Cisco UCS Unified Fabric now 100Gb end-to-end for X-Series

Since 2009, Cisco UCS Unified Fabric has been one of the key differentiators between UCS servers and the rest of the industry. Unified Fabric is the combination of data, storage, and management traffic on a single cable. This greatly simplifies your server and networking infrastructure and provides both CapEx (adapters, cables, switches) and OpEx (warranty, power & cooling, management) savings. Cisco’s unified fabric is a single cable that connects the UCS X-Series chassis to the fabric Interconnects

Read More: 700-150: Introduction to Cisco Sales (ICS)

In a redundant deployment, you reduce the number of cables and switches 5:2 – two switches/cables for data and storage and one for management.

12+ years ago, Cisco UCS first shipped with 10Gb when the rest of the industry’s standard was 1Gb. In March, we announced we were leapfrogging the industry again by making 100Gb standard for UCS X-Series vs. 25Gb for other vendors.

The Cisco UCS X-Series Unified Fabric consists of three components: VICs, IFMs, and 6500 Series Fabric Interconnects.

Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card (VIC) 15000 Series

VICs (Virtual Interface Cards) are more than a NIC or an ordinary converged network adapter (CNA – Ethernet + storage). Other vendors offer NICs or CNAs, but none offer the full functionality of a VIC. The two key differentiators are the inclusion of management traffic and the number of virtual adapter interfaces.

Cisco UCS servers are configured via policies and templates. The VIC receives the configuration from Cisco Intersight and is pushed to the server. This removes the need for a server management network.

Virtual adapter interfaces come in two flavors – data and storage. These virtual adapter interfaces extend the network fabric directly to both servers and virtual machines via end-to-end network virtualization so that a single connectivity mechanism can be used to connect both physical and virtual servers with the same level of visibility and control. Each can have their own quality service, guaranteeing bandwidth and QoS thus providing optimal user experience. Cisco VICs supports more virtual adapter interfaces than any other NIC or CNA giving you the ability to tune and shape traffic to every application.

I’ll leave it to the data sheet to call out all the hardware features like low latency and kernel bypass for performance optimizations among others.

Cisco UCS VIC 15231 mLOM, 2×100 Gbps

Cisco UCS 9108 100G Intelligent Fabric Module (IFM)

An IFM is the connection point between the X9508 Chassis (and servers) and the Fabric Interconnect – either the 6400 or 6500 series. Our 2nd gen IFM ups the speed from 25Gb to 100Gb. Like its predecessor, each IFM has eight ports, and they are always deployed in redundant pairs. The amount of bandwidth is determined by the number of ports used. If you are looking to future proof but don’t need the full 800Gb per IFM, you just use fewer ports. As your needs increase, just use the remaining ports. 

Cisco UCS 9108 100G Intelligent Fabric Module

Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect

The 36 port Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect supports Cisco UCS X-Series, UCS B-Series, and UCS C-Series servers. It offers line-rate, low-latency, lossless 1/10/25/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, NVMe over Fabric (NVMe/FC, NVMe/TCP, NVMe over ROCEv2), and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) functions. The total switching capacity is 7.42 Tbps.

Of the 36 ports, the FI has 32 40/100-Gb Ethernet and 4 unified ports that support 40/100-Gb Ethernet ports or 16 Fibre Channel ports after breakout at 8/16/32-Gb FC speeds. The switch also supports two ports at 1-Gb speed using QSA, and all 36 ports can breakout for 10- or 25-Gb Ethernet connectivity and support FCoE.

Cisco UCS 6536 Fabric Interconnect

Putting Unified Fabric all together

The adage is a picture is worth 1,000 words. To save you reading 1k words, here is a diagram showing Cisco Unified Fabric and the entire UCS portfolio.

Click on me to make full size!

What can 5th Gen Unified Fabric do for you?

Unified Fabric will simplify your infrastructure and save you money. The architecture means there are few components to procure, install, power, and maintain. Less money spent upfront and less time and money spent over their life. This will increase your business agility and allow you to focus on adding value to your business vs. keeping the lights on.

Then add in the performance benefits that 100Gb line rate, low latency end-to-end solution provides for your applications and user experience. You will have increased the reliability, efficiency, and scalability of the network.

Source: cisco.com

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Cisco UCS and Cisco MDS

Better together

At a concert, few years ago, the director spoke to the audience and said something that resonated in my mind for long time. His words went like this: the value of the ensemble is greater than the sum of the value of the individual musicians. The meaning was clear. He wanted to illustrate the significance of playing together, as an orchestra, rather than a group of individual sound musicians.

