Cisco APIC-M2-K9 Full English Product Description
1. Short Official Part & License Label
APIC-M2-K9: Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller M2 Medium-Size Physical Appliance for Cisco ACI Fabric, 1U Rack-Mount Server Based on UCS C220 M4, 2×10G SFP+ VIC 1225 Converged Ports, Supports ACI Fabric up to 1000 Leaf/Spine Edge Ports, Clustered SDN Controller, Declarative Policy Model, Multi-Tenant Orchestration, CIMC Out-of-Band Management, REST API / GUI / CLI, End-of-Sale Legacy ACI Controller
2. Full Product Overview
The Cisco APIC-M2-K9 is a medium-density physical appliance for the Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) Software-Defined Data Center architecture. It serves as the centralized control plane, policy engine and management platform for ACI leaf-spine fabrics. Built on the UCS C220 M4 x86 rack server hardware, it is designed for medium-scale datacenter deployments supporting up to 1000 fabric edge ports.
APIC-M2 runs the APIC operating system and is always deployed as a cluster (minimum 3 nodes for production high availability). It implements application-centric declarative policy management: administrators define application requirements, and APIC automatically distributes security, forwarding, QoS and mobility policies across all ACI leaf switches. It unifies physical server, virtual machine, container and workload networking, supporting multi-tenancy, zero-trust segmentation, L4-L7 service graph insertion, VM orchestration integration and fabric health telemetry.
Hardware platform specifications: Intel Xeon E5-2620 v3 CPU, 64GB DDR4 RAM, dual hot-swappable SAS HDDs for RAID storage. Network adapter is UCS VIC 1225 dual-port 10G SFP+ CNA. It supports optional dual redundant power supplies and redundant fans to eliminate single points of failure. Integrated Cisco Integrated Management Controller (CIMC) enables independent out-of-band power control, hardware monitoring and remote console access.
Lifecycle Status: APIC-M2 reached End-of-Sale (EoS) October 2017, End-of-Support (EoL) January 31, 2022. Supported ACI firmware releases up to 5.x. It is succeeded by APIC-M3 / M4 and modern APIC-G5 generations. It cannot run ACI 6.1+ new releases.
Key Differentiator vs APIC-L2-K9: Medium capacity profile limited to maximum 1000 edge ports, suitable for medium datacenter fabrics, whereas L2 targets larger deployments over 1000 ports. Compared to virtual APIC: Physical dedicated server with higher performance, persistent local storage and native CIMC hardware management.
3. Complete Hardware Physical & Interface Specifications
Form Factor & Mechanical
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Rack Form Factor: Standard 1U 19-inch rack-mount chassis (UCS C220 M4)
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Dimensions: 44.45 mm (H) × 482.6 mm (W) × 730.3 mm (D) / 1.75 × 18.98 × 28.75 inches
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Unit Weight: 13.6 kg (30 lbs) with dual PSUs installed
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Cooling: Multiple hot-swappable redundant internal fans
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Power Supply: Single AC PSU standard; optional second redundant AC PSU
Rear Panel Interfaces
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2×10G SFP+ ports (UCS VIC 1225 CNA; supports SFP+ SR/LR optical transceivers, LAG)
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1× 10/100/1000BASE-T dedicated CIMC out-of-band management port
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RJ45 RS-232 serial console port
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USB 3.0 Type-A ports for file upload and diagnostics
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Dual AC power supply slots
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Physical security lock slot
Front Panel LEDs
Global status LEDs: Power, System Health, Fault, Fan Status, Drive Activity
Per-port link/activity LEDs for 10G SFP+ uplinks and CIMC port
Power & Environmental
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Input AC: 100–240 VAC, 50/60 Hz
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Max power consumption: 500 W
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Operating Temperature: 5°C to 40°C (41°F ~ 104°F)
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Storage Temperature: -40°C to 65°C (-40°F ~ 149°F)
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Humidity: 10%–90% non-condensing
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Certifications: UL 60950-1, CE, FCC Class A, VCCI
Scalability Limits (Verified for APIC-M2 Cluster)
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Maximum supported ACI fabric edge ports: 1000 ports
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Supported leaf + spine switches: Up to 100 nodes
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Maximum tenants: 1000
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Maximum EPGs: 20,000
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Maximum contracts: 20,000
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Supports L4-L7 service graphs, multi-site ACI, remote leaf integration
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Fabric discovery: LLDP-based ACI leaf-spine automatic discovery
4. Core ACI Software Feature Suite
1. Declarative Application-Centric Policy Model
Define application network requirements (EPGs, contracts, filters); APIC distributes policy to all leaf switches. No per-switch CLI configuration. Policy is persistent, versioned and audit-tracked.
2. Multi-Tenant Segmentation
Logical tenant isolation, independent address spaces, VRF contexts, security domains for shared datacenter infrastructure. Native integration with TrustSec.
3. Unified Workload Mobility
VM mobility support for VMware vCenter; workloads retain security policy when moving between leaf nodes. Layer 2 / Layer 3 mobility, distributed anycast gateway.
4. L4-L7 Service Graph Orchestration
Automated insertion of firewalls, load balancers, WAFs between EPGs. Supports transparent and routed service appliances.
5. Fabric Monitoring & Telemetry
Real-time fabric topology view, health score, fault management, performance statistics, packet capture, historical analytics. Streaming telemetry export to external monitoring systems.
6. Security Feature Set
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Authentication: Local user database, RADIUS/TACACS+, LDAP, SAML SSO
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Access control: Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
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Threat defense: Rogue endpoint detection, endpoint tracking, microsegmentation via contract filtering
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Encryption: TLS for controller communications, MACsec on fabric links
7. API & Orchestration
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Embedded HTML5 GUI, Bash-style CLI
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REST API, XML API for integration with automation platforms
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Integration with VMware vCenter, SCVMM, OpenStack, Cisco Prime
8. High Availability & Operations
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Cluster deployment (3-node minimum recommended)
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Synchronized database across all cluster members
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In-Service Upgrade (ISU) for rolling controller updates
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Backup / restore of full fabric configuration
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CIMC out-of-band hardware management independent of APIC OS
5. Typical Deployment Scenarios
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Medium-scale enterprise datacenter ACI leaf-spine fabric supporting up to 1000 edge ports
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Consolidated multi-pod single-site ACI architecture without multi-site stretching
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Legacy datacenter network transformation to SDN microsegmentation
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Lab and proof-of-concept environments for ACI policy and multi-tenancy validation
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Migration intermediate platform before upgrading to newer APIC-G5 hardware
6. Short Sales Listing Tagline
Cisco APIC-M2-K9 Legacy 1U Rackmount Medium-Size ACI Application Policy Infrastructure Controller, Supports up to 1000 Fabric Edge Ports, Built on UCS C220 M4 Server, 2×10G SFP+ VIC 1225 Converged Ports, Integrated CIMC Out-of-Band Management, Declarative Application-Centric Policy, Multi-Tenant Microsegmentation, L4-L7 Service Graph Orchestration, REST API / GUI / CLI, Deployed as 3-Node Cluster, End-of-Sale SDN Controller for Medium Datacenter ACI Leaf-Spine Fabrics
