The document presents an overview of Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS), highlighting its architecture, scalability, and innovative technologies aimed at enhancing data center performance. Key features include unified fabric technology, service profiles for hardware abstraction, and the introduction of new UCS components designed to improve bandwidth and reduce latency. Additionally, the document emphasizes Cisco's strategies for market growth and customer satisfaction in the networking space.

1. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 1
Unified Computing System
Next Generation in Datacenters
Jason Sullivan
Sulli@cisco.com

2. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 2
LAN
Core
MDS
SAN
Aggregation
1 160
UCS VIC UCS VIC
App
OS
App
OS
App
OSApp
OS
App
OS
App
OS
App
OS
App
OS
App
OSApp
OS
App
OS
App
OS
Access (IOM)
Single Access Layer
LAN
Core
MDS
SAN
Aggregation
1 12
Access Access
App
OS
App
OS
App
OS
App
OS
App
OS
App
OS

3. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 3

4. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 4
Feeding Cows:

5. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 5

6. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 6
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

7. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 7

8. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 8
When to break into a new market

9. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 9
#1 or #2 in every technology

10. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 10
Do you want to manage drives or capacity?????

11. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 11

12. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 12

13. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 13
Unified Fabric Technology

14. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 14
Scaling challenges Migration,
Optimization,
Scalability,

15. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 15
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

16. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 16
Nexus 5000 family
UCS 6000 fabric interconnects & fabric extenders
Nexus 2000 family
Unified Ports & Connectivity
nx-os
ucs manager
built on nx-os

17. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 17
Pair of Fabric Interconnects support 20 chassis
One logically management chassis (server, I/O)

18. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 18

19. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 19

20. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 20

21. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 21

22. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 22

23. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 23

24. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 24

25. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 25

26. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 26Cisco Confidential© 2010 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 26
If Steve Jobs were to explain:
UCS Service Profiles

27. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 27
HardwareState
abstractedfromhardware
State
• 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

28. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 28

29. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 29

30. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 30

31. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 31

32. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 32
• 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’

33. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 33
Service Profiles
Mgmt
Address
(iLo,
Drac,
Etc)
MAC
Address
Resource
Pools
WWN
UUID
Server
POLICY
Template
Reference

34. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 34
§ 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

35. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 35
Example

36. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 36

37. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 37

38. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 38
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

39. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 39
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

40. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 40
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

41. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 41
1 Link
20 Gb per chassis
4 Link
80 Gb per chassis
8 Link
160 Gb per chassis
Flexible per chassis bandwidth allocation
2 Link
40 Gb per chassis

42. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 42
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

43. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 43
• 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

44. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 44

45. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 45
Power Entry Power EntryFan 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

46. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 46
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

47. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 47

48. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 48
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

49. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 49
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

50. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 50
Multiple personalities one card.

51. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 51
*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

52. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 52
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
Network
Administrator
*IEEE 802.1BR pre-standard
IEEE 802.1BR*
Adapter FEX
Many applications
require
multiple interfaces
FEX
Legacy

53. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 53
Adapter FEXLegacy
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 802.1BRIEEE 802.1BR*IEEE 802.1BR*
VM network
managed by
Server
administrator
Network
Administrator
VM-FEX
FEX

54. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 54

55. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 55

56. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 56

57. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 57
Server
Chassis
Domain
Single
Datacenter
Global
Datacenters
UCS Manager

58. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 58

59. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 59

60. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 60

61. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 61

62. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 62

63. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 63

64. © 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Confidential 64