Overview

Cisco UCS Manager Getting Started Guide Overview

This guide provides an overview of Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) essentials, procedures for performing Cisco UCS Manager initial configuration and best practices. The following table summarizes the overall organization of the guide.

Chapter

Description

Overview

Conceptual overview of Cisco UCS architecture including Cisco Fabric Interconnects, I/O Module and key server components; Introduction to Cisco UCS Central.

System Requirements

Hardware, browser, and port requirements for Cisco UCS Manager initial configuration.

Initial Configuration

Initial Configuration workflow in the following sequence:

  1. Console Setup

  2. Configure Administration Policies

  3. Configure Equipment Policies

  4. Configure Unified Ports

  5. Configure Fabric Interconnect Server Ports

  6. Configure LAN Connectivity

  7. Configure SAN Connectivity

  8. Define Workloads

Appendix

Recommendations, best practices, configuration examples, and a glossary.

Cisco UCS Manager User Documentation

Cisco UCS Manager offers you a new set of smaller, use-case based documentation described in the following table:

Guide

Description

Cisco UCS Manager Getting Started Guide

Discusses Cisco UCS architecture and Day 0 operations, including Cisco UCS Manager initial configuration and configuration best practices.

Cisco UCS Manager Administration Guide

Discusses password management, role-based access configuration, remote authentication, communication services, CIMC session management, organizations, backup and restore, scheduling options, BIOS tokens, and deferred deployments.

Cisco UCS Manager Infrastructure Management Guide

Discusses physical and virtual infrastructure components used and managed by Cisco UCS Manager.

Cisco UCS Manager Firmware Management Guide

Discusses downloading and managing firmware, upgrading through Auto Install, upgrading through service profiles, directly upgrading at endpoints using firmware auto sync, managing the capability catalog, deployment scenarios, and troubleshooting.

Cisco UCS Manager Server Management Guide

Discusses the new licenses, registering Cisco UCS domain with Cisco UCS Central, power capping, server boot, server profiles, and server-related policies.

Cisco UCS Manager Storage Management Guide

Discusses all aspects of storage management, such as SAN and VSAN in Cisco UCS Manager.

Cisco UCS Manager Network Management Guide

Discusses all aspects of network management, such as LAN and VLAN connectivity in Cisco UCS Manager.

Cisco UCS Manager System Monitoring Guide

Discusses all aspects of system and health monitoring, including system statistics in Cisco UCS Manager.

Cisco UCS S3260 Server Integration with Cisco UCS Manager

Discusses all aspects of management of UCS S-Series servers that are managed through Cisco UCS Manager.

Fundamentals of Cisco Unified Computing System

Cisco Unified Computing System Overview

Cisco UCS has a unique architecture that integrates compute, data network access, and storage network access into a common set of components under a single-pane-of-glass management interface.

Cisco UCS fuses access layer networking and servers. This high-performance, next-generation server system provides a data center with a high degree of workload agility and scalability. The hardware and software components support Cisco's unified fabric, which runs multiple types of data center traffic over a single converged network adapter.
Figure 1. Cisco Unified Computing System Architecture

Architectural Simplification

The simplified architecture of Cisco UCS reduces the number of required devices and centralizes switching resources. By eliminating switching inside a chassis, network access-layer fragmentation is significantly reduced. Cisco UCS implements Cisco unified fabric within racks and groups of racks, supporting Ethernet and Fibre Channel protocols over 10 Gigabit Cisco Data Center Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) links. This radical simplification reduces the number of switches, cables, adapters, and management points by up to two-thirds. All devices in a Cisco UCS domain remain under a single management domain, which remains highly available through the use of redundant components.

High Availability

The management and data plane of Cisco UCS is designed for high availability and redundant access layer fabric interconnects. In addition, Cisco UCS supports existing high availability and disaster recovery solutions for the data center, such as data replication and application-level clustering technologies.

Scalability

A single Cisco UCS domain supports multiple chassis and their servers, all of which are administered through one Cisco UCS Manager. For more detailed information about the scalability, speak to your Cisco representative.

