Chapter 6. Creating Identity and Resource Pools

Computers and their various peripherals have some unique identities such as Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs), Media Access Control (MAC) addresses of Network Interface Cards (NICs), World Wide Node Numbers (WWNNs) for Host Bus Adapters (HBAs), and others. These identities are used to uniquely identify a computer system in a network. For traditional computers and peripherals, these identities were burned into the hardware and, hence, couldn't be altered easily. Operating systems and some applications rely on these identities and may fail if these identities are changed. In case of a full computer system failure or failure of a computer peripheral with unique identity, administrators have to follow cumbersome firmware upgrade procedures to replicate the identities of the failed components on the replacement components.

The Unified Computing System (UCS) platform introduced the idea of creating identity and resource pools...