Cisco UCS (Unified Computing System)

© 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 1

Unified Computing System Next Generation in Datacenters

Jason Sullivan [email protected]


LAN

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UCS VIC UCS VIC

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Access (IOM)

Single Access Layer

LAN

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Access Access

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Feeding Cows:



A year from now the difference will be (Cisco) UCS (Unified Compute System) is dead and we have had phenomenal market share growth in the networking space…And customers are thrilled and partners are making a lot of money.” – Randy Seidl, VP of the Americas, Enterprise Servers Storage and Networking, HP (April 26, 2010) Randy Seidl



When to break into a new market


#1 or #2 in every technology


Do you want to manage drives or capacity?????




Unified Fabric Technology


Scaling challenges Migration, Optimization,

Scalability,


UCS Mezzanine Adapters Cisco Virtualized Adapter, Emulex, Qlogic, Intel, Broadcom

UCS Blade Servers Industry Standard Architectures

UCS 5108 – Blade Chassis Blade inserts into the Chassis Blades are a logical part of the chassis

UCS Fabric Extender – I/O Module Inserts into Blade Chassis Chassis is logical part of the Fabric Extender

UCS Fabric Interconnect Fabric Extender is a logically part of the Fabric Interconnect

UCS Manager Management resides in the Fabric Interconnect


Nexus 5000 family

UCS 6000 fabric interconnects & fabric extenders

Nexus 2000 family

Unified Ports & Connectivity nx-os

ucs manager built on nx-os


Pair of Fabric Interconnects support 20 chassis One logically management chassis (server, I/O)









© 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 26 Cisco Confidential © 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 26

If Steve Jobs were to explain: UCS Service Profiles


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•  Separate firmware, addresses, and parameter settings from server hardware

•  Separate access port settings from physical ports

•  Physical servers become interchangeable hardware components

•  Easy to move OS & applications across server hardware

BMC Firmware BMC Settings

MAC Address NIC Firmware NIC Settings

HDD Controller F/W Controller settings

Drive Firmware

UUID BIOS Firmware BIOS Settings

Boot Order

WWN Address HBA Firmware HBA Settings

LAN Connectivity

SAN Connectivity OS & Application






•  take hierarchy directory structure knowledge •  abstract all personality from the hardware device

•  combine all the device customizations in a ‘file’ •  centralized the device personality •  give it the freedom and ‘motion’


Service Profiles

Mgmt Address (iLo, Drac, Etc)

MAC Address

Resource Pools

WWN

UUID Server

POLICY

Template

Reference


§  Server Adapter Policy Bios Default Bios Policies Boot Policies Host Firmware Policies IPMI Access Local Disk Config Policy Maintenance Policy Power Control Policy Scrub Policy (Local Disk) Serial over LAN Policy Server Pool Policy Server Pool Qualification Policy Threshold Policies iSCSI Authentication Policy vNIC/vHBA Placement Policy

§ LAN Dynamic vNIC Behavior Dynamic vNIC Connection Policy Flow Control Policy Multicast Policy Network Control Policies QoS Policies Threshold Policies q vNIC Templates

§ SAN § Threshold Policies § Default vHBA Behavior § Fibre Channel Adapter Policies § SAN Connectivity Policies § Storage Connection Policies § Threshold Policies q vHBA Templates


Example




Double+ the Fabric Capacity with the new UCS 6248UP More than doubles the ports in 1RU while reducing latency to almost half

Increase Configura@on Flexibility with Unified Ports Simplifies fabric purchase decision by allowing any port to be Ethernet or FC

Double the Chassis Bandwidth with the new UCS 2208XP With 16x 10GE uplinks provide up to 160Gb of bandwidth per chassis

Increase Bandwidth To Each Blade Using Port-‐Channeling Provides up to 2x 80 Gig shared bandwidth to each blade

Quadruple Blade Bandwidth with the UCS VIC 1280 Adapter Four Smes more I/O per blade; up to 40 Gbps burst per virtual interface

Increased Virtual Interface Scale Per Adapter Higher density of VMs when using VM-‐FEX


Scalability, Agility, Higher Performance

48-Port Fabric Interconnect 6248UP

IO Module 2208XP

Virtualized Adapter 1280

VM-FEX Adoption

1 TB switching throughput, 48 flexible unified Ports

80 Gb network facing and 320 Gb server facing throughput

256 virtual interfaces, Dual 40 Gb to the server, VMware/RedHat hypervisor support for VM-FEX

Offering hypervisor choice for customers


Cisco UCS™ 6200 and 2200 with Unified Ports

Typical Deployments

UCS-FI-6248UP

48 Port Fabric Interconnect

•  Performance for typical deployments, •  1TB throughput, •  48 ports in 1RU, •  Infrastructure agility with Unified Ports.

High End Deployments

UCS-FI-6296UP

96 Port Fabric Interconnect

•  High Application performance , •  2TB through put, •  High workload density 96 ports in 2RU, •  Infrastructure agility with Unified Ports.