Flexibility

A Cisco UCS domain allows you to quickly align computing resources in the data center with rapidly changing business requirements. This built-in flexibility is determined by whether you choose to fully implement the stateless computing feature. Pools of servers and other system resources can be applied as necessary to respond to workload fluctuations, support new applications, scale existing software and business services, and accommodate both scheduled and unscheduled downtime. Server identity can be abstracted into a mobile service profile that can be moved from server to server with minimal downtime and no need for additional network configuration.

With this level of flexibility, you can quickly and easily scale server capacity without having to change the server identity or reconfigure the server, LAN, or SAN. During a maintenance window, you can quickly do the following:

  • Deploy new servers to meet unexpected workload demand and rebalance resources and traffic.

  • Shut down an application, such as a database management system, on one server and then boot it up again on another server with increased I/O capacity and memory resources.

Optimized for Server Virtualization

Cisco UCS has been optimized to implement VM-FEX technology. This technology provides improved support for server virtualization, including better policy-based configuration and security, conformance with a company's operational model, and accommodation for VMware's VMotion.

Cisco UCS Building Blocks and Connectivity

Figure 2. Cisco UCS Building Blocks and Connectivity


As shown in the figure above, the primary components included within Cisco UCS are as follows:

  • Cisco UCS Manager—Cisco UCS Manager is the centralized management interface for Cisco UCS. For more information on Cisco UCS Manager, see Introduction to Cisco UCS manager in Cisco UCS Manager Getting Started Guide
  • Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnects—The Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect is the core component of Cisco UCS deployments, providing both network connectivity and management capabilities for the Cisco UCS system. The Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnects run the Cisco UCS Manager control software and consist of the following components:

    • Cisco UCS 6200 series Fabric Interconnects, Cisco UCS 6332 series Fabric Interconnects, and Cisco UCS Mini

    • Transreceivers for network and storage connectivity

    • Expansion modules for the various Fabric Interconnects

    • Cisco UCS Manager software

    For more information on Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnects, see Cisco UCS Fabric Infrastructure Portfolio.

  • Cisco UCS I/O Modules and Cisco UCS Fabric Extender—IOM modules are also known as Cisco FEXs or simply FEX modules. These modules serve as line cards to the FIs in the same way that Nexus series switches can have remote line cards. IOM modules also provide interface connections to blade servers. They multiplex data from blade servers and provide this data to FIs and do the same in the reverse direction. In production environments, IOM modules are always used in pairs to provide redundancy and failover.

    Important

    The 40G backplane setting is not applicable for 22xx IOMs.

  • Cisco UCS Blade Server Chassis—The Cisco UCS 5100 Series Blade Server Chassis is a crucial building block of Cisco UCS, delivering a scalable and flexible architecture for current and future data center needs, while helping reduce total cost of ownership.
  • Cisco UCS Blade and Rack Servers—Cisco UCS Blade servers are at the heart of the UCS solution. They come in various system resource configurations in terms of CPU, memory, and hard disk capacity. All blade servers are based on Intel Xeon processors. There is no AMD option available. The Cisco UCS rack-mount servers are standalone servers that can be installed and controlled individually. Cisco provides Fabric Extenders (FEXs) for the rack-mount servers. FEXs can be used to connect and manage rack-mount servers from FIs. Rack-mount servers can also be directly attached to the fabric interconnect.

    Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) can choose from different blade configurations as per business needs

  • Cisco UCS I/O Adapters—Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers are designed to support up to two network adapters. This design can reduce the number of adapters, cables, and access-layer switches by as much as half because it eliminates the need for multiple parallel infrastructure for both LAN and SAN at the server, chassis, and rack levels.

Cisco UCS Fabric Infrastructure Portfolio

The Cisco UCS fabric interconnects are top-of-rack devices and provide unified access to the Cisco UCS domain. The following illustration shows the evolution of the Cisco UCS fabric interconnects product family. The Cisco UCS Infrastructure hardware is now in its third generation.

Note

The Cisco UCS 6100 Series Fabric Interconnects and Cisco UCS 2104 I/O Modules have reached end of life.

Expansion Modules

The Cisco UCS 6200 Series supports expansion modules that can be used to increase the number of 10G, FCoE, and Fibre Channel ports.

  • The Cisco UCS 6248 UP has 32 ports on the base system. It can be upgraded with one expansion module providing an additional 16 ports.

  • The Cisco UCS 6296 UP has 48 ports on the base system. It can be upgraded with three expansion modules providing an additional 48 ports.

