An administrator can define or modify one or more service graphs. Next, the administrator can register service appliances along with their device package files with a controller. Then, the controller can establish the capabilities of the service devices, and classify the service devices as legacy or service tag switching (STS) capable devices. Then, the controller can create one or more instances of the service graph, by populating the service nodes into the service graph. Then, the application owner can attach their endpoint groups (EPGs) to the service graphs created by the administrator. Then, a service in the network can be automatically provisioned using the service graph to configure one or more nodes in an associated service chain of the service according to information in the service graph.