Cisco Unified Computing System Overview
Overview
The Cisco Unified Computing System is a new approach to Datacenter Virtualization. It's focus is on greater flexibility and scaling while simplifying management and reducing CapEx and OpEx costs. The pervasive use of 10Gbit cabling through a series of fabric extenders/interconnects and a centralized management console that defines service profiles. Service profiles define the storage, server and network components presented to the VMWare environment.
Timeline
2009
- Cisco UCS Chassis and Blades
- Nexus 2000 Extender
2008
- Nexus 1000V
- Nexus 5000
- Nexus 7000
Components
- Cisco UCS Manager - Embedded into the fabric interconnect
- Cisco UCS 6100 Series Fabric Interconnect - Provides FCoE and chassis interconnects, Comes in a 20 and 40 port version
- Cisco UCS 2100 Series Fabric Extenders - Logically part of Fabric Switch, Inserts into Blade Chassis
- Cisco UCS 5100 Series Blade Chassis - Flexible slot configuration, Logically part of Fabric Switch
- Cisco UCS B-Series Servers - A full and half width options, can mix blade types in single chassis
- Cisco UCS Adapters - Three Adapter options, can mix within a blade
Compute
The compute power of the solution is provided by Cisco UCS B-series Blade Servers, which are based on dual Intel Xeon QuadCore processors, DDR3 memory, and optionally two SAS drives. Access is provided via ports on front or Virtual Console via Cisco UCS Manager.
| Type | Memory Capacity | Memory Size and Speed | Size and Form Factor | I/O Throughput |
| Cisco UCS B200 M1 Blade Server | 12 DIMMs; up to 96GB | upto 8-GB DDR3; 1066 Mhz and 1333 Mhz | Half-width | Up to 20 Gbps |
| Cisco UCS B250 M1 Extended Memory Blade Server | 48 DIMMs; up to 384GB | upto 8-GB DDR3; 1066 Mhz Full width | Up to 40 Gbps |
Unified Fabric
The unified fabric provides line-rate, lossless 10 Gigabit Ethernet, FCoE, and Cisco UCS Manager Software. It also provides support for the VN-Link technology, also has expansion modules for Fiber Channel and 10GBit Ethernet uplinks.
| Type | Max. Chassis per System/Ports | Throughput | Expansion Slots |
| Cisco UCS 6120XP | 20 | 520 Gbps | 1 |
| Cisco UCS 6140XP | 40 | 1.04 terabits per second | 2 |
UCS Adapters
The UCS Adapters provides virtualization-optimized Ethernet and/or FCoE over a 10Gbit fabric connection. There are three cards, one from Cisco, Qlogic, and Emulex. The Cisco M81KR is a fully virtualization optimized card with a hardware based version of the Nexus 1000V Switch and support for pass-through switching. It also allows for up to 128 virtual adapters that can be used for Fiber Channel or Ethernet connectivity. The Cisco M71KR-E has both an Intel ethernet controller and an Emulex Fiber channel controller on the card. The Cisco M71KR-Q has both an Intel ethernet controller and a QLogic Fiber channel controller.
UCS Manager
UCS Manager provides policy based management of the server, network, and storage resources. Policies are created that are used in service profiles that define all attributes from the server bios version to the SAN presentments and QoS Parameters. UCS Manager runs on the Cisco 6100 Fabric interconnects, and provides full management of all blades, fabric devices, adapters, and virtual connections. It uses role-based access controls to restrict management along corporate boundaries. It also has many APIs that enable it to plug into other management systems. UCS Manager can be accessed via a Java GUI or a CLI.
Unique Features
Cisco UCS brings many unique features to the traditional virtualization environment.
Service Profiles
The service profile allows the servers in the Cisco Unified Computing System to be treated as raw computing capacity that can be allocated and reallocated among application workloads, enabling a much more dynamic and efficient use of the server capacity than exists in today's data centers. Server deployment with service profiles takes minutes instead of the many days or weeks that server deployment takes in many existing data centers.
Scalability
One Cisco UCS Manager instance can manage two Cisco UCS 6100 Series Fabric Interconnects, 40 Cisco UCS 5100 Series Chassis, 80 Cisco UCS 2100 Series Fabric Extenders, and 320 Cisco UCS B-Series Servers.
VN-Link
The Cisco UCS Manager implementation of VN-Link enables policy-based virtual machine connectivity, mobility of network and security properties during VMware VMotion migration, and a nondisruptive operating model in which network administrators perform network tasks and server administrators perform server tasks.
Hypervisor Bypass
Provides support that enables the virtual machine to directly access the adapter when such technology becomes available in hypervisors. I/O bottlenecks and memory performance can be improved by providing virtual machines direct access to hardware I/O devices, eliminating the overhead of embedded software switches.