Ports on the Cisco UCS 6300 Series Fabric Interconnects

Ports on the Cisco UCS 6300 Series Fabric Interconnects can be configured to carry either Ethernet or Fibre Channel traffic. These ports are not reserved. They cannot be used by a Cisco UCS domain until you configure them.


Note

When you configure a port on a fabric interconnect, the administrative state is automatically set to enabled. If the port is connected to another device, this may cause traffic disruption. You can disable the port after it has been configured.

The following table summarizes the second and third generation ports for the Cisco UCS fabric interconnects.

Cisco UCS Mini

Second Generation

Third Generation

Item

Cisco UCS 6324

Cisco UCS 6248 UP

Cisco UCS 6296 UP

Cisco UCS 6332

Cisco UCS 6332-16UP

Description

Fabric Interconnect with 4 unified ports and 1 scalability port

48–Port Fabric Interconnect

96–Port Fabric Interconnect

32–Port Fabric Interconnect

40–Port Fabric Interconnect

Form factor

1 RU

1 RU

2 RU

1 RU

1 RU

Number of fixed 40 GB Interfaces

—

—

—

6(Ports 17–32)

6(Ports 35–40)

Number of 1GB/10GB Interfaces (depending on the SFP module installed)

All

All

All

Ports 5–26 using breakout cable

Ports 17–34 using breakout cable

Unified Ports (8 Gb/s, FC, FCoE)

4

All

All

None

Ports 1–16

Compatibility with all IOMs

All

All

All

All

All

Expansion Slots

None

1 (16 port)

3 (16 port)

None

None

Fan Modules

4

2

5

4

4

Power Supplies

—

2 (AC/DC available)

2 (AC/DC available)

2 (AC/DC available)

2 (AC/DC available)


Note

Cisco UCS 6300 Series Fabric Interconnects support breakout capability for ports. For more information on how the 40G ports can be converted into four 10G ports, see Port Breakout Functionality on Cisco UCS 6300 Series Fabric Interconnects.

Port Modes

The port mode determines whether a unified port on the fabric interconnect is configured to carry Ethernet or Fibre Channel traffic. You configure the port mode in Cisco UCS Manager. However, the fabric interconnect does not automatically discover the port mode.

Changing the port mode deletes the existing port configuration and replaces it with a new logical port. Any objects associated with that port configuration, such as VLANs and VSANS, are also removed. There is no restriction on the number of times you can change the port mode for a unified port.

Port Types

The port type defines the type of traffic carried over a unified port connection.

By default, unified ports changed to Ethernet port mode are set to the Ethernet uplink port type. Unified ports changed to Fibre Channel port mode are set to the Fibre Channel uplink port type. You cannot unconfigure Fibre Channel ports.

Changing the port type does not require a reboot.

Ethernet Port Mode

When you set the port mode to Ethernet, you can configure the following port types:

  • Server ports

  • Ethernet uplink ports

  • Ethernet port channel members

  • FCoE ports

  • Appliance ports

  • Appliance port channel members

  • SPAN destination ports

  • SPAN source ports


    Note

    For SPAN source ports, configure one of the port types and then configure the port as SPAN source.

Fibre Channel Port Mode

When you set the port mode to Fibre Channel, you can configure the following port types:

  • Fibre Channel uplink ports

  • Fibre Channel port channel members

  • Fibre Channel storage ports

  • FCoE Uplink ports

  • SPAN source ports


    Note

    For SPAN source ports, configure one of the port types and then configure the port as SPAN source.

Port Breakout Functionality on Cisco UCS 6300 Series Fabric Interconnects
About Breakout Ports

Cisco UCS fabric interconnect 6300 series supports splitting a single QSFP port into four 10G ports using a supported breakout cable. By default, there are 32 ports in the 40G mode. These 40G ports are numbered in a 2-tuple naming convention. For example, the second 40G port is numbered as 1/2. The process of changing the configuration from 40G to 10G is called breakout and the process of changing the configuration from [4X]10G to 40G is called unconfigure.

When you break out a 40G port into 10G ports, the resulting ports are numbered using a 3-tuple naming convention. For example, the breakout ports of the second 40-Gigabit Ethernet port are numbered as 1/2/1, 1/2/2, 1/2/3, 1/2/4.

