The definitive guide to UCS and the Cisco® Data Center Server: planning, architecture, components, deployment, and benefits
With its new Unified Computing System (UCS) family of products, Cisco has introduced a fundamentally new vision for data center computing: one that reduces ownership cost, improves agility, and radically simplifies management. In this book, three Cisco insiders thoroughly explain UCS, and offer practical insights for IT professionals and decision-makers who are evaluating or implementing it.
The authors establish the context for UCS by discussing the implications of virtualization, unified I/O, large memories and other key technologies, and showing how trends like cloud computing and green IT will drive the next-generation data center. Next, they take a closer look at the evolution of server CPU, memory, and I/O subsystems, covering advances such as the Intel® XEON® 5500, 5600, 7500, DDR3 memory, and unified I/O over 10 Gbps Ethernet.
Building on these fundamentals, the authors then discuss UCS in detail, showing how it systematically overcomes key limitations of current data center environments. They review UCS features, components, and architecture, and demonstrate how it can improve data center performance, reliability, simplicity, flexibility, and energy efficiency. Along the way, they offer realistic planning, installation, and migration guidance: everything decision-makers and technical implementers need to gain maximum value from UCS–now, and for years to come.
Silvano Gai has spent 11 years as Cisco Fellow, architecting Catalyst®, MDS, and Nexus switches. He has written several books on networking, written multiple Internet Drafts and RFCs, and is responsible for 80 patents and applications. He teaches a course on this book’s topics at Stanford University.
Tommi Salli, Cisco Technical Marketing Engineer, has nearly 20 years of experience with servers and applications at Cisco, Sun, VERITAS, and Nuova Systems.
Roger Andersson, Cisco Manager, Technical Marketing, spent more than 12 years in the CLARiiON® Engineering Division at EMC, and 5 years as Technical Product Manager at VERITAS/Symantec. He is now focused on Cisco UCS system management.
- Streamline data centers with UCS to systematically reduce cost of ownership
- Eliminate unnecessary server components–and their setup, management, power, cooling, and cabling
- Use UCS to scale service delivery, simplify service movement, and improve agility
- Review the latest advances in processor, memory, I/O, and virtualization architectures for data center servers
- Understand the specific technical advantages of UCS
- Integrate UCS 6100 Fabric Interconnect, Cisco UCS 2100 Series Fabric Extenders, UCS 5100 Series Blade Server Enclosures, UCS B-Series Blade Servers, UCS C-Series Rack Servers, and UCS Adapters
- Use Cisco UCS Manager to manage all Cisco UCS components as a single, seamless entity
- Integrate third-party management tools from companies like BMC ®, CA ®, EMC ®, IBM ®, Microsoft ®, and VMware ®
- Practice all this with a copy of Cisco Unified Computing System™ Platform Emulator Lite (UCSPE Lite) on the DVD in the back of the book
This book is part of the Networking Technology Series from Cisco Press®, which offers networking professionals valuable information for constructing efficient networks, understanding new technologies, and building successful careers.
