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 high-availability clustering


A UCS Fabric Interconnects pair can be configured in a high-availability cluster. In cluster configuration, FIs create primary secondary affiliation for control data traffic flow whereas data plane forwards simultaneously on both Fabric Interconnects. This means cluster control traffic flow is controlled only by primary node whereas network data can flow through both FIs under normal conditions. Fabric Interconnects are connected through dedicated Gigabit Ethernet UTP copper ports, which does not participate in the data plane. These interfaces are marked as L1 and L2. L1 of one Fabric Interconnect should be connected to the L1 of the other Fabric Interconnect and similarly L2 should be connected to L2 of the peer. These links carry cluster heartbeat traffic.

High-availability configuration requires three IP addresses. Both Fabric Interconnects require an IP address each, and the third IP address is the cluster IP for the management that floats between...