Book Image

Implementing Cisco UCS Solutions

Book Image

Implementing Cisco UCS Solutions

Overview of this book

Cisco Unified Computing System(UCS) provides unique features for the contemporary data centres. Cisco UCS is a unified solution that consolidates computing, network and storage connectivity components along-with centralized management. Cisco UCS reduces TCO and improves scalability and flexibility. Stateless computing blade server's design simplifies the troubleshooting, and Cisco-patented extended memory technology provides higher virtualized servers consolidation results. A hands-on guide to take you through deployment in Cisco UCS. With real-world examples for configuring and deploying Cisco UCS components, this book will prepare you for the practical deployments of Cisco UCS data centre solutions. If you want to learn and enhance your hands-on skills with Cisco UCS solutions, this book is certainly for you. Starting with the description of Cisco UCS equipment options, this hands-on guide then introduces Cisco UCS Emulator which is an excellent resource to practically learn Cisco UCS components' deployment. You will also be introduced to all areas of UCS solutions with practical configuration examples. You will also discover the Cisco UCS Manager, which is the centralized management interface for Cisco UCS. Once you get to know UCS Manager, the book dives deeper into configuring LAN, SAN, identity pools, resource pools, and service profiles for the servers. The book also presents other administration topics including Backup, Restore, user's roles, and high availability cluster configuration. Finally, you will learn about virtualized networking, 3rd party integration tools and testing failure scenarios. You will learn everything you need to know for the rapidly growing Cisco UCS deployments in the real-world.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Implementing Cisco UCS Solutions
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Configuring VSAN and zoning


Storage connectivity not only requires the configuration of connectivity protocols such as FC, FCoE, and iSCSI, but in case of FC and FCoE SAN connectivity, it is also required to configure zoning to allow access to servers/hypervisors to the SAN LUNs. When using Cisco switches for SAN connectivity, it is also recommended to configure VSANs along with proper zoning. We will now look into zoning and VSANs.

Learning about zoning

Zoning is a conventional SAN security mechanism which is used to restrict storage access between anticipated targets (typically SANs) and initiators (typically servers). There are two main methods to configure zoning: soft zoning and hard zoning. Hard zoning is more secure compared to soft zoning and is the preferred zoning method. SAN Fabric Switches from various vendors might support different zoning configurations, so it is always recommended to consult your SAN admin for proper zoning configuration.

In the previous UCS versions including...