Table of Contents:
Preface xvi
Nomenclature xvi
Chapter 1 Introduction 1
Data Center Challenges 1
Environmental Concerns–“Green” 2
Server Consolidation 3
Virtualization 4
Real Estate Power and Cooling 5
Cabling 5
Disaster Recovery 7
Network Virtualization 8
Desktop Virtualization 9
Cloud Computing 10
Evolution of Data Centers 10
Stand-Alone Servers 11
Scale-Up 12
Scale-Out 12
Scale-Up vs. Scale-Out 12
Rack-Optimized Servers 13
Blade Servers 14
Server Sprawl 15
Virtualization 17
Server Deployment Today 18
Unified Computing System (UCS) 18
Chapter 2 Server Architectures 23
The Processor Evolution 24
Sockets 24
Cores 25
Threads 27
Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology 27
Front-Side Bus 28
Dual Independent Buses 29
Dedicated High-Speed Interconnect 30
Intel® QuickPath Interconnect 31
The Memory Subsystem 33
SRAMs 34
DRAMs 34
SDRAMs 35
DIMMs 36
ECC and Chipkill® 38
Memory Ranks 39
UDIMMs and RDIMMs 40
DDR2 and DDR3 41
The I/O Subsystem 43
PCI Express® 43
Intel Microarchitectures 45
Platform Architecture 46
CPU Architecture 49
Virtualization Support 56
Advanced Reliability 59
Advanced Encryption Standard 60
Trusted Execution Technology 61
Chip Design 61
Chipset Virtualization Support 63
Intel® VT-d for Direct I/O 64
Intel® VT-c for Connectivity 65
VMDirectPath® 68
Chapter 3 UCS Enabling Technologies 69
Unified Fabric 69
10 Gigabit Ethernet 71
Lossless Ethernet 72
Terminology 72
PFC (Priority-Based Flow Control) 72
DCBX: Data Center Bridging eXchange 73
Bandwidth Management 74
FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) 75
Virtualization 81
Server Virtualization 81
SR-IOV 83
The IEEE Standard Effort 83
Port Extenders and Virtualization 84
VNTag 86
Fabric Extenders 88
VN-Link 90
Memory Expansion 93
Speed vs. Capacity 94
Capacity vs. Cost 94
How Much Memory Is Required? 95
NUMA 98
The UCS Approach 98
The UCS Advantage 101
Chapter 4 I/O Adapters 103
Disclaimer 104
The Intel® Approach 104
10 Gigabit Ethernet NIC Solutions 104
Intel® 82598 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Oplin) 105
Support for Multi-Core CPUs 108
Hardware-Assisted Virtualization 109
Advanced Features for Storage over Ethernet 109
Intel® 82599 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Niantic) 109
Improved Performance 112
Hardware-Assisted Virtualization 113
Support for DCB (Data Center Bridging) 114
Storage over Ethernet 115
Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) 115
Time Sync–IEEE 1588 115
Double VLAN 116
Security 116
Intel’s NetEffect™ iWARP Controller (NE020) 116
iWARP and RDMA 117
N2020 Architecture 119
Performance 120
Summary 122
Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) 123
Cisco® Palo 124
Emulex 129
Emulex OneConnect OCm10102-FC 130
FCoE Features 132
Ethernet Features 133
Functional Architecture 133
Deployment in UCS 133
Management of OneConnect UCNAs 134
Benefits of OneConnect UCNAs 136
QLogic® 137
8000 Series–First Generation CNA 137
8100 Series–Second Generation CNA 138
Broadcom® 144
BCM57711 Dual-Port 10GbE Controller 144
Advanced Integration 145
High-Performance Hardware Offload 146
Broadcom and UCS 151
Chapter 5 UCS B-Series Blade Servers 153
Components Overview 153
UCS Manager 154
UCS 6100 Series Fabric Interconnects 154
UCS 2100 Series Fabric Extenders 155
UCS 5100 Series Blade Server Chassis 156
UCS B-Series Blade Servers 157
I/O Adapters 159
Overall Organization 160
UCS C-Series Rack Servers 161
Detailed Description 161
UCS 6100 Series Fabric Interconnects 161
UCS 2104XP Fabric Extender 168
UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis 172
Two-Socket Blade Architecture 172
UCS B200 Two-Socket Server 179
UCS B250 Extended Memory Server 181
Four-Socket Blade Architecture 182
UCS B440 Four-Socket Server 186
Description of Communication Flows 187
The Boot Sequences 187
Fabric Interconnect and UCSM 189
Fabric Extender 190
