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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
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.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Table of Contents
Implementing Cisco UCS Solutions
Implementing Cisco UCS Solutions
Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing
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First published: December 2013
Production Reference: 1181213
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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Cover Image by Abhishek Pandey (<[email protected]>)
Credits
Authors
Farhan Ahmed Nadeem
Prasenjit Sarkar
Reviewer
Anuj Modi
Acquisition Editor
Kevin Colaco
Lead Technical Editors
Mayur Hule
Neeshma Ramakrishnan
Commissioning Editor
Aarthi Kumaraswamy
Technical Editors
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Aparna Kumari
Copy Editors
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Dipti Kapadia
Gladson Monteiro
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Project Coordinators
Cheryl Botelho
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Proofreaders
Bernadette Watkins
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Indexer
Tejal R. Soni
Graphics
Disha Haria
Yuvraj Mannari
Production Coordinator
Arvindkumar Gupta
Cover Work
Arvindkumar Gupta
About the Authors
Farhan Ahmed Nadeem has been in the IT field for over 17 years. He has a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering and holds a number of certifications including CCNP/CCNA DC, VCP, CISSP, CCA, and MCSE-EA. Starting with Microsoft certification MCSE-NT in 1997, he always stayed abreast with the latest technologies and server hardware through proactive learning and successful real-world deployments. He has extensive work experience in complex heterogeneous environments comprising various hardware platforms, operating systems, and applications. This exposure gave him broad knowledge in investigating, designing, implementing, and managing infrastructure solutions. He progressively started focusing on virtualization technologies and the Cisco UCS platform and has completed a number of successful UCS deployments with both VMware ESXi and Citrix XenServer hypervisors. When not working with computers, he enjoys spending time with his family.
I am thankful to my friend Prof. Dr. Adeel Akram, who helped me in developing the contents. I am also thankful to my wife and four kids who missed a lot of their weekends while I was working on this project.
Prasenjit Sarkar (@stretchcloud) is a senior member of technical staff at VMware Service Provider Cloud R&D, where he provides architectural oversight and technical guidance for designing, implementing, and testing VMware's Cloud datacenters. He is an author, R&D guy, and a blogger focusing on virtualization, Cloud computing, storage, networking, and other enterprise technologies. He has more than 10 years of expert knowledge in R&D, professional services, alliances, solution engineering, consulting, and technical sales with expertise in architecting and deploying virtualization solutions and rolling out new technologies and solution initiatives. His primary focus is on VMware vSphere Infrastructure and Public Cloud using VMware vCloud Suite. His aim is to own the entire life cycle of a VMware based IaaS (SDDC), especially vSphere, vCloud Director, vShield Manager, and vCenter Operations. He was one of the VMware vExperts of 2012 and is well known for his acclaimed virtualization blog http://stretch-cloud.info. He holds certifications from VMware, Cisco, Citrix, Red Hat, Microsoft, IBM, HP, and Exin. Prior to joining VMware, he served other fine organizations (such as Capgemini, HP, and GE) as a solution architect and infrastructure architect.
I would like to thank and dedicate this book to my mom and dad. Without their endless and untiring support, this book would not have been possible.
About the Reviewer
Anuj Modi has been working in the IT field for more than 11 years, starting out his career as a system administrator. He has worked with leading companies such as Computer Science Corporation (CSC) as Wintel Senior Administrator and Hewlett-Packard (HP) as a technical solutions consultant. Currently, he is working as a unified computing and virtualization consultant with Cisco Systems (Private) Limited, providing consultations on datacenter solutions to customers. He is involved in datacenter assessment, planning, designing, implementing and optimizing infrastructure, and helping customers to build and migrate to the green datacenter of the next generation. He is also involved in the demonstration of Cisco Unified Computing Solution (UCS) value targeting cloud computing, virtualization, unified I/O, datacenter management, and orchestration. He ensures delivery of datacenter architecture and industry standard solutions such as Vblock, FlexPod, VSPEX, VDI, VXI, Nexus 1000v, Virtual Security Gateway (VSG), ASA 1000V, Unified Computing Solution Director (UCSD), and Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), and helps customers with server consolidation, capacity planning of existing servers, P2V, migration of datacenter, and so on.
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Preface
Implementing Cisco UCS Solutions is written with a hands-on approach. With actual examples for configuring and deploying Cisco UCS components, this book prepares readers for the real-world deployments of Cisco UCS datacenter solutions.
This book starts with a description of Cisco UCS equipment options and introduces Cisco UCS Emulator, which is an excellent resource for practically learning Cisco UCS components deployment. Subsequent chapters introduce all areas of UCS solutions with practical configuration examples.
