Cisco UCS Fundamentals

Joseph Ezerski, CCIE #8588

Product Manager, SAVTG

20 Years in IT, 8 of them at Cisco

CCIE #8588 (R&S)
Product Manager, UCS
Living and Working from The Netherlands
Misses the Sunshine

UCS The question on everyones mind

UCS versus Legacy Architecture
UCS Advantage Stateless Computing
Extending and Simplifying Management
Where to find out more

QUESTION #1

Wait a sec! Cisco sells

SERVERS??

Fastest Growing Product in the Market

17,800 unique UCS Customers
#3 market share in x86 blades (#2 in N.
America & US)
2,300 UCS channel partners
44 ISVs writing to UCS API (and growing)
Ten of thousands of supported
applications
70 world record performance benchmarks
to date
Numerous industry awards and
certifications

QUESTION #1-A

So What Is UCS?

UCS

A SINGLE COMPONENT
DOES NOT MAKE A SYSTEM

TO UNDERSTAND UCS,
YOU NEED TO SEE THE
WHOLE PICTURE

Youve
Got Mail!

Email and Internet on a PC

Phone

Portable Storage

Dedicated MP3 Player

Portable DVD player

You

Digital Camera

All tools in one device

One User Interface
Consistent Experience
Scalable (More Apps)
Ground Breaking Innovations
Built for the Cloud

The magic is how Smartphone makers unify

all tools together within a singular device and
manages it all with a single user interface

Every customer,
in every data center,
already has a set of
common technologies:

Servers
Storage
Networking
Management

Definition of Fabric
Computing:
A set of compute, storage,
memory & network
components joined through
a fabric interconnect and the
software to configure
and manage them.

QUESTION #2

How did we get here?

Blade Server Chassis

FC Modules $$
Ethernet Modules $$
Chassis Manager $$

Storage Area Network

Ethernet Network

Management Network

All this stuff costs money and I have to

pay to license and manage it!!

Mgmt Server

Embed management
Unify Fabrics (wire once)
Optimize virtualization
Treat a virtual object like physical object (VNLink)
Performance and Scale (more vm per server)

Remove unnecessary
switches
adapters
management modules

Less than 1/3rd the support

infrastructure for a given workload

Mgmt Server

 A Mgmt
singleServer
system that encompasses:

Network: Unified fabric

Compute: Industry standard x86
Storage: FC, FCoE, iSCSI
Virtualization optimized

Unified management model

Dynamic and rapid resource provisioning (Service Profiles)

Efficient Scale
Cisco network scale & services
Fewer servers with more memory

Lower cost
Fewer servers, switches, adapters, cables
Lower power consumption
Fewer points of management

AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM OPTIMIZES DATA CENTER

EFFICIENCY
UCS Manager
Embedded manages entire UCS
UCS Fabric Interconnect
10GE unified fabric switch

UCS Fabric Extender

IO Module
UCS Blade Server Chassis
Flexible bay configurations
UCS Blade and Rack Servers
x86 industry standard
Patented extended memory
UCS I/O Adapters
Choice of multiple adapters

Legacy Blade Architecture

Cisco UCS

Multi-Chassis Server Identity Manager

Fabric Interconnect A Fabric Interconnect B

Server Health Monitoring

Multi-chassis Server Identity Manager

Server Health Monitoring
Blade & Chassis Management
Ethernet
Ethernet
Fiber Channel
Fiber Channel

Enet Switch

Enet Switch

Enet Switch

Enet Switch

FC Switch
CMC/OA

FC Switch
CMC/OA

FC Switch
CMC/OA

FC Switch
CMC/OA

Enclosure 1: Servers 1-16

Enclosure 2: Servers 17-32

Enet Switch

Enet Switch

Enet Switch

Enet Switch

FC Switch
CMC/OA

FC Switch
CMC/OA

FC Switch
CMC/OA

FC Switch
CMC/OA

Enclosure 3: Servers 33-48

Enclosure 4: Servers 49-64

Enet Switch

Enet Switch

Enet Switch

Enet Switch

FC Switch
CMC/OA

FC Switch
CMC/OA

FC Switch
CMC/OA

FC Switch
CMC/OA

Enclosure 5: Servers 65-80

Enclosure 6: Servers 1-16

Servers 1-8

Servers 9-16

Servers 17-24

Servers 25-32

Servers 33-40

Servers 41-48

Servers 49-56

Servers 57-64

Servers 65-72

Servers 73-80

Enet Switch

Enet Switch

Enet Switch

Enet Switch

Servers 81-88

Servers 89-96

FC Switch
CMC/OA

FC Switch
CMC/OA

FC Switch
CMC/OA

FC Switch
CMC/OA

Servers 97-104

Servers 105-112

Enclosure 8: Servers 113-138

Servers 113-120

Servers 121-128

Servers 129-136

Servers 137-144

Servers 145-152

Servers 153-160

Enclosure 7: Servers 97-112

Enet Switch

Enet Switch

Enet Switch

Enet Switch

FC Switch
CMC/OA

FC Switch
CMC/OA

FC Switch
CMC/OA

FC Switch
CMC/OA

Enclosure 9: Servers 139-154

Enclosure 10: Servers 154-160

1 Logical Chassis

QUESTION #3

How can I manage and fully

utilize all this technology
without adding complexity
and doing it quickly?

