Carl Bradshaw, Solution Architect

UCS Fundamentals

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 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

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 4

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’

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 5

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

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 6

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

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 7

UCS 6100 Series Fabric Interconnect

6120 or 6140 with FC GEMs

Clustered

UCS Manager software

Brains of UCS

Wire once, walk away

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 8

UCS 2100 Series FEX or IOM

10Gbe connections to 6120

Encapsulates FC into Ethernet packets

Not a switch! – chassis is dumb

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 9

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

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 10

Uplink Bandwidth Efficiency

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 11

Cluster Resilience

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 12

UCS 5100 Blade Server Chassis

Chassis is dumb

8 half-width blades

Midplane IOM connections

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 13

B-series blades

Blades are dumb

Nehalem-EX with 4 socket 32-core

World-record Westmere benchmarks

384GB RAM B250

2x CNA on B250

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 14

Another fine mezz…

FCoE currently ends at 6120

Menlo dual-NIC dual-HBA

Palo VIC 56 user devices

© 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco ConfidentialPresentation_ID 15

UCS Stateless Computing

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 16

UCS Palo VIC fluid workloads

Workload network and storage requirements

Any x86 workload on a B200

Service Profile reshapes workload

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 17

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

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 18

Stateless computing

Virtualised MAC addresses

SAN or PXE boot

Blade is utility compute power

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 19

Stateless computing in action

SAN

ArrayVMware HA Cluster

Cluster Failover Capacity

Target

LUN

cb_esx2

Target

LUN

cb_esx2

© 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco ConfidentialPresentation_ID 20

UCS Infrastructure Integration

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 21

Designed for Integration

Plugs into existing infrastructures

UCS encapsulates disruptive technologies

Fibre SAN support, FCoE advantages

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 22

UCS vPC attached to a vPC domain

6100 A 6100 B

7K1 7K2vPC Domain

Port Channel uplink vPC attached

vPC peer-link

keepalive

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 23

Network to UCS – No Peer Link Traffic

6100 A 6100 B

7K1 7K2vPC Domain

vPC peer-link

keepalive

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 24

Fabric A to Fabric B – No Peer Link Traffic

6100 A 6100 B

7K1 7K2vPC Domain

vPC peer-link

keepalive

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 25

Peer Link Failure – No Problem

6100 A 6100 B

7K1 7K2vPC Domain

vPC peer-link

keepalive

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 26

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

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 27

Best Practice without vPC

6100 A 6100 B

7K1 7K2

All UCS uplinks forwardingNo STP influence on the topologyEnd Host Mode

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 28

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

© 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco ConfidentialPresentation_ID 29

Summary

© 2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidentialcabradsh@cisco.com 30

UCS Fundamentals

Component reduction, easier to manage

6100 series centre of system

Fluid workloads and Service Profiles enable stateless computing

Integrates with existing infrastructure

carl.bradshaw@cisco.com