Cisco Cisco UCS Director 4.0 White Paper
Cisco UCS Director Delivers Infrastructure as a Service
December 2015
© 2015 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public information.
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delivers exactly this capability. Products such as HPE OneView, claim to deliver IaaS
but fall short in the following ways:
but fall short in the following ways:
• Limited automation capabilities with no self-service
• Limited support or guidance for specific application stacks
• Support for only one hardware vendor (HPE) when organizations want to
• Limited support or guidance for specific application stacks
• Support for only one hardware vendor (HPE) when organizations want to
automate the entire data center
• Limited integration with operations tools even within all HPE products
As this document demonstrates, Cisco UCS Director is much better suited than
OneView to help you deliver IaaS to your clients.
OneView to help you deliver IaaS to your clients.
Cisco UCS Director Delivers IaaS
Cisco UCS Director was designed for IaaS. It automates IT processes, providing
a single point for self-service from which you can automate and orchestrate your
IT infrastructure, including computing, networking, and storage, with physical and
virtual resources treated equally.
a single point for self-service from which you can automate and orchestrate your
IT infrastructure, including computing, networking, and storage, with physical and
virtual resources treated equally.
HPE OneView is an excellent tool for deploying many of HPE’s hardware solutions.
However, OneView is really an infrastructure management tool, not an IaaS delivery
system, despite the marketing claims. Table 1 summarizes some of the critical IaaS
capabilities of Cisco UCS Director and the limitations of OneView.
However, OneView is really an infrastructure management tool, not an IaaS delivery
system, despite the marketing claims. Table 1 summarizes some of the critical IaaS
capabilities of Cisco UCS Director and the limitations of OneView.
HPE has announced the availability of HPE Synergy in the second quarter 2016.
OneView is embedded in the Synergy Composer appliance. HPE has described
Synergy as a “private bare-metal cloud.” Although this description sounds
appealing, Synergy Composer supports only the HPE hardware managed under the
domains in the Synergy platform. If you are already using OneView today to manage
your HPE BladeSystem, ProLiant DL servers, or ConvergedSystem products, you
will have to license Synergy Composer separately. In addition, Synergy Composer
will not work in conjunction with your existing OneView software, because there is
no way to federate the separate islands of management. Synergy Composer and
OneView do not provide the essential IaaS capabilities that Cisco UCS Director
provides with one license.
OneView is embedded in the Synergy Composer appliance. HPE has described
Synergy as a “private bare-metal cloud.” Although this description sounds
appealing, Synergy Composer supports only the HPE hardware managed under the
domains in the Synergy platform. If you are already using OneView today to manage
your HPE BladeSystem, ProLiant DL servers, or ConvergedSystem products, you
will have to license Synergy Composer separately. In addition, Synergy Composer
will not work in conjunction with your existing OneView software, because there is
no way to federate the separate islands of management. Synergy Composer and
OneView do not provide the essential IaaS capabilities that Cisco UCS Director
provides with one license.
Orchestration and Automation
Cisco UCS Director offers stronger orchestration and automation capabilities than
OneView.
OneView.
Broad Orchestration Capabilities
Cisco UCS Director comes with a large task library with more than 1500 automated
tasks and more than 100 preconfigured workflows. The task library provides low-
level, or atomic, actions that you can quickly assemble to create higher-level
workflows that deploy, configure, and manage your infrastructure. You can use
workflows immediately or publish them in an infrastructure catalog to be used by
system administrators or clients for on-demand infrastructure provisioning. Specific
workflows can be assigned to an entire organization or to specific groups based on
tasks and more than 100 preconfigured workflows. The task library provides low-
level, or atomic, actions that you can quickly assemble to create higher-level
workflows that deploy, configure, and manage your infrastructure. You can use
workflows immediately or publish them in an infrastructure catalog to be used by
system administrators or clients for on-demand infrastructure provisioning. Specific
workflows can be assigned to an entire organization or to specific groups based on