The Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) is the industry’s first converged data center platform. The Cisco UCS delivers smart, programmable infrastructure that simplifies and speeds enterprise-class applications and service deployment in bare-metal, virtualized, and cloud-computing environments.

The Cisco UCS is an integrated computing infrastructure with intent-based management to automate and accelerate deployment of all applications, including virtualization and cloud computing, scale-out and bare-metal workloads, and in-memory analytics, in addition to edge computing that supports remote and branch locations and massive amounts of data from the Internet of Things (IoT).

This chapter covers the following key topics:

Cisco UCS Architecture: This section provides an overview of UCS B-Series, C-Series, and Fabric Interconnect (FI) architecture and connectivity.

Cisco UCS Initial Setup and Management: This section covers UCS B-Series and C-Series initial setup and configuration.

Cisco UCS Network Management: This section discusses UCS LAN management, including VLANs, pools, polices, quality of service (QoS), and templates.

Cisco UCS Storage: This section discusses UCS SAN management, including SAN connectivity (iSCSI, Fibre Channel, FCoE), VSANs, WWN pools, and zoning.

“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz

The “Do I Know This Already?” quiz enables you to assess whether you should read this entire chapter thoroughly or jump to the “Exam Preparation Tasks” section. If you are in doubt about your answers to these questions or your own assessment of your knowledge of the topics, read the entire chapter. Table 12-1 lists the major headings in this chapter and their corresponding “Do I Know This Already?” quiz questions. You can find the answers in Appendix A, “Answers to the ‘Do I Know This Already?’ Quizzes.”

Table 12-1 “Do I Know This Already?” Section-to-Question Mapping

Caution

The goal of self-assessment is to gauge your mastery of the topics in this chapter. If you do not know the answer to a question or are only partially sure of the answer, you should mark that question as wrong for purposes of the self-assessment. Giving yourself credit for an answer you correctly guess skews your self-assessment results and might provide you with a false sense of security.