UC on UCS

OS Virtualization and UCS

Architecture
 Virtualization – What is a Server?
•  CPU and IO management
•  Memory
•  Hard Disk
•  Network
•  Power/Cabling/Heat/Cooling

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 Virtualization – What is a Server?

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 Virtualization – What is a Server?

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 Virtualization – What is a Server?

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 UCS Components
•  UCS B-Series Blade Chassis
–  Fabric Interconnect
–  IOM FEX
–  Blade Servers
•  CPU/RAM/HDD
•  Mezzanine/Adapter card
•  UCS C-Series Server
–  CPU/RAM/HDD
–  Mezzanine/Adapter card

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 Physical Architecture of UCS
•  Fabric Interconnects (FIs)
–  Core of the UCS platform
–  Everything connects to FIs
–  FIs run the actual UCS Manager software
•  Chassis
–  Chassis contains blades, but no intelligence
–  Blades contain CPU/RAM/CNAs
•  IOM
–  IO muxes data from FIs to Blades
–  CMS (Chassis Management Switch)
•  Carries Management traffic to/from CIMC on FI
–  CMC (Chassis Management Controller)
•  Monitors all sensors, voltage, controls fan speed

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 UCS Virtualization
•  Impossible to talk about UCS with a talk about
Virtualization
•  Entire basis of UCS is Virtualization
•  Main concept was to make hardware almost like
a hypervisor
–  Does not actually virtualize the hardware, but rather
much of the hardware values
•  BIOS Settings, MAC, pWWN, UUID, etc
–  Does not mean that you must run hypervisor

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 Virtualization of Server Hardware
•  Virtualization of all server hardware resources with complete transparency
to OS
•  Done with the new concept of a “Service Profile”
•  But isn’t this what ESXi already provides me – abstraction from server
hardware?
–  Yes, but what happens when you want to upgrade HW that runs ESXi?
–  Well, you could just vMotion everything off and spin-up a new ESXi host
–  Yes, you could, but you have to spin the install, deal with licensing and host-
customization
•  Now, simply vMotion all guests off, re-associate SP to a new blade in
same/different chassis, vMotion guests back on
–  Done in less than 15 mins, completely automated (w/ automation tools),
virtually nothing to configure

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 Concept of Service Profiles
•  The tremendous power of Cisco UCS
–  Modeled largely after Virtualization
–  Abstraction of OS from hardware
–  Allow freedom to move OS from blade to blade
–  Allows for very easy upgrade of hardware to more
powerful CPU/RAM/VIC
–  This includes upgrading both bare metal OS and
Hypervisor OS
•  Move entire VMWare/KVM/Hyper-V instance to new blade

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 Concept of Service Profiles
•  All server configuration is now done in Service Profiles, rather than directly on
Servers/Blades
•  Service Profiles are made up of Policies and Pools
•  UEFI/BIOS
–  UUID
–  Boot Order
–  UEFI/BIOS FW and Settings
–  BIOS Scrub Actions
•  BMC (Baseboard Management Controller)
–  Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) settings
–  Remote KVM over IP Settings and FW
–  Serial over LAN (SOL) Settings
–  Call Home Behavior
–  CIMC Control

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 Concept of Service Profiles cont’d
•  LAN
–  Number of NICs (vNIC)
–  NIC MAC Address(es)
–  VLAN Tagging/VLAN Assignments
–  QoS / Rate Limiting
–  Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE) Settings
•  SAN
–  Number of HBAs (vHBA)
–  HBA WWNN/WWPN
–  FC Fabric Assignment
–  FC Boot Parameters
•  HDD
–  RAID Settings
–  Disk Scrub Settings

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 Pools
•  Pools are just that – pools of data
•  What kind of data?
–  Management IP Pools
–  UUID Pools
–  MAC Address Pools
–  WWNN/WWPN Pools
–  Server Pools and Membership
•  They’re scattered amongst the tabs
–  But logically where they belong
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 UCS Platform Emulator
•  Download from http://developer.cisco.com
–  (login required)
•  Gives you almost an exact replication of the UCS
Management
•  Can build virtual servers but cannot boot any ‘actual’
servers
•  Can do 99% of all the system GUI tasks
•  Connect to NX-OS and Local-Mgmt not supported
(talk about these CLIs later)
–  Allows you to connect, but no commands actually work
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 Q&A

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