Management

Cisco Converged Branch Infrastructure

Domain Isolation (Network and IT Administrator)

Provisioning steps:
IT administrator connects
to provisioned IP

Network administrator
provisions hardware IT administrator
configures network

Network administrator IT administrator

provisions IP address installs software

System ready to use

 Integration into UCS Manager/UCS Central?
Cisco UCS
Fabric Interconnect
Unified
Management

 Blade Servers use Fabric

Interconnects
 Standalone Rack Servers Cisco UCS
use the Fabric Extender to Fabric Extender
Connect to UCS Manager
 UCS E-Series does NOT
support Fabric Interconnect
and is not economically
viable to install a Fabric
Extender at the Branch to
C-Series Rack Mount Servers
integrate with UCS Manager B-Series Blade Servers
 Reference
Cisco UCS E-Series Blade Management
Cisco Integrated Management Controller
 Out-of-band management UCS E-Series Server
 Management access hosted on dedicated baseboard management
controller (BMC) chip on each Cisco UCS® E-Series Server CIMC

 Ethernet out-of-band management interface •

 Lights-out management
 Virtual KVM and Virtual media support LAN, WAN,
CLI
console ports, and
 Consistent CLI and GUI look and feel between C and E Series
interfaces

Web GUI
CIMC Connectivity Options
1. Dedicated External Management Port 2. Shared Internal L3 Port

Pro: Pro:
• Easiest topology, doesn’t rely on router • Doesn’t require physical port
Con: Con:
• Requires port on switch • Relies on router, possibly requires subnet

3. Shared Internal L2 Port 4. Shared External Port

Pro: Pro:
• Doesn’t require physical port • Doesn’t rely on router
Con: Con:
• Relies on router, requires switch module • Requires port on switch

*Configuration examples for all options are in the appendix

Cisco UCS E-Series Central Management options
UCS Director 5.4
Cisco Prime Third-Party Tools
IMC Supervisor 2.0

 Centrally manage distributed UCS®E

 Platform hardware inventory  Prime™ DCNM monitors CIMC plug-in for:

distributed UCS E-Series
 Firmware inventory
 MS SCCM
 Platform hardware inventory
 Enhancements to Managing Firmware
 MS SCOM
 Hardware health status  Firmware inventory
 HP OM
 Detailed fault logging  vKVM launch
and history  HP OO
 Detailed fault logging
 vKVM launch and history  Nagios
 Policy-Based Management (Requires
 Prime Infrastructure 3.0
Advanced License)

 Email Alert Enhancements  Cisco® UCS E-Series support to Powershell scripting

be added as part of device pack
 Read-Only User

 Advanced Licensing Option

 IMC Supervisor 2.0 (screenshots from UCS Director,
superset of IMC S)
 Delivered as a virtual machine, runs on VMware

 Eval license pre-installed, for 60 days up to 50 servers

 Centrally manage distributed UCS® E-Series

 Platform hardware inventory

 Firmware inventory

 Managing Firmware

 Hardware health status

 Detailed fault logging and history

 vKVM launch

 Server Configuration through Policy-Based Management

(Requires Advanced License)
 Email Alert Enhancements

 Advanced Licensing Option

 CIMC minimum version 2.3.3

Cisco IMC Supervisor 2.0
Discovering Cisco UCS E-Series
Step 1. Discover servers by creating a discovery profile

 Servers can be discovered using IP range, Subnet mask range, CSV file, IP address list
 You can create multiple discovery device profiles to address different types of addressing deployments
 You can add individual CIMC (server) using Rack Account settings, single server CIMC login details are required
Cisco IMC Supervisor 2.0
Discovering Cisco UCS E-Series
Step 2. Monitor discovery process and wait for the servers to successfully register

 Monitor the discovery progress of servers in the Discovered Devices tab

 Servers that are discovered will return a ‘Success’ message
 Servers that fail to be discovered return an ‘Failed’ message to help with troubleshooting the connectivity issue
Cisco IMC Supervisor 2.0
Discovering Cisco UCS E-Series
Step 3. Import newly discovered servers

 Import discovered servers

 After servers are imported, the system is ready for monitoring and management
 Cisco IMC Supervisor 2.0
Management
Cisco IMC Dashboard - What can you do?

 Inventory and fault status overview Power ON, OFF, Reset, vKVM
launch, Launch GUI
 See each server’s CPU, memory, storage and network settings
 See boot-order config, IP address, server MAC address, and other
parameter details
Cisco IMC Supervisor 2.0
Managing Servers
Cisco IMC Dashboard – Managing server policies and configurations

 Manage server policies centrally and push these  Auto discover a “golden” server policy config
policies to distributed E-series servers
 Managed policies include BIOS settings, boot order,
RAID*, SNMP, vKVM, LDAP, NTP and more…. *Support will be delivered Dec 15’
 Cisco IMC Supervisor 2.0
Firmware Upgrades
Upgrading Firmware - Manage and schedule firmware upgrades

 Download the UCS® E-Series Server huux.x.iso file to a CIFS  Configure the details in IMC Sup to access the HUU
or NFS server share upgrade file from the E-series servers
 The host utility upgrade (HUU) file contains CIMC, NIC, RAID  Each E-series server must have access to the hosting
controller, and BIOS firmware patches server in order to boot from the HUU file
 To upgrade CIMC, BIOS, NIC, RAID firmware use physical  Minimum WAN bandwidth is 5Mbps (40ms, 0.01%
accounts menu, go to the firmware upgrade tab and click on packet loss tested)
“Configure Profile”
Cisco IMC Supervisor 2.0
Firmware Upgrades
Upgrading Firmware (continued)