You will be introduced to the Cisco UCS Manager, which is the centralized management interface for Cisco UCS. Once the reader establishes elementary acquaintance with UCS Manager, we go deep into configuring LAN, SAN, identity pools, resource pools, and service profiles for the servers. We also present miscellaneous administration topics including backup, restore, user roles, and high-availability cluster configuration. The last few chapters introduce virtualized networking, third-party integration tools, and testing failure scenarios.
If you want to learn and enhance your hands-on skills with Cisco UCS solutions, this book is certainly for you. You will learn everything you need for the rapidly growing Cisco UCS deployments.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Cisco UCS Physical Architecture and Installing UCS Hardware, covers physical components of UCS solutions including Fabric Interconnects, blade chassis, IOM/FEX modules, mezzanine cards, blade servers, and rack-mount servers. Specifications of different components are provided along with the physical installation and connectivity of all of the components.
Chapter 2, Setting Up Lab Using Cisco UCS Emulator, introduces the UCS Emulator, which is an excellent tool from Cisco to learn UCS even without a physical lab. Different UCS Emulator installation options are discussed, and configuring the UCS Emulator for lab usage is explained.
Chapter 3, Configuring Cisco UCS Using UCS Manager, gives an overview of UCS Manager, which is the core management tool for the UCS platform. Readers get acquainted with the UCS Manager navigation and configuration options using both graphical user interface and command-line interface.
Chapter 4, Configuring LAN Connectivity, explains UCS network connectivity. UCS platform-unique features, including Fabric Interconnect operational modes, pin groups, port channels, virtual PortChannel, and virtual network interface card configuration, are explained along with both northbound and southbound network connectivities from Fabric Interconnects.
Chapter 5, Configuring SAN Connectivity, explains storage connectivity for different SAN protocols supported by the UCS platform. Configuration of protocols including FC, FCoE, and iSCSI is discussed along with an introduction to UCS unique features including FC operational modes, VSANs, and uplink pinning.
Chapter 6, Creating Identity and Resource Pools, introduces identity and resource pools which include UUID, MAC addresses, WWN, and server pools. Identity and resource pools are used for abstracting unique identities and resources for devices such as vNICs; vHBAs and server pools can assign servers in groups based on similar server characteristics.
Chapter 7, Creating and Managing Service Profiles, shows how to create service profiles that provide necessary identities, resources, and configuration to the stateless servers. Readers first learn how to create policies which provide server configuration, and then learn various service profile configuration options.
Chapter 8, Managing UCS through Routine and Advanced Management, introduces the most common and advanced management tasks performed with UCS, from startup and shutdown to logging, upgrading firmware, licensing, and role-based access. These routine management tasks are crucial to understand in order to effectively administer Cisco UCS.
Chapter 9, Virtual Networking in Cisco UCS, explains the integration of Cisco UCS and the virtualization of hypervisor mostly with VMware vSphere and Cisco Nexus 1000v Distributed Virtual Switch.
Chapter 10, Configuring Backup, Restore, and High Availability, covers UCS backup and restore options. This chapter also provides details of high-availability configuration for UCS Fabric Interconnects.
Chapter 11, Cisco UCS Failure Scenarios Testing, discusses various failure scenarios that provide necessary knowledge for UCS troubleshooting for identifying and resolving issues.
Chapter 12, Third-party Application Integration, covers third-party applications including VMware vCenter extension, goUCS automation toolkit, EMC UIM, and so on.
What you need for this book
In order to create a lab without physical equipment and to practice procedures provided in this book, you will need the following:
Who this book is for
This book is intended for the professionals responsible for Cisco UCS deployments which include systems, network, and storage administrators. Readers should have basic knowledge of the server's architecture, network, and storage technologies. Although not necessary, familiarity with virtualization technologies is also recommended because a majority of real-world UCS deployments run virtualized loads. Even though UCS Fabric Interconnects running the UCS manager software are based on the Nexus platform, knowledge of Nexus OS is not necessary, because a majority of the management tasks are handled in the graphical user interface with very few exceptions using the CLI.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "All uplink ports are configured as 802.1q trunks."
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Click on the Equipment tab in the Navigation pane."
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Chapter 1. Cisco UCS Physical Architecture and Installing UCS Hardware
In previous decades, computers evolved at a dramatic pace. Moore's law, which predicted that the density of transistors and integrated circuits would double every two years as computing components kept on shrinking in size while improving in computational capacity, has truly prevailed. This technological evolution led to three distinct generations of computing devices.
We witnessed the era of the following generations:
Mainframes were monolithic systems often with proprietary hardware and software. With their enormous computing power, mainframes were able to run multiple applications; however, their major limitations were cost and many single points of failure. Due to their high cost and management complexity, mainframes remained mainly confined to military use, universities, and some very large organizations.
