Book Image

Implementing Cisco UCS Solutions - Second Edition

By : Anuj Modi, Prasenjit Sarkar
Book Image

Implementing Cisco UCS Solutions - Second Edition

By: Anuj Modi, Prasenjit Sarkar

Overview of this book

Cisco Unified Computer System (UCS) is a powerful solution for modern data centers and is responsible for increasing efficiency and reducing costs. This hands-on guide will take you through deployment in Cisco UCS. Using real-world examples of configuring and deploying Cisco UCS components, we’ll prepare you for the practical deployments of Cisco UCS data center solutions. If you want to develop and enhance your hands-on skills with Cisco UCS solutions, this book is certainly for you. We start by showing you the Cisco UCS equipment options then introduce Cisco UCS Emulator so you can learn and practice deploying Cisco UCS components. We’ll also introduce you to all the areas of UCS solutions through practical configuration examples. Moving on, you’ll explore the Cisco UCS Manager, which is the centralized management interface for Cisco UCS. Once you get to know UCS Manager, you’ll dive deeper into configuring LAN, SAN, identity pools, resource pools, and service profiles for the servers. You’ll also get hands-on with administration topics including backup, restore, user’s roles, and high availability cluster configuration. Finally, you will learn about virtualized networking, third-party integration tools, and testing failure scenarios. By the end of this book, you’ll know everything you need to know to rapidly grow Cisco UCS deployments in the real world.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Authors
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Configuring northbound connectivity to upstream switches


Cisco recommends using Nexus 5k/7k/9k switches for Fabric Interconnect northbound network connectivity because of the features such as virtual PortChannel (vPC). It is, however, possible to connect Fabric Interconnect to other Ethernet switches as well, including Cisco Catalyst series switches and even switches from Cisco competitors, as long as those switches use the industry standard protocols.

The majority of UCS field deployments are designed using Nexus 5k/7k switches. Therefore, we will explain the upstream configuration using Cisco Nexus 5k switches. However, with the introduction of the Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), Cisco supports UCS connectivity with the latest spin/leaf architecture with Nexus 9k and provides tight integration with the Application Programming Interface Controller (APIC).

Configuring upstream switches

Northbound connectivity from Fabric Interconnect can be achieved through a standard uplink, a port...