16 Port I/O Module

UCS-FI-2204XP

•  80G/ chassis, •  20Gb to the Blade each, 40Gb total per

blade, •  Improved Utilization with Port Channels.

32 Port I/O Module

UCS-IOM-2208XP

•  160G/ chassis, •  40Gb to the Blade each, 80Gb total per

blade, for burst traffic, •  Improved Resiliency , •  Improved Utilization with Port Channels.

UCS Fabric Interconnects

UCS FEX I/O Modules


1 Link 20 Gb per chassis



Flexible per chassis bandwidth allocation



LAN

2 x 2 Link 40 Gbps per Chassis

5 Gbps per server 160 Servers

2 x 4 Link 80 Gbps per Chassis 10 Gbps per server 160 Servers (6296)

2 x 8 Links 160 Gbps per Chassis

20 Gbps per server 96 Servers (6296)

2 x 1 Link 20 Gbps per Chassis 2.5 Gbps per server

160 Servers

§  Wire once for connectivity and bandwidth; §  Need more bandwidth = Just add cables – no

mapping, no zoning required; §  Policy-driven bandwidth allocation;

§  Integrates as a single system into your data center;

§  Mixed blade and rack environments, 160 servers per domain limit;

All Links 10 Gbps FCoE

Appliance

Direct Attach Direct Attach

FC Storage

FCoE Storage

SAN Network

LAN Network


•  Oversubscribe the port licenses for much better costs

•  16 servers per UCS “virtual chassis”

•  Scale to 160 Servers is the target (10 sets of 2232)

•  Future single-wire becomes a cabling and SW effort instead of HW

•  C200M2, C210M2, C250M2, C200M2SFF, C260M2, C460M2

•  Generation 2 IO adapters

UCS 6100 or 6200

Nexus 2232 Nexus 2232

UCS Manager

Data Connection

Mgmt Connection

1 or 10 Gb LOM GLC-T connector

10 Gb CNA



Power Entry Power Entry Fan Module Fan Module

Out of Band Mgmt 10/100/1000

Console

Fabric Interconnect Cluster Connectivity

N + N Redundant FANs N + N Power Supplies

32 x Fixed ports: 1/10 GE or 1/2/4/8 FC Expansion Module (GEM)

Double+ the port density, ½ the latency, unified ports


Dynamic Port Allocation: Lossless Ethernet or Fibre Channel

Use-cases

Native Fibre Channel

§  Flexible LAN & storage convergence based on business needs

§  Service can be adjusted based on the demand for specific traffic

FC Eth

Lossless Ethernet: 1/10GbE, FCoE, iSCSI, NAS

Benefits §  Simplify switch purchase -

remove ports ratio guess work

§  Increase design flexibility

§  Remove specific protocol bandwidth bottlenecks



Individual Ethernets

DCB Ethernet

Individual Storage (iSCSI, NFS, FC)

Blade Management Channels (KVM, USB, CDROM, Adapters)

§  Virtual Switch Ports, Cables, and NIC Ports

§  Mapping of Ethernet and FC Wires over Ethernet

§  Service Level enforcement §  Multiple data types (jumbo,

lossless, FC)

§  Individual link-states §  Fewer Cables

•  Multiple Ethernet traffic co-exist on same cable

§  Fewer adapters needed §  Overall less power §  Interoperates with existing

Models •  Management remains constant

for system admins and LAN/SAN admins

§  Possible to take these links further upstream for aggregation


Latency Up to 40% lower end-to-end latency

Throughput Up to 10% more At 30% lower CPU utilization

Application Performance

Up to 15% more (Database workload)

Software Switch

VM-FEX (Hypervisor Bypass)

Cisco UCS Delivers Enhanced Performance

Others


Multiple personalities one card.


*IEEE 802.1BR pre-standard

FEX Architecture Fabric Extension Architecture §  Consolidates network management §  FEX managed as line card of parent

switch §  Standards based IEEE 802.1QBR

100% approval rating, ratification ~march 2012

IEEE 802.1BR*

Many applications require

multiple interfaces

One Network Parent Switch to Top of Rack

Network Administrator

Legacy

FEX


Legacy

IEEE 802.1BR* Adapter FEX

Host Adapter Fabric Extension §  Consolidates multiple 1Gb interface

into a single 10Gb interface §  Extends network into server §  IEEE 802.1BR

One Network Parent Switch to Adapter


*IEEE 802.1BR pre-standard

IEEE 802.1BR*

Adapter FEX

Many applications require

multiple interfaces

FEX

Legacy


Adapter FEX Legacy

IEEE 802.1BR*

Hypervisor

One Network Virtual Same As Physical

VM-FEX

Virtual Machine Fabric Extension §  Consolidates virtual and physical

network §  Each VM gets a dedicated port on

switch §  IEEE 802.1BR IEEE 802.1BR* IEEE 802.1BR*

VM network managed by

Server administrator


VM-FEX

FEX





Server Chassis

Domain Single

Datacenter

Global Datacenters

UCS Manager






