The Cisco UCS Manager enables you to manage general and complex server deployments. For example, you can manage a general deployment with a pair of fabric interconnects, which is the redundant server access layer that you get with the first chassis that can scale up to 20 chassis and up to 160 physical servers. This can be a combination of blades and rack-mount servers to support the workload in your environment. As you add more servers, you can continue to perform server provisioning, device discovery, inventory, configuration, diagnostics, monitoring, fault detection, and auditing.

Beginning with release 4.0(2a), the Cisco UCS Manager extends support for all existing features on the following Cisco UCS hardware unless specifically noted:

Cisco UCS C480 M5 ML Server

Cisco UCS VIC 1495

Cisco UCS VIC 1497

Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect

Cisco UCS VIC 1455

Cisco UCS VIC 1457

Cisco UCS C125 M5 Server

By default, the Cisco UCS 6454 Fabric Interconnect, the Cisco UCS 6332 FIs, the Cisco UCS Mini 6324 FIs, and the UCS 6200 Series FIs include centralized management. You can manage the Cisco UCS blade servers and rack-mount servers that are in the same domain from one console. You can also manage the Cisco UCS Mini from the Cisco UCS Manager.

To ensure optimum server performance, you can configure the amount of power that you allocate to servers. You can also set the server boot policy, the location from which the server boots, and the order in which the boot devices are invoked. You can create service profiles for the Cisco UCS B-Series blade servers and the Cisco UCS Mini to assign to servers. Service profiles enable you to assign BIOS settings, security settings, the number of vNICs and vHBAs, and anything else that you want to apply to a server. Initial configuration of fabric interconnects is performed using the console connection. It is essential to maintain symmetric Cisco UCS Manager versions between the fabric interconnects in a domain.

Follow these steps to perform the initial configuration for the Cisco UCS Manager:

Step 1. Power on the fabric interconnect. You see the power-on self-test messages as the fabric interconnect boots.

Step 2. If the system obtains a lease IPv4 or IPv6 address, go to step 6; otherwise, continue to the next step.

Step 3. Connect to the console port.

Step 4. At the installation method prompt, enter GUI.

Step 5. If the system cannot access a DHCP server, you are prompted to enter the following information:

IPv4 or IPv6 address for the management port on the fabric interconnect

IPv4 subnet mask or IPv6 prefix for the management port on the fabric interconnect

IPv4 or IPv6 address for the default gateway assigned to the fabric interconnect

Note

In a cluster configuration, both fabric interconnects must be assigned the same management interface address type during setup.

Step 6. Copy the web link from the prompt into a web browser and go to the Cisco UCS Manager GUI launch page.

Step 7. On the Cisco UCS Manager GUI launch page, select Express Setup.

Step 8. On the Express Setup page, select Initial Setup and click Submit.

Step 9. In the Cluster and Fabric Setup area, do the following: