Cisco Cisco UCS C250 M1 Extended-Memory Rack-Mount Server Libro blanco

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StorMagic SvSAN with Cisco UCS Mini Architecture

The architecture described in this deployment guide is simple. It provides a highly available environment using a combination of 
features from StorMagic SvSAN, VMware vSphere, and Cisco UCS Mini and using the local storage available on Cisco UCS B200 
M4 Blade Servers.

Computing

This deployment uses the Cisco UCS Mini chassis with four Cisco UCS B200 M4 Blade Servers. Each blade server uses the 
Intel Xeon processor E5-2620 v3, 128 GB of RAM, two 32-GB Cisco FlexFlash Secure Digital (SD) cards, two 1.2-terabyte (TB) 
10,000-rpm SAS drives, and the Cisco UCS VIC 1340 (Figure 2).

Figure 2.  Physical Connectivity Diagram

4x10 SFP+
• Unified Port (Eth/FC/FCoE)
• Uplink Port (Eth/FC/FCoE)
• Server Port – Direct-attached

C-Series, no FEX support

• Appliance Port
• FC/FCoE Storage Port
• Supports 1/10G Eth,

2/4/8G FC

• 1/100/1000 Mbps

• Firmware Upgrades

Fabric Interconnect

6324

1GE Mgmt.

Network

1GE Mgmt.

Network

1

10GE Infra

Network

10GE Infra

Network

UCS Mini Chassis

1X40G QSFP+
• Ethernet/FCoE
• Licensed Server Port

– Direct attached
  C-Series no FEX

• Appliance Port
• FCoE Storage 

Port

LAN

Networking

The management ports on both the Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnects housed inside the Cisco UCS Mini chassis are 
connected to the management network. In addition, at least one 1- or 10-Gbps port from each side of the fabric is used as an 
uplink port to connect to the LAN through a pair of upstream switches, as shown in Figure 2. In this example, five virtual NICs 
(vNICs) are created in the service profile associated with the Cisco UCS B200 M4 servers and will be used to configure the 
VMware ESXi networking as explained here.

SvSAN uses three types of logical interfaces for different traffic types:

•  Management: Used to access the web GUI, plug-in, or CLI; at least one must be present

•  Small Computer System Interface over IP (iSCSI): Listens for incoming connection requests from iSCSI initiators; at least 

one must be present

•  Mirror: Used by VSA nodes to communicate data and metadata associated with mirrored volumes

StorMagic recommends use of four or more physical NICs between hosts and SvSAN VSAs to provide the recommended level of 
redundancy and load balancing. 

•  vSwitch0 connects directly to the customer’s production network, and it is assumed that this is where production virtual 

machines will reside. The VSA also has an interface on vSwitch0 for management, administration, and monitoring purposes 
only. 

•  vSwitch1 is an isolated network, segregated by either VLAN or IP address. This network should not be used for any other 

traffic apart from VSA iSCSI and mirror traffic, prevent contention and provide the best storage throughput.