The Cisco UCS Manager can classify servers into resource pools based on criteria including physical attributes (such as processor, memory, and disk capacity) and location (for example, blade chassis slot). Server pools can help automate configuration by identifying servers that can be configured to assume a particular role (such as web server or database server) and automatically configuring them when they are added to a pool.

Resource pools are collections of logical resources that can be accessed when configuring a server. These resources include universally unique IDs (UUIDs), MAC addresses, and WWNs.

The Cisco UCS platform utilizes a dynamic identity instead of hardware burned-in identities. A unique identity is assigned from identity and resource pools. Computers and peripherals extract these identities from service profiles. A service profile has all the server identities including UUIDs, MACs, WWNNs, firmware versions, BIOS settings, policies, and other server settings. A service profile is associated with the physical server that assigns all the settings in a service profile to the physical server.

In case of server failure, the failed server needs to be removed and the replacement server needs to be associated with the existing service profile of the failed server. In this service profile association process, the new server automatically picks up all the identities of the failed server, and the operating system or applications that depend on these identities do not observe any change in the hardware. In case of peripheral failure, the replacement peripheral automatically acquires the identities of the failed components. This significantly improves the system recovery time in case of a failure. Server profiles include many identity pools:

UUID suffix pools

MAC pools

IP pools

Server pools

Universally Unique Identifier Suffix Pools

A universally unique identifier suffix pool is a collection of System Management BIOS (SMBIOS) UUIDs that are available to be assigned to servers. The first number of digits that constitute the prefix of the UUID is fixed. The remaining digits, the UUID suffix, are variable. A UUID suffix pool ensures that these variable values are unique for each server associated with a service profile which uses that particular pool to avoid conflicts.

If you use UUID suffix pools in service profiles, you do not have to manually configure the UUID of the server associated with the service profile.

An example of creating UUID pools is as follows:

Step 1. In the Navigation pane, click Servers.

Step 2. Expand Servers > Pools.

Step 3. Expand the node for the organization where you want to create the pool. If the system does not include multitenancy, expand the root node.

Step 4. Right-click UUID Suffix Pools and select Create UUID Suffix Pool.

Step 5. In the Define Name and Description page of the Create UUID Suffix Pool wizard, complete the following fields (see Figure 12-46):

Figure 12-46 Creating UUID Suffix Pool

Step 6. Click Next.

Step 7. In the Add UUID Blocks page of the Create UUID Suffix Pool wizard, click Add.

Step 8. In the Create a Block of UUID Suffixes dialog box, complete the following fields:

Step 9. Click OK.

Step 10. Click Finish to complete the wizard.

You need to assign the UUID suffix pool to a service profile and/or template.

The Cisco UCS X-Series Modular system, shown Figure 12-22, is the latest generation of the Cisco UCS. It is a modular system managed from the Cisco Intersight cloud. Here are the major new features:

The system operates in Intersight Managed Mode (IMM), as it is managed from the Cisco Intersight.

The new Cisco UCS X9508 chassis has a midplane-free design. The I/O connectivity for the X9508 chassis is accomplished via frontloading, with vertically oriented compute nodes intersecting with horizontally oriented I/O connectivity modules in the rear of the chassis.

Cisco UCS 9108 Intelligent Fabric modules provide connectivity to the upstream Cisco UCS 6400/6500 Fabric Interconnects.

Figure 12-22 Cisco UCS X-System with Cisco Intersight

The new Cisco UCS X9508 chassis provides a new and adaptable substitute for the first generation of the UCS chassis. It is designed to be expandable in the future. As proof of this, the X-Fabric slots are intended for future use. It has optimized cooling flows to support reliable operation for longer times. The major features are as follows:

A seven-rack-unit (7RU) chassis has 8 front-facing flexible slots. These can house a combination of compute nodes and a pool of future I/O resources, which may include GPU accelerators, disk storage, and nonvolatile memory.

2x Cisco UCS 9108 Intelligent Fabric Modules (IFMs) at the top of the chassis that connect the chassis to upstream Cisco UCS 6400/6500 Series Fabric Interconnects. Each IFM has the following features:

• Up to 200Gbps of unified fabric connectivity per compute node.

• The Cisco UCS 9108 25G IFM supports 8x 25Gbps SFP28 uplink ports, while the 100G option supports 8x 100-Gbps QSFP uplink ports. The unified fabric carries management traffic to the Cisco Intersight cloud-operations platform, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) traffic, and production Ethernet traffic to the fabric interconnects.

