Looking at the UCS equipment
With the ever increasing demand on datacenters, vendors started focusing on different aspects of server and networking hardware consolidation; however, most of the ad hoc solutions were based on gluing together the existing products which were not designed grounds up to provide a cohesive infrastructure and failed to address the requirements of the datacenter as a whole. Hence, management of these amalgamated solutions was a nightmare for IT administrators.
Cisco entered into the blade server market with a holistic approach to the blade server design. With a strong background in networking and storage products, Cisco developed a cohesive solution consolidating the computing, network, and storage connectivity components along with centralized management of these resources. The purpose of Cisco UCS is to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and improve scalability and flexibility.
Salient features and benefits of the UCS solution include the following:
- Stateless computing
- Rapid provisioning of servers
- Simplified troubleshooting
- Virtualization readiness
- Choice of industry-standard form factors
- Extended memory technology for increased density
Stateless computing
Cisco introduced the idea of stateless computing with its blade server design. Cisco blade servers do not have any initial configuration. Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs) for blades, Network Interface Cards (NICs), Media Access Control (MAC) addresses, storage World Wide Node (WWN) numbers, firmware, and BIOS settings are all abstracted from Unified Computing System Manager (UCSM), the management software running on the FIs.
Rapid provisioning of servers
Provisioning of servers dramatically improves as the servers can be provisioned using the UCSM software even before they are physically available. Once the server is physically installed, it will abstract its identity from UCSM. Using server configuration templates, it is therefore possible to create a server template only once and apply the template to hundreds of servers.
Simplified troubleshooting
Replacement of servers also becomes very easy. Since the servers are stateless, as soon as a replacement server is installed, it will abstract all the configuration of the old server and will be available for use. Servers can also be easily migrated for different roles and workloads.
Virtualization readiness
Virtualization in the form of modern bare metal hypervisors is a major breakthrough for optimal utilization of computational resources. Cisco UCS solution supports all major hypervisor platforms including VMware ESX/ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix Xen server. Support and integration with VMware vSphere solution is very strong. UCSM can be integrated with vCenter to abstract and manage features at the individual Virtual Machine (VM) level. By leveraging the benefits of virtualization and increasing the density of the physical server, the UCS solution can scale up to thousands of VMs.
Choice of industry-standard form factors
Cisco UCS servers are available in two categories: B-series blade servers and C-series rack-mount servers. Both form factors are designed using the same industry-standard components and can address different computational requirements. Both B-series blade servers and C-series rack-mount servers are designed using Intel Xeon CPUs. B-series servers are managed through UCSM, whereas C-series servers can either be individually managed or can be integrated to UCSM.
Extended memory technology for increased density
Cisco also introduced a patented extended memory technology for two CPU socket servers to increase the total amount of memory support; this could be more than double the amount of memory as compared to the industry standards for two socket servers. Virtualized workloads can leverage this extra memory to support an even greater density of VMs in a reduced physical footprint, resulting in reduced Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and Operational Expenditure (OPEX) costs. Extended memory technology is available in both B-series blade servers and C-series rack-mount servers.
