The Cisco UCS is a single integrated system with switches, cables, adapters, and servers all tied together and managed by unified management software. Thus, you are able to virtualize every component of the system at every level. The switch port, cables, adapter, and servers can all be virtualized.

Because of the virtualization capabilities at every component of the system, you have the unique ability to provide rapid provisioning of any service on any server on any blade through a system that is wired once. Figure 12-20 illustrates these virtualization capabilities.

The Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card 1400/14000 Series (Figure 12-20) extends the network fabric directly to both servers and virtual machines so that a single connectivity mechanism can be used to connect both physical and virtual servers with the same level of visibility and control. Cisco VICs provide complete programmability of the Cisco UCS I/O infrastructure, with the number and type of I/O interfaces configurable on demand with a zero-touch model.

Cisco VICs support Cisco Single Connect technology, which provides an easy, intelligent, and efficient way to connect and manage computing in the data center. Cisco Single Connect unifies LAN, SAN, and systems management into one simplified link for rack servers, blade servers, and virtual machines. This technology reduces the number of network adapters, cables, and switches needed and radically simplifies the network, reducing complexity. Cisco VICs can support 256 PCI Express (PCIe) virtual devices, either virtual network interface cards (vNICs) or virtual host bus adapters (vHBAs), with a high rate of I/O operations per second (IOPS), support for lossless Ethernet, and 10/25/40/100-Gbps connection to servers. The PCIe Generation 3 16 interface helps ensure optimal bandwidth to the host for network-intensive applications, with a redundant path to the fabric interconnect. Cisco VICs support NIC teaming with fabric failover for increased reliability and availability. In addition, it provides a policy-based, stateless, agile server infrastructure for your data center.

Figure 12-20 UCS Virtualization Infrastructure

The VIC 1400/14000 Series is designed exclusively for the M5 generation of UCS B-Series blade servers, C-Series rack servers, and S-Series storage servers. The adapters are capable of supporting 10/25/40/100-Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet. It incorporates Cisco’s next-generation converged network adapter (CNA) technology and offers a comprehensive feature set. In addition, the VIC supports Cisco’s Data Center Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX) technology. This technology extends the Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect ports to virtual machines, simplifying server virtualization deployment.

The Cisco UCS VIC 1400/14000 Series provides the following features and benefits (see Figure 12-21):

Stateless and agile platform: The personality of the card is determined dynamically at boot time using the service profile associated with the server. The number, type (NIC or HBA), identity (MAC address and World Wide Name [WWN]), failover policy, bandwidth, and quality of service (QoS) policies of the PCIe interfaces are all determined using the service profile. The capability to define, create, and use interfaces on demand provides a stateless and agile server infrastructure.

Network interface virtualization: Each PCIe interface created on the VIC is associated with an interface on the Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect, providing complete network separation for each virtual cable between a PCIe device on the VIC and the interface on the fabric interconnect.

Figure 12-21 Cisco UCS 1400 Virtual Interface Cards (VICs)

UCS M5 B-Series VIC: