UCSPE is an excellent platform for those looking to gain hands-on experience with Cisco Unified Communication System Platform and UCSM software without setting up a costly lab. UCSPE provides a profound awareness of all the hardware available for the UCS platform, and it also provides hands-on configuration experience with UCSM software.

But UCSPE has some limitations compared to the real UCSM software:

• The system cannot be integrated with a directory server (such as AD) for user authentication
• Server profiles configured can be assigned to the server, but an operating system cannot be installed on the UCSPE servers
• No KVM interface to the servers is available
• Remote monitoring data (syslog, SNMP, call home, smart call home, and so on) cannot be sent out
• High availability of the Fabric Interconnect cluster cannot be simulated