Tower and rack-mounted servers usually have limited computational resources as compared to mainframes; however, these are very cost effective. Because of the limited resources available on these servers, a one-to-one server-to-application ratio is usually the way to go. Because of this one server one application design, rack and tower servers need more rack space, separate cabling, individual power supplies, and more cooling in the datacenter, which makes management of the infrastructure quite complex. However, this second generation of computers is generally very cost effective. This led to the mass adoption of computers everywhere.
The latest trend in the ever evolving computer architecture space is to move away from tower and rack-mounted servers in favor of blade servers. In today's highly demanding enterprise applications, blade server architecture provides excellent features when compared with rack and tower servers. These features include the following:
Contemporary datacenters are facing unprecedented growth in computational demands alongside the need for reducing implementation and operational costs. Considering these factors, blade servers are designed to minimize the use of resources and space. Components in a blade chassis are either removed or shared between blade servers.
The minimum form factor of a rack server is 1 Rack Unit (RU). 1 RU is equal to 1.75 inches, and the most common server rack height is usually 42 RU. It is therefore possible to fit only 42 pizza-box servers in a standard rack. With blade servers, it is possible to achieve higher densities of servers per rack.
In a blade server, data connectivity interfaces and power supplies are also shared. Thus, blade servers also require less cabling, and hence less management.
In this chapter, we will discuss physical components of the Unified Computing System (UCS) equipment. The list of the topics covered in this chapter is as follows:
Looking at the UCS equipment
With the ever increasing demand on datacenters, vendors started focusing on different aspects of server and networking hardware consolidation; however, most of the ad hoc solutions were based on gluing together the existing products which were not designed grounds up to provide a cohesive infrastructure and failed to address the requirements of the datacenter as a whole. Hence, management of these amalgamated solutions was a nightmare for IT administrators.
Cisco entered into the blade server market with a holistic approach to the blade server design. With a strong background in networking and storage products, Cisco developed a cohesive solution consolidating the computing, network, and storage connectivity components along with centralized management of these resources. The purpose of Cisco UCS is to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and improve scalability and flexibility.
Salient features and benefits of the UCS solution include the following:
Stateless computing
Cisco introduced the idea of stateless computing with its blade server design. Cisco blade servers do not have any initial configuration. Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs) for blades, Network Interface Cards (NICs), Media Access Control (MAC) addresses, storage World Wide Node (WWN) numbers, firmware, and BIOS settings are all abstracted from Unified Computing System Manager (UCSM), the management software running on the FIs.
Rapid provisioning of servers
Provisioning of servers dramatically improves as the servers can be provisioned using the UCSM software even before they are physically available. Once the server is physically installed, it will abstract its identity from UCSM. Using server configuration templates, it is therefore possible to create a server template only once and apply the template to hundreds of servers.
Simplified troubleshooting
Replacement of servers also becomes very easy. Since the servers are stateless, as soon as a replacement server is installed, it will abstract all the configuration of the old server and will be available for use. Servers can also be easily migrated for different roles and workloads.
Virtualization readiness
Virtualization in the form of modern bare metal hypervisors is a major breakthrough for optimal utilization of computational resources. Cisco UCS solution supports all major hypervisor platforms including VMware ESX/ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix Xen server. Support and integration with VMware vSphere solution is very strong. UCSM can be integrated with vCenter to abstract and manage features at the individual Virtual Machine (VM) level. By leveraging the benefits of virtualization and increasing the density of the physical server, the UCS solution can scale up to thousands of VMs.
Choice of industry-standard form factors
Cisco UCS servers are available in two categories: B-series blade servers and C-series rack-mount servers. Both form factors are designed using the same industry-standard components and can address different computational requirements. Both B-series blade servers and C-series rack-mount servers are designed using Intel Xeon CPUs. B-series servers are managed through UCSM, whereas C-series servers can either be individually managed or can be integrated to UCSM.
Extended memory technology for increased density
Cisco also introduced a patented extended memory technology for two CPU socket servers to increase the total amount of memory support; this could be more than double the amount of memory as compared to the industry standards for two socket servers. Virtualized workloads can leverage this extra memory to support an even greater density of VMs in a reduced physical footprint, resulting in reduced Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) andOperational Expenditure (OPEX) costs. Extended memory technology is available in both B-series blade servers and C-series rack-mount servers.
Understanding the physical architecture of UCS
The Cisco UCS solution can be divided into the following three main categories:
The Cisco UCS FIs
The Cisco UCS FIs provide network connectivity and management for the connected servers. The UCS FIs run the UCSM control software and consist of the following components:
The Cisco UCS blade servers
The Cisco UCS blade servers require a mother chassis where these servers can be installed. The UCS blade server solution consists of the following components:
The Cisco UCS rack-mount servers
The Cisco UCS rack-mount servers are standalone servers that can be installed and controlled individually. Cisco provides Fabric Extenders (FEXs) for the rack-mount servers. FEXs can be used to connect and manage rack-mount servers from FIs. The UCS rack-mount server solution consists of the following components:
In this chapter we will provide details about hardware options available for both blade servers and rack-mount servers. Most of the field deployments of UCS servers are based on blade servers. Therefore, our main focus will be on blade server configuration in this book. However, if proper connectivity is established between rack-mount servers and FIs, rack-mount servers can also be managed in the same fashion.
The following figure depicts the FIs running the UCSM software, a blade server chassis with IOM modules, and the main components of a blade server:
In this chapter, we will go into the details of various UCS components and will focus on their physical specifications and installation in the subsequent sections.
Note
The Cisco interactive 3D model for Cisco 5100 series chassis and blades is an excellent resource for exploring Cisco UCS components physically. It is also available for iPhone/iPad (search for UCS Tech Specs in the marketplace). More details on this are available at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/ps10265/ps10279/ucs_kaon_model_preso.html.
Understanding FIs
An FI is the core component of a UCS solution. FIs are typically configured as highly available clustered pairs in production environments. It's possible to run a single FI-based design as a proof of concept test deployment before actually implementing it in production. FIs provide the following two capabilities:
FIs are available in two generations, namely Cisco UCS 6100 series and Cisco UCS 6200 series. The core functionality is the same in both generations; however, UCS 6200 series has a newer generation Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), higher throughput, and increased number of physical ports. Both generations can be upgraded to the latest UCSM software.
FIs provide converged ports. Depending on the physical Small Form Factor Pluggable (SFP) transceivers and FI software configuration, each port can be configured in different ways. Cisco 6200 series FI ports can be configured as Ethernet ports, Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) ports, or Fiber Channel (FC) ports. On the other hand, 6100 series converged ports only support Ethernet and FCoE (they also support FC, but only in the expansion slot).
In production, FIs are deployed in clustered pairs to provide high availability. Cisco-supported implementation requires that clustered FIs be identical. The only possibility for having different FIs in a cluster is during a cluster upgrade.
Tip
Larger enterprises may consider deploying the Cisco UCS central software, which can manage multiple UCS domains across globally distributed datacenters.
The following are the specifications of all the available UCS FIs.
The Cisco 6296UP FI
The Cisco 6296UP FI (UP represents Unified Ports) is a 2 RU device with a maximum of 96 converged ports. Ports can be configured as 1 GB Ethernet, 10 GB Ethernet, 10 GB FCoE, and 2/4/8 GB FC. The specifications of this FI are as follows:
The Cisco 6248UP FI
The Cisco 6248UP FI is a 1 RU device with a maximum of 48 converged ports. Ports could be configured as 1 GB Ethernet, 10 GB Ethernet, 10 GB FCoE, and 2, 4, or 8 GB FC. The specifications of this FI are as follows:
The Cisco 6140UP FI
The Cisco 6140UP FI is a 2 RU device with a maximum of 48 converged ports. Fixed ports can be configured as 10 GB Ethernet and 10 GB FCoE. Only the first 16 ports can be configured as 1 GB Ethernet. The FC is only supported in the expansion module ports. The specifications of this FI are as follows:
The Cisco 6120UP FI
The Cisco 6120UP FI is a 1 RU device with a maximum of 20 fixed 10 GB ports. Fixed ports can be configured as 10 GB Ethernet and 10 GB FCoE. Only the first eight ports can be configured as 1 GB Ethernet. The FC is only supported in the expansion module ports. The specifications of this FI are as follows:
Note
Standard pricing of FIs provides a limited number of port licenses. To enable more ports, extra licenses can be purchased per port.
Exploring connectivity transceivers for FIs
A variety of SFP transceivers are available for both FI series. These transceivers provide south-bound IOM connectivity and north-bound network and storage connectivity. They are based on industry-standard SFP+ specifications.
Transceivers can be selected depending on the technology, for example, Ethernet or FC, and also according to the distance requirements. For shorter distances between FIs, IOMs, and north-bound network switches, twinax cables with integrated SFP is an economical alternative as compared to fiber optic SFP.
The most commonly used transceivers include the following:
Note
A detailed list of FI-compatible SFPs is available at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/ps10265/ps11544/data_sheet_c78-675245.html.
Distance and other detailed specifications of the Cisco SFPs are available at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/modules/ps5455/data_sheet_c78-455693.html.
The Cisco UCS 5100 series blade server chassis
The Cisco 5100 series blade server chassis is a vital building block of the Cisco UCS solution. Currently, there is only one generation of UCS blade chassis, which is Cisco UCS 5108. The chassis form factor is 6 RU and it can host the following:
A look at the chassis front
The UCS chassis front is used to insert blade servers into the chassis. The front of the chassis also holds UCS power supplies. The UCS chassis front can hold the following hardware:
This has been demonstrated in the following image:
A look at the chassis back
The UCS chassis back provides slots for IOM modules, fan units, and power connectors. It provides the following connectors:
