Cisco Cisco UCS B200 M3 Blade Server Weißbuch
A Principled Technologies test report 2
Cisco UCS blades deploy 77 percent faster with 67 percent
fewer steps than HP blades
fewer steps than HP blades
FASTER + SIMPLER = BETTER
To quantify the time on task and steps required to deploy blade servers, we first
deployed a single blade, documenting the steps and time. We then deployed two blade
servers concurrently.
To demonstrate the deployment benefits of the Cisco UCS solution, we added a
Cisco UCS B200 M3 Blade Servers to a Cisco UCS 5108 Blade Server Chassis. We took full
advantage of Cisco UCS automated process using Service Profiles that are part of UCS
Manager. UCS Manager is included with, and comes embedded in the UCS Fabric
Interconnects. For the second step, we then added two more of these blade servers to
the same chassis.
We carried out these same tasks with the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8 Server, first
adding a single blade and then two additional blades to the HP BladeSystem c7000
Enclosure, which we configured with two HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric 10 Gb/24-port
modules. For both HP scenarios, we created a new server profile from a template for
the HP ProLiant blade(s) using the HP Virtual Connect Manager. Because the HP solution
is much less automated than the Cisco UCS solution, we had to manually perform a
number of additional configuration steps in both scenarios before the server was ready
for OS installation.
When we instantiated the Cisco UCS Service Profile, UCS Manager automatically
assigned all policies, firmware, and server identity settings required to deploy the new
blades seamlessly into the existing environment. Using the UCS service profile, we were
also able to tweak many individual server settings; doing so was optional, but
convenient. You can view a partial list of the 127+ available server identity settings in
In contrast, when we added an HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8 Server to an HP
BladeSystem c7000 Enclosure, simply creating a Virtual Connect server profile did not
fully prepare the new blade for deployment. We also needed to manually adjust BIOS
settings and set up Enclosure Firmware Management with an ISO image of the HP
Service Pack for ProLiant for firmware updates. The additional manual steps added to
the time to deploy, and the lack of some repeatable automated processes increased the
potential for human error.
Figure 1 highlights the reduction in steps that result from the Cisco UCS
solution’s approach to blade configuration, in both the one- and two-blade scenarios.