The same concept comes to my mind when I think of the combination of Cisco UCS, and Cisco MDS 9000 storage networking. You can use them independently, or connected to other products. But the combination of Cisco UCS and Cisco MDS delivers unique benefits that exceed the sum of the individual products. The pseudo-mathematical formula 1+1=3 can well express the concept. Alternatively, another way to describe it is the prosaic expression “better together”.

Cisco UCS + Cisco MDS synergy: 1+1=3

The joint adoption of Cisco UCS compute systems and Cisco MDS 9000 Series of storage networking switches provides a significant benefit to the enterprise. Over the years, I have collected information from the many customer opportunities I have been directly involved in. When reflecting on that, I identified a list of synergies and benefits coming from the joint adoption of Cisco UCS with Cisco MDS 9000. I also discovered those benefits can be grouped into three main categories: advanced design options, easier management and better support.

Key advantages

◉ Multiprotocol flexibility allows organizations to deploy Fibre Channel and FCIP on a single chassis and more easily benefit from the advantages of both technologies. Support for SCSI, NVMe and FICON protocols is also available. Moreover, you have the advantage to be fully covered under a Cisco verified solution.

◉ VSANs can logically segregate storage traffic and create multi-tenancy, and they are supported in the Fibre Channel fabric and within Cisco UCS. This capability is only available from Cisco.

◉ VSAN trunking allows the use of the same link for carrying traffic from multiple VSANs, reducing the need for multiple links while segregating traffic. This is a unique Cisco capability.

◉ F-port PortChannels provide link aggregation of multiple Cisco UCS to Cisco MDS 9000 physical links into a single logical channel, as well as fault tolerance and uniform traffic load balancing. This capability is only available from Cisco.

◉ NVMe/FC can boost application performance by reducing latency and minimizing CPU usage for data transfer activities. You also have the advantage to be fully covered under a Cisco verified solution.

◉ Common Operating System and management tools ease network implementation, maintenance, and troubleshooting by relying on the same skill set across SAN, LAN, and computing environments. This is a unique Cisco capability.

◉ Cisco UCS visibility from Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller allows a single view for all networking elements in a Cisco data center architecture, including Cisco UCS fabric interconnects and server vNICs and vHBAs. This capability is only available from Cisco.

◉ Cisco Intersight integration covering both compute and storage networking provides lifecycle management of Cisco UCS servers, as well as Cisco Nexus 9000 and Cisco MDS 9000 products. This is a unique Cisco capability.

◉ Cisco Intersight Cloud Orchestrator can be used to automate different technology domains with an easy-to-use and low-code workflow designer, enabling IT operations teams to move at the speed of the business. This is a unique Cisco capability.

◉ Smart Zoning reduces the need to implement and maintain large zone databases and eases management and implementation tasks. You also have the advantage to be fully covered under a Cisco verified solution.

◉ Assured interoperability and feature compatibility, avoiding tedious compatibility matrix verification and deployment delays. This capability is only available from Cisco.

◉ Organizations can interact with a single vendor when troubleshooting problems across computing and networking environments. This is a unique Cisco capability.

◉ A variety of support models are available across data center solutions to efficiently manage and coordinate partners to resolve problems. This capability is only available from Cisco.

Key business benefits

When we consider the business implications of the advantages listed above, we can discover that Cisco UCS plus Cisco MDS 9000 integrated solution delivers:

◉ Operational savings from hassle-free firmware upgrades, solution automation with Cisco Intersight and operational simplification with smart zoning

◉ Increased uptime with Cisco support and a single pane of glass for unified visibility, combined with deep traffic analysis and proactive troubleshooting

◉ Application performance improvements from uniform traffic load balancing on uplinks and NVMe/FC end-to-end support, all combined with congestion prevention with MDS 9000 DIRL software.

In short, the Cisco MDS 9000 Series provides superior performance, high availability, and intelligent storage networking for Cisco UCS environments in small, medium and large organizations.

Source: cisco.com

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Cisco UCS Automation – Part 2: A Step-by-Step Guide to Connecting and Disconnecting using UCS PowerTool

Let’s Connect

What’s the hardest part about meeting someone new or going to another country or just interacting with something you are unfamiliar with? Typically, it’s how to start the interaction, how do you connect, stay connected, and reconnect. Sometimes the relationship or the place just doesn’t work out and then you have to leave or disconnect.

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