 Click “Run Upgrade”

 Select upgrade profile and servers to upgrade
 Monitor upgrade progress of each server in IMC Supervisor
Cisco UCS E-series CIMC
Host Image Mapping
Imaging a Server Across the WAN

 IMC Supervisor can’t mount ISOs

 All Cisco UCS® servers support vKVM with virtual CD/DVD
 However, using vKVM with virtual CD/DVD .iso mount takes a
compressed OS iso file and decompresses it, then runs an
active install across the WAN link
 Use Host Image Mapping to upload the compressed OS iso
image directly to the Cisco® UCS E-Series SD flash.
 You don’t over utilize your WAN bandwidth
 You don’t have to be connected to the system vKVM during
the installation process
 The OS iso file is now available locally in case of a disaster
recovery situation
Cisco UCS E-series CIMC
Host Image Mapping
Imaging a Server Across the WAN (Continued)

 Only one type of virtual mount can be active.

Do not have vKVM CD/DVD mount at the same
time as HIM

 Make sure your BIOS boot order is set to boot from

the virtual CD/DVD drive first

 Before a reboot and after a OS is installed, make

sure to unmap the boot image from HIM and that
your install drive (RAID, SD flash) is set as the
second option boot
Use Cases
Cisco Converged Branch Infrastructure
Use Case 1: Video Application, Storage System, and IP Cameras
Video Management
System (10.1.30.10)
Router CPU
APP Interface ucse 1/0/0
service instance 1
OS ethernet
encapsulation untagged
bridge-domain 1
Hypervisor
Storage Application
MGF Fabric APP (10.1.30.20)

OS
Interface ucse 2/0/0
service instance 1
Hypervisor ethernet
encapsulation untagged
bridge-domain 1
C44(config)# interface BDI 1
C44(config-if)# ip address 10.1.30.1
255.255.255.0
 Cisco ISR + UCS-E + EtherSwitch Module
Use Case 2: separate departments converged

Logical Solution Topology

Cisco® Converged Branch Cisco ISR Router
Platform Configuration

ISR Router Motherboard

NIM/HWIC NIM/HWIC NIM/HWIC
Cisco Application Servers
VLAN10
Multi-gigabit fabric Catalyst Switch
VLAN20
VLAN10 VLAN20 VLAN30
VLAN30

Service Module VM1

Service Module (SM-X-ES3-24P) VM2
(UCS-E140S-M2) VM3

VLAN10 VLAN20

VLAN30

User Client Access Devices

Applications Deployed By Verticals
Retail Financial Health Care - Clinics
Domain Controllers Domain Controllers Digital Image Storage
File and Print Services File and Print Services Patient Data Storage
Point of Sale – Retalix (NCR), Micros Virtual Desktops – Citrix, VMWare Billing applications
Video Surveillance Manager Virtual Wireless LAN Controller Virtual Desktops – Citrix, VMWare
WAN Optimization Home grown or customized Banking Virtual WAAS
applications - Teller applications
Database Server – Oracle, MySQL Video Surveillance Manager
Cisco Prime Monitoring application
ECDS – Training VODs
WAN Optimization
Home grown Applications – Monitoring
Applications, accounting application
3rd Party Analytical Software –
Scopics/RetailNext
Customer Success Stories
Customer Success - Finance(Retail Banking)
Commercial bank headquartered in Anchorage, Alaska,
Northrim Bank employs 250 people in 11 branches across 350
miles in southern Alaska.
Challenge :
• Northrim wanted to upgrade the bank's legacy infrastructure to
dramatically increase the speed of service at the bank's teller stations.
• A slow circuit-based network created high latency problems that affected
expensive third-party banking software applications that were very
sensitive to bandwidth delay.
• Several times a day, users encountered sluggish application response or
program errors that required re-login or even rebooting the system, a
frustrating and time-consuming occurrence.

Next Gen Branch Architecture

• VMware Horizon View running on VMware ESXi , Microsoft AD,
DNS,DHCP on the Double Wide UCS E-Series Server Blade
• Plans to add Unified Communications , FXS/FXO voice interfaces and
Security
 Customer Success – Retail
Columbia Sportswear
Columbia Sportswear stores use compact Integrated Services Routers, which
combine routing, switching, compute and voice services.

Challenge :
The company has retail stores and branch offices across North America and is
expanding globally.
• Need to Shrink IT footprint in its stores.
• Central management.
• Stores need to accept payment cards and receive phone calls even in spite of
WAN outage to the HQ network.

Next Gen Store Architecture:

Cisco Store-in-a-box provided the perfect solution for a Smaller IT Footprint while
lowering Costs using the Cisco® 3945 Series Integrated Services Router (ISR),
Cisco UCS E-Series Blade Server and a 48-port integrated switch.

“The POS application is now a virtual machine on the blade server,”

Simplified Management - “We chose the Cisco ISR partly because it’s easy to set
up and manage,” says Spiegel. “For example, technicians no longer have to rack,
stack, and power four separate systems, or install the operating system and
applications on a physical server.
Before, deploying or replacing store infrastructure took days. Now the IT team just
ships the router to the store, and any employee can connect it in minutes.”
Additional Resources
Resources
CCO and CEC pages:
http://www.cisco.com/go/ucse
http://wwwin.cisco.com/c/cec/prods-industry/selling-en/products/routing/ucs-eseries.html

Contacts
Mirko Grabel (TME) - [email protected]
Abhi Karmakar (PM) - [email protected]

“ucse-customer(mailer list) [email protected]” (internal and external!)