Simply A Blueprint
Every house requires a blueprint
detailing how to build it

To build that house we need a series

of inter-working, necessary parts
from plumbing, electricity, light and
air, waste, and structure
We can think of servers much the
same way.

Legacy Servers require a lot of manual intervention

Server Identity &

Personality
NIC MACs
HBA WWNs
Server UUID
VLAN Assignments
VLAN Tagging
FC Fabrics Assignments
FC Boot Parameters
Number of vNICs
Boot order
PXE settings
IPMI Settings
Number of vHBAs
QoS

Call Home
Template Association
Org & Sub Org Assoc.
Server Pool Association
Statistic Thresholds
BIOS scrub actions
Disk scrub actions
BIOS firmware
Adapter firmware
BMC firmware
RAID settings
Advanced NIC settings
Serial over LAN settings
BIOS Settings

SAN

LAN

UCS Service Profiles reduce complexity and speed up deployment

Server
Identity
&
To build
our server

Personality

Make one or more unique

profile copies from a
NIC MACs
Home
template (i.e.Call
our
HBA WWNs
Template Association
blueprint)Org & Sub Org Assoc.
Server UUID
VLAN Assignments
VLAN Tagging
FC Fabrics Assignments
FC Boot Parameters
Number of vNICs
Boot order
PXE settings
IPMI Settings
Number of vHBAs
QoS

Service
Profile1

Service
Profile2

Server Pool Association

Associate a single
Statisticprofile
Thresholds
BIOS
scrub
actions
to a singleDisk
server.
scrub actions
Repeat for more
BIOSservers
firmware
Adapter firmware
as needed

BMC firmware
RAID settings
Advanced NIC settings
Serial over LAN settings
BIOS Settings

Rapidly deploy any

number of servers in just
a few clicks!

Service
Profile3

Service
Profile x

UCS Rack and

Blade Servers

Service
Profile

Extremely Rapid Deployment

Rapid Recovery In Event of Failure

Easy Migration Path to Upgrade of Servers to new HW

Repurpose Blades as needed

Service
Profile

Disaster Recovery
Works with both Rack and Blade
Other ideas?

Service
Profile

 Fewer manual steps

Adjust BIOS, Firmware, NIC & SAN Settings: 120 parameters in all, a server personality
Edit storage controller settings

Decreased chances of human error

Firmware updates become automatic with the update of the master service profile

Easier repeatability and faster server provisioning

Higher RAS
Lower software costs

Enforce greater consistency

Simplified cloning and copying
Move service profiles from rack to blade and blade to rack
Group, undo and single-operation firmware updates

QUESTION #4

What about managing the

rest of my data center?

GUI
CLI

User Developed Portal,

Tools, Utilities
Packaged Systems
Management Software

UCS Manager

UCSM Takes Care of All Infrastructure in

the UCS Domain

Discovery, Inventory, Monitoring, Diagnostics,

Statistics Collection, Configuration of Network,
Blades, Storage Connections, Firmware, etc

Speaks GUI, CLI, SNMP, IPMI, SMASHCLP

AND / OR

OPEN XML APIs for integration with

new and existing data center
infrastructure

Manage UCS with Industry Standard Tools

Third Party Management

Service Orchestration
Provisioning and Configuration
Monitoring and Analysis

Cisco UCS Manager

Unified Control API
Service Profiles
Cisco UCS Pools

Unified Management at Scale

UCS Central

Data Center 2

Data Center 1
UCS Manager

UCS Manager

UCS Manager

UCS Manager

Data Center 3
UCS Manager

Unifies management of multi UCS domains

Simplify global operations with centralized

inventory, faults, logs and server consoles

Model based API for large scale automation

Delivers global policies, service profiles, ID

pools and templates

Foundation for high availability, disaster

recovery and workload mobility

Self Service Infrastructure Provisioning

Turn-Key Solution; ready for use in hours
A single, integrated, out-of-the-box solution
Enforce Best Practices with Consistent
Infrastructure Policies
Seamless virtual and physical resource pooling
Hypervisor agnostic
End-to-End Automation
Model-based automation - no need for scripting
Single-click policy-driven provisioning
Ongoing lifecycle management

QUESTION #5

OK, you have my

attention. Where can I go
to find out more?

www.cisco.com/go/ucs

Data Sheets
Validated Designs
White Papers
Quick Start Guides
Bundles & Promos
Or you can ask your local DC
Team for a demonstration

Data Sheets
Validated Designs
White Papers
Best Practices
Quick Start Guides
Bundles & Promos

Or you can ask your local

DC Team for a
demonstration

 UCS is a truly innovative way of bringing together infrastructure we

all have in the data center, but we understand that infrastructure is
only the foundation. The real value is in applications and solutions.
Sign up for my other session on UCS and Applications. A brief talk
on how UCS can act as the foundation upon which your applications
can run better than ever.
Today 14:15-15:15 in Session Room #2

QUESTIONS?

AND THANK YOU