Managing UCSPE Hardware

Removing UCS Devices

Before we can remove a piece of hardware, we need to disconnect it first. The easiest way to do this is to click on the broken chain-link icon at the top right-hand corner (Figure 2-1). This will disconnect all the devices (apart from the Fabric Interconnects).

A window section depicts four icons, a link, a broken link, a green dot, and a red dot, and a box below the broken link reads, disconnect all devices.

We can disconnect individual devices by clicking on the red circle next to the line item we want to remove if we only want to remove one piece of equipment.

If you have chosen to remove all of them, once they change their green circle to a red one, click on the red circle at the top (Figure 2-2).

A section of a window shows four icons, a link, a broken link, a green dot, and a red dot. The red dot is selected, and a box below it reads, remove all devices.

This will remove the devices. If you find that (after waiting a few minutes) nothing has changed, then click on the trashcan icon on the device line item to delete them one by one. Refreshing the page is also useful here, as is clicking on the Equipment link, to update any changes that have been made.

The only devices that are left will be the fabric interconnects (Figure 2-3).

A hardware inventory displays the information on fabric interconnect, rack server, fabric extender, chassis, blade server, enclosure, and enclosure NODE.

If the devices do not appear to change state, then click the Equipment link on the left-hand side and the screen should refresh. You may have to do this a lot with UCSPE as it can be slow to pick up changes, such as when we come to add hardware shortly.

Now that we have an empty canvas (so to speak) we can start with the Fabric Interconnects.

Fabric Interconnects

The Fabric Interconnects (also referred to as “FICs” or “FIs.” FI is better to use to avoid confusion, as FIC sounds much like FEX, which we will cover shortly) is where all the magic happens. This is where we manage the UCS estate as this is where the UCS software is held.

Generally, we would have two Fabric Interconnects, though you may also encounter a UCS-Mini. The UCS-Mini can handle between two and fifteen servers (a maximum of eight blade servers and seven rack servers), and places the FI (the UCS 6324 model) within the chassis, rather than them being separate hardware.

The FI runs a version of the Cisco Nexus software providing northbound connectivity to the rest of the network as well as connectivity to storage.

We can change the FI model if we want to by clicking on the cog icon at the top (Figure 2-4).

A fabric interconnect section displays various icons, and a drop-down menu lists the options, change cluster state, change F I serial, change fabric interconnect, and U C S P E settings.

If you do change the FI, then you will have to restart UCSPE (Figure 2-5).

A section of a window of the fabric interconnect option, and a command is displayed, that is, restart the U C S emulator with current settings, yes or no.

The interconnects come with two power supplies (PSUs) and four fans (Figure 2-6).

A page titled Fabric Interconnect A lists the model, serial, vendor, and description, followed by information on two P S Us and 4 Fans.

Chassis

The 5108s are 8-slot 6RU chassis with two I/O bays. The N20-C6508 is the same as the previous, but is now discontinued.

You can add a chassis, such as the UCSB-5108-AC2, by clicking on the plus sign next to the word “Chassis” on the Equipment page. Enter the name for the chassis, select the model and click on “Add” (Figure 2-7).

A window section displays how a chassis is added to the Chassis section. The Chassis, U C S B 5108 A C 2 Cisco systems inc is highlighted.

The chassis will appear in our inventory on the left-hand side (Figure 2-8).

A section displays equipment, the fabric interconnect, and stash servers. The equipment section includes chassis C H 5 1.

Now that we have our first chassis, we need to fill it with the components that connect it to our FIs and make it hum gently⁴ in the data center (power supplies and fans).

If we select the chassis and click on the edit button to the right on the item line, then we can see that we have many options of components we can add (Figure 2-9).

Information on Chassis C H 5 2 or Chassis number 1, such as model, U C S M chassis I D, serial, and description, is displayed. Options such as manage links of chassis and stash are present.

We are not going to add any blade servers at the moment, but we do need to add some power. We do this by clicking on “Psu” (not sure why Cisco didn’t capitalize all of “PSU,” but there we are), selecting an appropriate model (such as the Platinum II AC power supply), and dragging it up to the chassis, above where the model is shown and underneath the plus and minus buttons (Figure 2-10).

A section titled Chassis C H 5 2 is displayed. Platinum 2 A C power supply is involved. The model, U C S M chassis I D, serial, and description are displayed.

Once you let go, you can select how many to add. UCSPE will tell us how many available slots we have available to fill. We can decide which slot to add an item to by typing in the slot number (such as “1”) or a range, by typing in “1-4” and pressing enter. You should now have four power supplies (Figure 2-11):

A section titled Chassis C H 5 2. A box displays the message, successfully added P S U to Chassis. Information on P S U slots 1 to 4 is listed.

Chassis also require fans and we add these in the same manner, by clicking on the Fan link next and adding eight fans (Figure 2-12). In the box, you can type “1-8” to add all eight fans in one go.

A section titled Chassis C H 5 2. A box in it, displays the message, successfully added fan to chassis. Information on fan slots 1 to 8 is listed.

