Cisco Cisco UCS B440 M1 High-Performance Blade Server Weißbuch
© 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
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intuitive graphical user interface (GUI), a command-line interface (CLI), and a robust application programming
interface (API) to manage all system configuration and operations. The Cisco UCS Manager helps increase IT staff
productivity, enabling storage, network, and server administrators to collaborate on defining service profiles for
applications. Service profiles are logical representations of desired physical configurations and infrastructure
policies. They help automate provisioning and increase business agility, allowing data center managers to
provision resources in minutes instead of days.
Working as a single, cohesive system, these components unify technology in the data center. They represent a
radical simplification in comparison to traditional systems, helping simplify data center operations while reducing
power and cooling requirements. The system amplifies IT agility for improved business outcomes. The Cisco
Unified Computing System components illustrated in Figure 1 include, from left to right, fabric interconnects, blade
server chassis, blade servers, and in the foreground, fabric extenders and network adapters.
Figure 1. Cisco Unified Computing System
2.2 Cisco Unified Computing System Components
2.2.1 Cisco UCS Manager
Cisco UCS Manager serves as an embedded device manager for all Cisco Unified Computing System
components. The Cisco UCS Manager creates a unified management domain that serves as the central nervous
system of the Cisco Unified Computing System. The Cisco UCS Manager takes the place of the system
management tools associated with a traditional computing architecture by integrating computing, networking, and
virtualization resources into one cohesive system. Cisco UCS Manager implements policy-based management
using service profiles to help automate provisioning and increase agility.
In managing the services within Cisco UCS, configuration details are applied to service profiles, instead of many
tedious touches of a physical server and the associated LAN, SAN, and management networks. The service profile
includes all the firmware, firmware settings, and BIOS settings. For example, definition of server connectivity,
configuration, and identity.This model allows for rapid service instantiation, cloning, growth, shrink, retirement, and
re-use in a highly automated fashion. One capability is for a project-by-project instantiation of compute resources
with integrated governance, and a life-cycle that returns the physical compute hardware to a pool for other
business unit usage. If the project requires a re-build of a previous infrastructure, the stateless nature of Cisco UCS
provides for a rapid standup of the prior environment (assuming a SAN boot, or physical disk storage scenario).
With other vendors, there is a loosely coupled system of packages having many meshed and customized
interconnections. When any of these items is versioned, the effects of updating are not isolated to a given
component—they impact other components within a solution. Cisco UCS, with its single source of information and