport dependency. We confirm who owns that network and how its health will be observed and escalated.
A useful starting point
Not sure where to start?
Bring the requirement. We will help you define the engineering work.
Decide which policies and networks are shared
We set out the tenants, routing contexts and app policies that need coordination between sites. Some services can remain site-local, reducing the impact of a fault or setup error. Where network extension is required, its purpose and boundaries are documented. We avoid assuming that policy consistency means every object must be identical everywhere.
Shared services and external access need special attention. The design specifies where traffic exits, which site provides inspection and what changes when a site becomes unavailable. A route to a surviving fabric is not enough if authentication, DNS or a stateful service remains dependent on the failed location. These dependencies are included in the application-level resilience discussion.
Different environments. The same care.
Built around the work
your network supports.
Finance, banking and the wider private sector. We start with the systems and people that depend on your connections.
Finance & banking
Market-data paths, routing and provider coordination on clients’ behalf.
Financial-market services ↗Offices & multi-site teams
Reliable access between people, workplaces and business applications.
Office network design ↗Data centres & cloud
Network boundaries, workload connections and operational ownership.
Data centre networks ↗Model failure and partition behaviour
We examine loss of an inter-site circuit, a complete site and relevant management components as separate scenarios. The design explains which workloads continue locally, which cross-site services stop and how routing changes. An inter-site partition may require app decisions that the network cannot safely make on its own, particularly where data consistency is involved.
Capacity in the surviving state is assessed as well. Moving traffic to another site can overload transport or security services that were sized only for normal demand. We identify any operating restrictions and the evidence needed to check them. The customer receives a description of supported network behaviour, not an unsupported guarantee of app continuity under every failure.
Introduce the design through controlled tests
A pilot or staged rollout checks a limited set of policies and services before broader adoption. We confirm route exchange, endpoint reachability, security boundaries and relevant management workflows. Tests are agreed with app owners and the teams operating the inter-site network. Results from one service are not automatically generalised to all workloads.
Failure exercises include restoration where safe, because returning a site or path can introduce another traffic transition. We record what was tested and what remains based on documented support rather than direct evidence. The acceptance plan includes rollback or recovery procedures appropriate to the actual change, with clear authority for stopping a rollout when the observed behaviour differs from the design.
Establish multi-site operational governance
The handover identifies setup ownership, approval boundaries, monitoring and escalation across locations. Software lifecycle planning considers the fabric, management and transport dependencies together. A change that is routine within one site can have wider consequences when policy or services are shared. So the operating process reflects that difference.
MCI can assess a current architecture or design a new multi-site arrangement as part of our ACI services and data centre interconnect work. Provide the site topology, app recovery needs and current platform versions to begin. We will separate the network deliverables from the app, storage and commercial duties needed for a complete service design.
Talk to a specialist
What does your network need next?
Tell us what you are planning, changing or trying to improve. We will help define a practical next step and the engineering scope.
+44 203 196 6566Choose option 1
sales@proxar.co.ukUK-wide service.
Most of our engineers are based in Kent, with a focus on London, Sussex, Essex and Berkshire.
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