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 VSANs and zoning


Storage connectivity not only requires the configuration of connectivity protocols such as FC, FCoE, and iSCSI, but in the 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...