At the bottom are slots, ready to house future I/O modules that can flexibly connect the compute modules with I/O devices. This connectivity is called Cisco UCS X-Fabric technology” because X is a variable that can evolve with new technology developments.

6x 2800W power supply units (PSUs) provide 54V power to the chassis with N, N+1, and N+N redundancy. A higher voltage allows efficient power delivery with less copper and reduced power loss.

Efficient, 4x 100mm, dual counter-rotating fans deliver industry-leading airflow and power efficiency. Optimized thermal algorithms enable different cooling modes to best support the network environment. Cooling is modular so that future enhancements can potentially handle open- or closed-loop liquid cooling to support even higher-power processors.

The X-Fabric Technology supports 32 lanes of PCIe Gen 4 connectivity to each compute node. Using the Cisco UCS X9416 X-Fabric Modules, each blade can access PCIe devices including up to four GPUs in a Cisco UCS X440p PCIe Node. Combined with two onboard cards, the compute nodes can accelerate workloads with up to six GPUs per node.

The available compute nodes for the Cisco UCS X-System are

Cisco UCS X210x M6 Compute Node:

• CPU: Up to 2x 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors with up to 40 cores per processor and 1.5 MB Level 3 cache per core

• Memory: Up to 32x 256 GB DDR4-3200 DIMMs for up to 8 TB of main memory. Configuring up to 16x 512-GB Intel Optane persistent memory DIMMs can yield up to 12 TB of memory.

Cisco UCS X210x M7 Compute Node:

• CPU: Up to 2x 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors with up to 60 cores per processor and up to 2.625 MB Level 3 cache per core and up to 112.5 MB per CPU

• Memory: Up to 32x 256 GB DDR5-4800 DIMMs for up to 8 TB of main memory

Cisco UCS X410x M7 Compute Node

• CPU: 4x 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors with up to 60 cores per processor and up to 2.625 MB Level 3 cache per core and up to 112.5 MB per CPU

• Memory: Up to 64x 256 GB DDR5-4800 DIMMs for up to 16 TB of main memory

Fabric Extenders (FEs) are extensions of the fabric interconnects (FIs) and act as remote line cards to form a distributed modular fabric system. The fabric extension is accomplished through the FEX fabric link, which is the connection between the fabric interconnect and the FEX. A minimum of one connection between the FI and FEX is required to provide server connectivity. Depending on the FEX model, subsequent connections can be up to eight links, which provides added bandwidth to the servers.

The latest generation of the Cisco UCS Fabric extenders is the Cisco UCS 2408 FEX. It is used in the Cisco UCS 5108 chassis and allows for the connectivity to the Cisco 6454, 64108 and 6536 Fabric interconnects. The external connectivity is provided by 8x 25-Gbps FcoE SFP28 ports. This allows for up to 200-Gbps of bandwidth between the Cisco UCS 2408 FEX and the Cisco UCS 6400 and 6500 series fabric interconnect. As in a Cisco UCS 5108 blade chassis there are always two FEXs, one for the connectivity to each of the fabric interconnects, the combined bandwidth available to the chassis will be 400-Gbps.

The internal connectivity is supported by 32x 10-Gbps ports, which through the mid-plane provide 4x 10-Gbps bandwidth per server slot, per Cisco UCS 2408 FEX. Again, looking at the redundant connectivity of the Cisco UCS 5108, this secures a total of 80-Gbps of redundant bandwidth for each blade server in the chassis. The internal to external communication is delivered by the 1.04-Tbps of hardware forwarding capability of the FEX.

The Cisco UCS 2304 IOM (Fabric Extender) is an I/O module with 8x 40-Gigabit backplane ports and 4 40-Gigabit uplink ports (see Figure 12-11). It can be hot-plugged into the rear of a Cisco UCS 5108 blade server chassis. A maximum of two UCS 2304 IOMs can be installed in a chassis. The Cisco UCS 2304 IOM provides chassis management control and blade management control, including control of the chassis, fan trays, power supply units, and blades. It also multiplexes and forwards all traffic from the blade servers in the chassis to the 10-Gigabit Ethernet uplink network ports that connect to the fabric interconnect. The IOM can also connect to a peer IOM to form a cluster interconnect.

Figure 12-11 Cisco UCS 2300 IOM

Figure 12-12 shows how the FEX modules in the blade chassis connect to the FIs. The 5108 chassis accommodates the following FEXs:

Cisco UCS 2408

Cisco UCS 2304

Note

The Cisco UCS 2304 Fabric Extender is not compatible with the Cisco UCS 6200 Fabric Interconnect series.

Cisco UCS 2208XP

Cisco UCS 2204XP