Implementing Cisco UCS Solutions

Implementing Cisco UCS Solutions

by Farhan Ahmed Nadeem, Prasenjit Sarkar
Released December 2013
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781782170662

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Book description

Cisco Unified Computer System is a powerful solution for data centers that can raise efficiency and lower costs. This tutorial helps professionals realize its full potential through a practical, hands-on approach written by two Cisco experts.

  • Learn about various Cisco UCS equipment options suitable for your deployment and configure various Cisco UCS components like LAN, SAN, Resource pools, Backup, Restore, RBAC, policies, and service profiles
  • Configure Cisco UCS Emulator for Cisco UCS practice lab and integrate Cisco UCS with 3rd party applications
  • With implementation examples for each topic using the Cisco UCS Emulator , learn how to configure your Cisco UCS environment
  • The book will follow a hands-on approach to help you deploy servers and application stacks

In Detail

Cisco Unified Computing System(UCS) provides unique features for the contemporary data centres. Cisco UCS is a unified solution that consolidates computing, network and storage connectivity components along-with centralized management. Cisco UCS reduces TCO and improves scalability and flexibility. Stateless computing blade server's design simplifies the troubleshooting, and Cisco-patented extended memory technology provides higher virtualized servers consolidation results.

A hands-on guide to take you through deployment in Cisco UCS. With real-world examples for configuring and deploying Cisco UCS components, this book will prepare you for the practical deployments of Cisco UCS data centre solutions.

If you want to learn and enhance your hands-on skills with Cisco UCS solutions, this book is certainly for you.

Starting with the description of Cisco UCS equipment options, this hands-on guide then introduces Cisco UCS Emulator which is an excellent resource to practically learn Cisco UCS components’ deployment. You will also be introduced to all areas of UCS solutions with practical configuration examples.

You will also discover the Cisco UCS Manager, which is the centralized management interface for Cisco UCS. Once you get to know UCS Manager, the book dives deeper into configuring LAN, SAN, identity pools, resource pools, and service profiles for the servers. The book also presents other administration topics including Backup, Restore, user’s roles, and high availability cluster configuration. Finally, you will learn about virtualized networking, 3rd party integration tools and testing failure scenarios.

You will learn everything you need to know for the rapidly growing Cisco UCS deployments in the real-world.

Table of contents

  1. Implementing Cisco UCS Solutions
    1. Table of Contents
    2. Implementing Cisco UCS Solutions
    3. Credits
    4. About the Authors
    5. About the Reviewer
    6. www.PacktPub.com
      1. Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more
        1. Why Subscribe?
        2. Free Access for Packt account holders
        3. Instant Updates on New Packt Books
    7. Preface
      1. What this book covers
        1. What you need for this book
      2. Who this book is for
      3. Conventions
      4. Reader feedback
      5. Customer support
        1. Errata
        2. Piracy
        3. Questions
    8. 1. Cisco UCS Physical Architecture and Installing UCS Hardware
      1. Looking at the UCS equipment
        1. Stateless computing
        2. Rapid provisioning of servers
        3. Simplified troubleshooting
        4. Virtualization readiness
        5. Choice of industry-standard form factors
        6. Extended memory technology for increased density
      2. Understanding the physical architecture of UCS
        1. The Cisco UCS FIs
        2. The Cisco UCS blade servers
        3. The Cisco UCS rack-mount servers
      3. Understanding FIs
        1. The Cisco 6296UP FI
        2. The Cisco 6248UP FI
        3. The Cisco 6140UP FI
        4. The Cisco 6120UP FI
        5. Exploring connectivity transceivers for FIs
      4. The Cisco UCS 5100 series blade server chassis
        1. A look at the chassis front
        2. A look at the chassis back
        3. Environmental requirements
      5. IOM modules
        1. The Cisco 2208XP IOM card
        2. The Cisco 2204XP IOM card
        3. The Cisco 2104XP IOM card
      6. Blade servers and rack-mount servers
        1. Learning more about blade servers
          1. The B22 M3 blade server
          2. B200 M1/M2/M3 blade servers
          3. B230 M1/M2 blade servers
          4. The B420 M3 blade server
          5. B440 M1/M2 blade servers
        2. Learning more about rack-mount servers
          1. The C22 M3 rack-mount server
          2. The C24 M3 rack-mount server
          3. The C220 M3 rack-mount server
          4. The C240 M3 rack-mount server
          5. The C260 M2 rack-mount server
          6. The C420 M3 rack-mount server
          7. The C460 M2 rack-mount server
      7. Getting started with mezzanine adapters
        1. VICs for blade servers
          1. VIC 1280
          2. VIC 1240
          3. VIC M81KR
        2. VICs for rack-mount servers
          1. VIC 1225
          2. VIC P81E
      8. Power capacity and power plug types
        1. Nonredundant mode
        2. N+1 redundant mode
        3. Grid redundant mode
      9. Installing UCS chassis components
        1. Blade server installation
          1. Installation and removal of CPU
          2. Installation and removal of RAM
          3. Installation and removal of internal hard disks
          4. Installation of mezzanine cards
          5. Installation of blade servers on the chassis
      10. Cabling FI and IOM
        1. IOM – FI cabling topology
        2. IOM – FI physical cabling
      11. Summary
    9. 2. Setting Up Lab Using Cisco UCS Emulator
      1. Configuring Cisco UCS emulator
        1. System requirements
        2. Hypervisor prerequisites
        3. Installing UCSPE on VMware Player using a ZIP file
        4. Installing UCSPE on VMware Player using an OVA file
        5. Installing UCSPE on VMware Workstation
        6. Installing UCSPE on VMware vSphere ESXi
      2. Using Cisco UCSPE
      3. Configuring network settings
      4. Configuring hardware settings
        1. Stash area
        2. Adding a new chassis with blade servers
          1. Adding an empty chassis
          2. Configuring and adding a blade server to the chassis
          3. Configuring and adding a rack-mount server
          4. Modifying server components
      5. Launching UCSM using the platform emulator
      6. UCSPE limitations
      7. Summary
    10. 3. Configuring Cisco UCS Using UCS Manager
      1. Introducing Cisco UCSM
        1. UCSM firmware version
      2. Walking through the UCSM interface
        1. Navigation pane
          1. The Equipment tab
          2. The Servers tab
          3. The LAN tab
          4. The SAN tab
          5. The VM tab
          6. The Admin tab
        2. The Fault Summary area
      3. Starting with the initial configuration
      4. Step-by-step initial configuration
      5. Global configuration policies
        1. Chassis/FEX Discovery Policy
        2. Power Policy
        3. MAC Address Table Aging
        4. DNS Server
        5. Time Zone Management
        6. SNMP
      6. UCS Manager – Command Line Interface
        1. Getting help with CLI commands
        2. Accessing the history of CLI commands
        3. Accessing other CLIs
        4. Scope commands
        5. Applying changes
        6. An example configuration using CLI commands
      7. Summary
    11. 4. Configuring LAN Connectivity
      1. Understanding Fabric Interconnect switching modes
        1. Ethernet End Host Mode (EHM)
        2. Ethernet switching mode
      2. Introduction to Fabric Interconnect port types
      3. Configuring northbound connectivity to upstream switches
        1. Configuring upstream switches
        2. Learning how to configure Fabric Interconnect uplink ports
        3. Configuring VLANs
      4. Using pin groups
        1. Dynamic pin groups
          1. Failure response
        2. Static pin groups
          1. Failure response re-pinning
      5. Configuring southbound connectivity to IOMs
        1. Learning how to configure Fabric Interconnect server ports
        2. Configuring IOM ports
      6. Configuring the last piece of the puzzle – vNICs
        1. What is MAC address abstraction?
        2. Learning to create vNICs
      7. Summary
    12. 5. Configuring SAN Connectivity
      1. Learning storage connectivity options
      2. Overview of FC and iSCSI storage
        1. Overview of SCSI
        2. Overview of Fiber Channel
        3. Overview of iSCSI
        4. Overview of Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