Next, we can add the IOMs. The IOMs are “In/Out Modules.” These are also known as FEXs. They are the line cards that connect our chassis to our fabric interconnects. They also provide the interface connections to the blade servers, and CMC (Chassis Management Controller), which is used for monitoring our components, such as fans, power supplies, and temperatures and this is also the component that is responsible for monitoring blade insertion and removal. Lastly, they also provide Chassis Management Switch (CMS), which gives us the KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse), Serial over LAN (SoL), and Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) abilities to our blades.

If we add two 2408 IOMs and click the word “Equipment” in the left-hand pane, then we should see the chassis change, listing the (currently disconnected) IOM ports (Figure 2-13).

A section titled Chassis C H 5 2. Alongside is present a section, titled manage links of Chassis, which displays the list of sources, peer device type, peer device side, peer slot, and edit or delete.

We are not going to configure the IOMs just yet, instead, we are going to see how we can quickly create two more. If we click back onto the main Equipment list, then we can click on the duplicate icon next to our chassis, and again to create two more chassis.

We should have three chassis now (Figure 2-14).

A table titled Chassis comprises 6 columns, titled, U C S M I d, name, vendor, model, serial, and insert or remove. Three chassis and their respective information is listed.

This ability to duplicate can save a lot of time if we need to add multiples of the same hardware component and is especially useful when adding servers.

We can now connect our chassis to our Fabric Interconnects. We can do this by editing the first chassis and clicking the pencil icon under “Edit Port” on port 1/1 (IOM 1, port 1). The Peer Device Type needs to be set to “fi.” Select FI A and select a free port (such as 1/20). Repeat the process for iom 1/2, selecting the next available port on the same FI (1/21).

Next, edit iom 2/1 (IOM 2, port 1) selecting FI B, and the same port number as used on iom 1/1 (port 1/20), and repeat for 2/2, selecting the next port (1/21) (Figure 2-15).

A section titled Manage links of Chassis lists the source, peer device type, peer device serial, peer slot, edit port, and delete link.

The reason we leave gaps between the ports of one IOM and the ports of another (as they go into the FI) is that if we want to increase bandwidth later on, we can keep things nice and neat and ordered. Also, bear in mind that the cabling is one IOM to one FI. The IOM, essentially, becomes part of the FI, so we never cross the streams. This isn’t Ghostbusters. Bad things really will happen. Maybe not end-of-the-world type stuff, but certainly a call to Cisco TAC (Technical Assistance Center)!

If you were to start UCS now, this is what your systems would look like (Figure 2-16).

A schematic diagram of the topology of the system comprises Chassis 1, Chassis 2, fabric interconnect 1, and 2, and chassis 3. Chassis 1, 2, and 3 are connected to both fabric interconnects.

Blade Servers

Our chassis are fairly useless if we have no (B-series) servers to run in them. So, add some servers by dragging the server from the menu at the bottom into the chassis. Each server will need CPU, memory, and storage, so add these as well. When adding servers, plan them out carefully. For example, if you have three chassis and servers that will perform different functions (such as ESXi hypervisors, database servers, application servers, and so on), share these out across all three chassis so that if one chassis has an issue, the servers in the other chassis can continue to server your data an environment as required.

Once you have added your servers, click on the red button next to each of the chassis (to remove them) and then click the green button to insert them again. The red button should turn green, as well as the green button next to each of the servers. You may need to wait a few minutes before you can insert it again.

Our chassis will look something like this (Figure 2-17):

A Chassis has two nearly identical compartments.

Now that we have some blade servers, we should add some rack servers. Before we do this, however, we are going to add some FEXs.

FEX

Rack Servers

In UCSPE, the rack servers (C-series) connect to the FEXs and there is a wide variety of servers to choose from. Way too many to list here with all their differences, but similarly to the blade servers, you will need to add CPU, memory, disks, I/O adapters, storage controllers, and PSUs.

When we connect rack servers, we need to consider how we connect them; we have options of “Direct Attach Server,” “Single Wire Management,” or “Dual Wire Management.”

Enclosures

UCS enclosures, such as the UCSC-C4200-SFF can host up to four “nodes,” such as the C125. These are designed for dense compute form factor with high core densities, where the ability to scale out with compute-intensive machines is critical.

We do need to add fans and power to the enclosures, but not IOMs. We can add the nodes by dragging them onto the chassis as we do with the other hardware. Once we have added the nodes (as well as the CPU, memory, I/O adapters, and disks), we can connect the node to the FEX by clicking the chain icon where it says “Manage Links of Node.”

We can see how this all looks by clicking the Equipment link at the top left-hand corner and then clicking the UCS icon at the end of the row of icons. We can log in using the username and password of “ucspe.”

The default UCSPE-generated layout will look a little like this (Figure 2-18):

A schematic diagram of the U C S environment comprises Chassis 3 and 4, fabric interconnects A and B, F E X 1 and 2, and 9 servers. The F E X 1 and 2 convey information to the servers.

Summary

In this chapter, we looked at how to add and remove the components available to us in UCSPE, as well as how to connect them all together.