Baseboard Management Controller 190
Chapter 6 UCS C-Series Rack Servers 193
UCS C200 194
UCS C210 195
UCS C250 199
UCS C460 202
Processors 207
Adapters 212
Hard Disk 213
Management 213
Software 219
Physical Parameters 220
C200 220
C210 220
C250 220
C460 221
Weights 221
Chapter 7 UCS Manager 223
UCSM Overall Architecture 223
System Components 223
UCSM Is a Model-Driven Framework 227
Management Information Model 232
Available Integration Points 233
Interfaces 233
Standard (Cut-Through) Interfaces in a UCS 235
Standard Interfaces in a UCS 237
Native Interfaces in UCS 239
Operating Principles 240
Configuration Policies 242
Operational Policies 243
Global vs. Local Policies 244
Pools 244
Manual Population of Pools 250
Automatic Population of Pools 250
Service Profiles 252
Service Profile Templates 253
Organizations 255
Hierarchical Pool and Policy Resolution 256
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) 257
Locales 258
Users and Authentication 259
UCSM and VMware’s vCenter Integration 259
Integration Architecture 260
Virtualization Support 260
Management Plane Integration 261
Port-Profiles 261
vNIC Template 262
Runtime Policy Resolution for Dynamic VIFs 262
UCS Manager and VM in GUI 264
Basic System Management with UCSM 264
Hardware Management 264
Example of a Chassis Discovery Process 265
Retirement of Hardware 266
Firmware Management 266
Firmware Download Formats 267
Firmware Life Cycle 268
Management Firmware Pack Policy 272
Host Firmware Pack Policy 272
The Stateless Computing Deployment Model 272
The Basic Computing Deployment Model 273
System Setup–Initial Setup 274
The Default Computing Deployment Model 274
The Stateless Computing Deployment Model 275
Requirements for Stateless Service Profiles 280
System Logging 287
Faults and Events 289
Audit Log 291
Backup and Restore of UCS Manager 292
Full State Backup 292
Configuration-Only Backup 292
Backing Up the UCS 292
Restoring a Configuration-Only Backup 293
Integrating with UCS 294
UCS Manager XML API 295
UCS XML API Object Naming 296
Method Categories 296
UCS Platform Emulator 301
Chapter 8 Third-Party Management Software 307
BMC® 307
Just-in-Time Provisioning 308
Embedded System Management 309
Business Service Provisioning 313
Composite Packaging 315
Configuration Management 316
Granular Access Control 318
Compliance 318
Vision for Automated and Efficient IT 319
CA® Management Integration with Cisco UCS 322
Integration Point 323
CA Infrastructure Management Integration 323
Discovery, Fault, and Service Modeling 324
Performance Management and Analytics 327
Automation 328
Change and Configuration Management 329
Service Profile and Application Templates 330
Automated Provisioning 331
Policy-Based Automation 332
User Self-Service 333
Private Cloud Deployments 333
EMC® Ionix Products for Cisco UCS 337
Unified Infrastructure Manager (UIM) 337
Data Center Insight (DCI) 341
IBM Tivoli Software Integration with Cisco UCS 344
Microsoft System Center 346
VMware vCenter 347
Communications 348
Configuration of the DVS 350
Virtual Machine Adapters 350
Resource Checks for DRS, HA, and FT 350
Chapter 9 Planning a UCS Blade Server Installation 353
The Owner of the UCS Domain 353
User Authentication 354
Power and Cooling 354
Physical Sizing and Environmental Requirements 357
Connectivity 359
Choosing the Right Cables 361
Twinax 361
Fiber 361
Bandwidth 362
OS and Application Support 363
Supported Storage Devices and Protocols 363
Planning for Redundancy 364
Power Supply Redundancy 364
I/O Redundancy 365
Ethernet Interfaces Redundancy 365
Fibre Channel Interfaces Redundancy 367
Bibliography 369
PCI Express 369
IEEE 802.3 369
Improvements to Ethernet 369
IEEE 802.1 Activities 369
FCoE 370
TRILL 370
Virtualization 370
Memory Subsystem 371
Intel® Processors 371
Data Centers 372
Green 372
Cloud Computing 372
Glossary 373
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