The following image shows the front view for the Cisco UCS 6332 series fabric interconnects, and includes the ports that may support breakout port functionality:
Figure 3. Cisco UCS 6332 Series Fabric Interconnects Front View


1

L1 and L2 high availability ports

2

28 X 40G QSFP ports ( 98 X 10G SFP ports)
Note 

  • QSA module is required on ports 13–14

  • A QSFP to 4XSFP breakout cable is required for 10G support.

3

6 X 40G QSFP ports

The following image shows the front view for the Cisco UCS 6332-16UP series fabric interconnects, and includes the ports that may support breakout port functionality:
Figure 4. Cisco UCS 6332-16UP Series Fabric Interconnects Front View


1

L1 and L2 high availability ports

2

16 X 1/10G SFP (16 X 4/8/16G FC ports)

3

18 X 40G QSFP(72 X 10G SFP+)
Note 

  • A QSFP to 4XSFP breakout cable is required for 10G support.

4

6 X 40G QSFP ports

The following image shows the rear view of the Cisco UCS 6300 series fabric interconnects.
Figure 5. Cisco UCS 6300 Series Fabric Interconnects Rear View


1

Power supply

2

Four fans

3

Power supply

4

Serial ports

Breakout Port Constraints

The following table summarizes the constraints for breakout functionality for Cisco UCS 6300 series fabric interconnects:

Cisco UCS 6300 Series Fabric Interconnect Series

Breakout Configurable Ports

Ports without breakout functionality support

Cisco UCS 6332

1–12, 15–26

13–14, 27–32

Note 

  • Auto-negotiate behavior is not supported on ports 27–32.

Cisco UCS 6332-16UP

17–34

1–16, 35–40

Note 

  • Auto-negotiate behavior is not supported on ports 35–40


Important

Up to four breakout ports are allowed if QoS jumbo frames are used.

For more information on how to configure breakout ports see the Cisco UCS Manager Network Management Guide.

Introduction to Cisco UCS Manager

Cisco UCS Manager is embedded software that resides on the fabric interconnects, providing complete configuration and management capabilities for all of the components in the Cisco UCS system. This configuration information is replicated between the two fabric interconnects, providing a highly available solution for this critical function. The most common way to access Cisco UCS Manager for simple tasks is to use a Web browser. A command-line interface (CLI) and an XML API are also included for command-line or programmatic operations.

The Cisco UCS Manager GUI provides role-based access control (RBAC) to allow multiple levels of users administrative rights to system objects. Users can be restricted to certain portions of the system based on locale, which corresponds to an optional organizational structure that can be created. Users can also be classified based on their access levels or areas of expertise, such as Storage Administrator, Server Equipment Administrator, or Read-Only.

Cisco UCS Manager provides unified, embedded management of all software and hardware components. Every instance of Cisco UCS Manager and all of the components managed by it form a domain. For organizations that deploy multiple Cisco UCS domains, Cisco UCS Central software provides a centralized user interface that allows you to manage multiple, globally distributed Cisco UCS domains with thousands of servers. Cisco UCS Central integrates with Cisco UCS Manager and utilizes it to provide global configuration capabilities for pools, policies, and firmware.

Configuration Options

You can configure a Cisco UCS domain in the following ways:

  • As a single fabric interconnect in a standalone configuration

  • As a redundant pair of fabric interconnects in a cluster configuration

A cluster configuration provides high availability. If one fabric interconnect becomes unavailable, the other takes over. Only one management port (Mgmt0) connection is required to support a cluster configuration. However, both Mgmt0 ports should be connected to provide link-level redundancy. In a cluster configuration, the master and slave slots are indentified as primary and subordinate.

In addition, a cluster configuration actively enhances failover recovery time for redundant virtual interface (VIF) connections. When an adapter has an active VIF connection to one fabric interconnect and a standby VIF connection to the second, the learned MAC addresses of the active VIF are replicated but not installed on the second fabric interconnect. If the active VIF fails, the second fabric interconnect installs the replicated MAC addresses and broadcasts them to the network through gratuitous ARP messages, shortening the switchover time.


Note

The cluster configuration provides redundancy only for the management plane. Data redundancy is dependent on the user configuration and might require a third-party tool to support data redundancy.