eWeek recently posted snapshots of Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) Software on their site: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/LABS-GALLERY-Cisco-UCS-Unified-Computing-System-Software-199462/?kc=rss
Take a good look at the software because the software is the reason this blade system will be successful because they are treating the physical blades as a resource – just CPUs, memory and I/O. “What” the server should be and “How” the server should act is a feature of the UCS Management software. It will show you the physical layout of the blades to the UCS 6100 Interconnect, it can show you the configurations of the blades in the attached UCS 5108 chassis, it can set the boot order of the blades, etc. Quite frankly there are too many features to mention and I don’t want to steal their fire, so take a few minutes to go to: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/LABS-GALLERY-Cisco-UCS-Unified-Computing-System-Software-199462/?kc=rss.
The software is what will sell this. I installed the system this week, it was racked and then from power on to me accessing it from my desk was less than 5 min. From there it is all provisioned from a single location with the click of a button.
Want another 8 (or more) servers? Connected another 2 cables to the new chassis, powered it on, walked to my desk and in 4 clicks I had another chassis with servers to install OS’s on. Can’t do that with an HP c7000 now can you *snicker*
Great comment, Jason. Thanks. I look at Cisco UCS like Lego blocks. When you want to add more capacity, you just snap them in. Thanks for stopping by. Your comments are always welcome!