      3. Storage connectivity design considerations
      4. Learning about the FC switching mode
      5. Configuring the FC port channel and trunking
      6. Configuring VSAN and zoning
        1. Learning about zoning
      7. Learning about VSAN
        1. Example configuration – connecting SAN directly to Fabric Interconnects
      8. Configuring FCoE
      9. Manual and automatic uplink pinning
        1. Dynamic pin groups
          1. Failure response
        2. Static pin groups
          1. Failure response re-pinning
      10. Summary
    13. 6. Creating Identity and Resource Pools
      1. Understanding identity and resource pools
      2. Learning to create a UUID pool
      3. Learning to create a MAC pool
      4. Learning to create a WWNN pool
      5. Learning to create a WWPN pool
      6. Making your identity pools meaningful
      7. Understanding server pools
      8. Learning to create server pool membership and qualification policies
      9. Summary
    14. 7. Creating and Managing Service Profiles
      1. Overview of service profiles
      2. Different ways of creating a service profile
        1. Creating a basic service profile
        2. Creating a service profile in the expert mode
        3. Creating a service profile from a service profile template
      3. Configuring policies
        1. Configuring the server BIOS policy
        2. Configuring adapter policies
        3. Configuring scrub policies
        4. Configuring QoS policies
        5. Local disk configuration policies
        6. Maintenance policies
        7. Configuring IPMI
      4. A walkthrough of the service profile creation – expert mode
        1. Identifying the service profile
        2. Configuring the networking settings
        3. Configuring the storage connectivity
        4. Configuring zoning
        5. vNIC/vHBA placement
        6. Server Boot Order configuration
        7. Configuring the server maintenance policy
          1. Configuring a SAN boot policy
        8. Associating service profiles
        9. Operational policies
      5. Creating and applying a service profile template
      6. Summary
    15. 8. Managing UCS through Routine and Advanced Management
      1. Licensing Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect
      2. Startup and shutdown of Fabric Interconnects
      3. Controlling blade server power
      4. Status and Locator LED
      5. Configuring logging
      6. Configuring Cisco Call Home
      7. Organizational structure in UCS Manager
        1. Organizational inheritance
      8. Role-based Access Control
        1. Active Directory integration
        2. Predefined roles
        3. About UCS locales
      9. Permissions in Multitenancy
      10. Summary
    16. 9. Virtual Networking in Cisco UCS
      1. Understanding IEEE 802.1Q
      2. Learning about VN-Link
      3. Using the NX-OS
      4. Changes in the datacenter
        1. Role differentiation
        2. Role issues
      5. Development of Nexus 1000v
        1. Virtual Ethernet interfaces
        2. Learning about port profiles
      6. Nexus 1000v components
        1. The Virtual Ethernet Module
        2. The Virtual Supervisor Module
      7. VEM implementation
      8. VSM implementation
      9. VEM data plane
        1. VEM functions
      10. VSM control plane
      11. Nexus 1000v and physical switches
        1. The physical switch chassis
        2. Line cards
        3. The N1KV backplane
      12. Nexus and vPath
        1. Performance advantages using vPath
      13. Deploying VSM
        1. VSM installation
      14. Communication between VSM and VEM
        1. Using Layer 2 connectivity
        2. Using Layer 3 connectivity
        3. Using the Domain ID
        4. L2 mode
        5. L3 mode
        6. System VLANs and opaque data
        7. VSM to vCenter communication
      15. Summary
    17. 10. Configuring Backup, Restore, and High Availability
      1. Backing up the Cisco UCS configuration
      2. Creating UCS backup jobs
        1. Creating a manually run backup job using GUI
        2. Creating a scheduled backup job using GUI
        3. Creating a backup job using CLI
      3. Restoring backups using GUI
      4. Configuring high-availability clustering
        1. Configuring the first Fabric Interconnect
        2. Configuring the second Fabric Interconnect
        3. Fabric Interconnect elections
      5. Managing high availability
        1. The Split-brain scenario
        2. Partition in space
        3. Partition in time
      6. Summary
    18. 11. Cisco UCS Failure Scenarios Testing
      1. Port-channel uplink failure and recovery on Fabric Interconnect
      2. Server link to Fabric Interconnect failure and recovery
        1. Identifying a mezzanine adapter failure
          1. Common mezzanine adapter error messages
      3. FEX IO modules – failure and recovery
        1. Common IOM error messages
        2. Fabric Interconnect server port failure
        3. Rectifying the Global Chassis Discovery Policy configuration error
      4. Fabric Interconnect device failure and recovery
        1. Common error messages with Fabric Interconnect
      5. UCS chassis failure, reporting, and recovery
        1. Common failure messages for UCS Chassis
      6. Single fiber channel failure and recovery on Fabric Interconnects
      7. Indicating a status with LEDs
      8. Creating a tech-support file
      9. Summary
    19. 12. Third-party Application Integration
      1. Understanding the challenges in Infrastructure
      2. Going deep with UIM
      3. Understanding the discovery mechanism of UIM
      4. Learning about the UIM service life cycle
      5. Integrating VMware vCenter server with UCSM
        1. Configuring vCenter with UCSM
        2. Integration with Cisco UCS PowerTool
          1. Connecting your UCS Manager using PowerTool
      6. Summary
    20. Index

Product information

  • Title: Implementing Cisco UCS Solutions
  • Author(s): Farhan Ahmed Nadeem, Prasenjit Sarkar
  • Release date: December 2013
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781782170662