ucs fundamentals

Carl Bradshaw, Solution Architect

UCS Fundamentals

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco [email protected] 2

Agenda

UCS architecture and components

UCS stateless computing

UCS infrastructure integration

© 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco ConfidentialPresentation_ID 3

UCS Architecture & Components


Mgmt Server Bolt on management

Ethernet Switches

Fibre Channel Switches

Blade chassis

Ethernet Blade Switches

Fibre Channel Blade Switches

Onboard Management (OA)

Blade server deployments today

The ‘Mini Rack’


UCS solution

Unify fabrics

Embed management

Optimize virtualization

Remove unnecessary switches, adapters and management modules

Save over 1/3rd the support infrastructure for a given workload

Mgmt Server Mgmt ServerMgmt Server


A single system that encompasses:

Network: Unified fabric

Compute: Industry standard x86 components

VNlink: Distributed Virtual Switch

Efficient scale

Fewer servers with more memory

Lower cost

Fewer servers, switches, adapters, cables

Lower power consumption

Fewer points of management

Unified Computing System


UCS 6100 Series Fabric Interconnect

6120 or 6140 with FC GEMs

Clustered

UCS Manager software

Brains of UCS

Wire once, walk away


UCS 2100 Series FEX or IOM

10Gbe connections to 6120

Encapsulates FC into Ethernet packets

Not a switch! – chassis is dumb


Wire Once Architecture

Wire once for bandwidth

All links can be active - all the time

QoS is available if required

Uplinks

20Gb/s 40Gb/s 80Gb/s


Uplink Bandwidth Efficiency


Cluster Resilience


UCS 5100 Blade Server Chassis

Chassis is dumb

8 half-width blades

Midplane IOM connections


B-series blades

Blades are dumb

Nehalem-EX with 4 socket 32-core

World-record Westmere benchmarks

384GB RAM B250

2x CNA on B250


Another fine mezz…

FCoE currently ends at 6120

Menlo dual-NIC dual-HBA

Palo VIC 56 user devices


UCS Stateless Computing


UCS Palo VIC fluid workloads

Workload network and storage requirements

Any x86 workload on a B200

Service Profile reshapes workload


What is a Service Profile?

What is my

identity?

How should I

behave?

Physical

Blade

MAC UUID nWWN pWWN vNIC vHBA

Boot

Policy

Local

Disk

Policy

Adapter

PolicyVSANs VLANs

Server

Pools


Stateless computing

Virtualised MAC addresses

SAN or PXE boot

Blade is utility compute power


Stateless computing in action

SAN

ArrayVMware HA Cluster

Cluster Failover Capacity

Target

LUN

cb_esx2

Target

LUN

cb_esx2


UCS Infrastructure Integration


Designed for Integration

Plugs into existing infrastructures

UCS encapsulates disruptive technologies

Fibre SAN support, FCoE advantages


UCS vPC attached to a vPC domain

6100 A 6100 B

7K1 7K2vPC Domain

Port Channel uplink vPC attached

vPC peer-link

keepalive


Network to UCS – No Peer Link Traffic

6100 A 6100 B

7K1 7K2vPC Domain

vPC peer-link

keepalive


Fabric A to Fabric B – No Peer Link Traffic

6100 A 6100 B

7K1 7K2vPC Domain

vPC peer-link

keepalive


Peer Link Failure – No Problem

6100 A 6100 B

7K1 7K2vPC Domain

vPC peer-link

keepalive


N5K 2N5K 1

6100 A 6100 B

vPC

7K1 7K2

Server

Server NICStays UP

N5K 2N5K 1

6100 A 6100 B

vPC

7K1 7K2

Server

Server NICNo Impact

No Uplink Re-pinning


Best Practice without vPC

6100 A 6100 B

7K1 7K2

All UCS uplinks forwardingNo STP influence on the topologyEnd Host Mode


UCS Networking Best Practice Summary

N5KN5K

6100 A 6100 BIf you can, Attach UCS with vPC uplinks

IF -- you attach UCS to a switch configured for vPC (N5K, or N7K)

THEN -- attach UCS with vPC uplinks

Avoid peer-link failure black holesNo peer-link traffic / bottlenecksNo Server NIC disruption

6100 A 6100 B


Summary


UCS Fundamentals

Component reduction, easier to manage

6100 series centre of system

Fluid workloads and Service Profiles enable stateless computing

Integrates with existing infrastructure

[email protected]

ucs fundamentals

Documents