Cisco Cisco UCS Director 4.0 White Paper

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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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your organizational structure. User authentication and authorization information can 
be imported from the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) service. 
Tasks and workflows automate the configuration of all hardware infrastructure layers, 
including computing, networking, and storage (Figure 1). You can provision bare-
metal servers, add virtualization layers, and add your chosen operating systems. 
You can also provision virtual and object-based storage configurations. Cisco UCS 
Director lets you test workflows, and it is designed so that workflows are completed 
successfully or not at all. The drag-and-drop workflow designer tool eliminates the 
need for service engagements or the need to bring together multiproduct solutions 
or third-party adapters.
Extensive Automation Capabilities
After workflows are created by your subject-matter experts, the policies 
implemented with these workflows automate the entire application lifecycle, 
including resource allocation, provisioning, monitoring, and management. This 
automation greatly reduces the amount of time required before you start gaining 
value from your deployments.
Cisco UCS Director maintains a faithful representation of every component and 
its relationship to other components. At installation, Cisco UCS Director conducts 
a discovery of physical and logical infrastructure components that is updated 
every 15 minutes and recorded into a model stored on a virtual appliance. The 
customer-configurable discovery process records changes, moves, and additions 
of new infrastructure. Any workflow that you can perform on the physical or virtual 
infrastructure can be first tested against the model to validate the configuration, 
helping eliminate potential disruption from human error. When processes are 
established, consistency and compliance is essentially assured, and configuration 
drift is nonexistent. 
Storage
Administrator
Server
Administrator
Network
Administrator
2
Physical and Virtual
Infrastructure Is
Provisioned
Policies Are Used to
Create Template
3
System Is Ready for Use
4
Subject-Matter Experts
Define Policies
1
Server Policy
Storage Policy
Network Policy
Virtualization Policy
Application Policy
Virtual
Infrastructure
Administrator
Network 
Configuration
Storage
Configuration
Virtual
Infrastructure 
Configuration
Server Name
UUID, MAC Address, 
WWN, Boot Infor-
mation, LAN and SAN
Configuration, and
Firmware Policy
Server Name
UUID, MAC Address, 
WWN, Boot Infor-
mation, LAN and SAN 
Configuration,
Firmware Policy,
SAN Zoning,
Create and 
MAP LUN
Figure 1. Cisco UCS Director Delivers Comprehensive Orchestration Capabilities