Setting Up UCSPE

UCSPE is a free download from Cisco.com. You will need a Cisco ID, so sign up if you do not have one already (https://id.cisco.com/signin/register). You can easily find UCSPE by searching for it on the main Cisco page (Figure 1-1).

A screenshot of U C S P E search results on the Cisco portal. The result displays sorted by: relevancy and the filter by: all categories, all types, and all products.

Click on the link (as shown in Figure 1-1) and you will be taken to the main page for UCSPE where you can click the link for the OVA and Zip file downloads (Figure 1-2).

A screenshot of the main page for U C S P E download link. The page header reads current Cisco U C S platform emulators and a hyperlink at the bottom that reads O V A and ZIP file downloads: U C S P E underscore 4.2 2 a downloads is highlighted under a box.

You will then be prompted to sign in using your Cisco ID. Once you have signed in, you can download the UCSPE software (Figure 1-3).

A screenshot of U C S P E software download options by U C S manager. Two download files on it are labeled U C S P E 4.2 2 a with O V A and one with ZIP extension.

The OVA file is the easiest option to use. You will need to accept the Cisco license agreement to download it. At the time of writing, the current version is 4.2(2a).

Importing UCSPE into VMWare

This is hardly resource-intensive, so it should run happily on most modern computers. Our platform will primarily use VMWare (Fusion), but UCSPE will also run fine on VirtualBox or other hypervisors. Installing the VMWare software is not covered in the book.

Firstly, start VMWare, and select the option to import (Figure 1-4).

A screenshot of the Fusion U C S platform emulator window with the cursor over the import button on the plus drop down menu.

In the window that pops up, click on “Choose File…” (Figure 1-5).

A screenshot of a pop up window for choosing an existing virtual machine. The bar below the header starts with choose virtual machine and ends with finish. The recent items display an empty box.

Select the UCSPE file you downloaded earlier and click on “Open.” Click Continue again (Figure 1-6).

A screenshot of a pop up window reads: choose an existing virtual machine from the search results. The recent items box below has two files, and a continue button at the bottom right is highlighted.

In the next window, you can rename the VM and select where to store it (Figure 1-7). Click “Save.”

A screenshot of save the virtual machine tab. The save as fill-in box reads U C S P E underscore 2.2.2 a S 9-2 and the fill-in box reads virtual machine. The Save button is highlighted at the bottom right.

The virtual machine will start to import into VMWare (Figure 1-8).

A screenshot of a pop-up window titled importing the virtual machine. The step bar below the header is at step 3, importing. A progress bar is visible below it, titled Importing U C S P E underscore 2.2.2 a S 9-2.

Once the import has been completed, you can customize the settings or click Finish (Figure 1-9).

A screenshot of a pop-up window titled finish, the configuration of the virtual machine is now complete. The step bar below the header is at step 4, finish and 6 virtual machine summary is listed below it.

Starting UCSPE

Start the UCSPE virtual machine by right-clicking on it and selecting Start.

When you start UCSPE for the first time, it runs through a quick installation and then starts the services, which can take a few minutes. Subsequent starts do not trigger an installation. The VM will then do some basic tasks, like using DHCP to gain an IP address (well, three actually; one for each of the Fabric Interconnects and one for the virtual IP, or VIP) (Figure 1-10).

A screenshot of the commands for cisco U C S platform emulator 4.2 on the command user interface.

In the next stage, UCSPE will complete the backend tasks, such as setting up SSH and GUI access, as well as generating the hardware catalog, which we will look at in the next chapter (Figure 1-11).

A screenshot of the command window displays generating U S C P E catalog o k at the start and inserting devices at the end.

Once everything has been completed, you will see the login details, which are the IP address of the VIP and the username and password (which are both “ucspe”) (Figure 1-12).

A screenshot of the command user interface with the login details contains the I P address as well as the username and password.

You can login and use the UCSPE VM console to show you more network details, the general status, and to perform functions such as resetting the system, rebooting, or shutting down (Figure 1-13).

A screenshot of the U C S P E console network details contains of the 10 rows starts from show status and ends with shutdown the v m

You can now browse to the GUI using HTTPS (in this instance, it would be https://172.16.2.134) (Figure 1-14).

A screenshot of the U C S manager pop-up window. Launch U C S manager and launch K V M manager are visible.

You can see that we have a list of our equipment on one side, and on the other we can log into UCS Manager (using the default username and password “ucspe”).

When UCSPE starts up, it will generate a fairly random environment, and that is where we will start in the next chapter after we look at how a UCS would be set up in the real world.

Real-World UCS Setup

If you are setting up a physical UCS, you will need to allocate three IP addresses; one for the management of each of the Fabric Interconnects (FICs), and one for the virtual IP (VIP) that will be used for the cluster management.

Once you have racked the FICs, we need to do the essential cabling for them, which will be management (LAN) interfaces that will connect to your upstream or management switches, and then we need to connect the cluster interfaces. These are the L1 and L2 interfaces, and we cable L1 on the first FIC to L1 on the other FIC and L2 to L2.

In this section, we will be configuring two FICs. FIC A will have the IP address 10.99.1.10, with a /24 subnet mask (255.255.255.0). FIC B will use the IP address 10.99.1.11. The VIP will be 10.99.1.200, and the default gateway will be 10.99.1.1. We will configure a DNS server IP address of 10.99.1.5. The cluster will be called “Mastering-UCS.”

Only power up the first FIC at first. We only power up the second one once the first FIC has been configured.

We are going to use the console for our configuration, so type “console” and press enter.

Type in “setup” next, as we are not restoring from a backup.

This is a new Fabric Interconnect, so type “Yes” to start a fresh setup.

Type in a new password for the admin user when prompted. The complexity needs to be at least eight characters.

We will set up a cluster, so type in “yes” when prompted.

Because this is the primary switch that we are setting up, it will be the “A” of the pair. The secondary switch will be “B.”

Next, we get to name our cluster. The name we chose will also be used on each Fabric Interconnect, with them getting either -A or -, depending on if they are the first FI, or the second.

Now we type in the cluster IP address. It is this address that will be used by the primary Fabric Interconnect and is the IP you use when you fire up the UCS Manager.

You can then configure your DNS servers. This is optional.

We are not going to configure a default domain name, so choose “no” for the next section.

You will see a summary of the settings we have entered so far. Either type “y” to save the settings and restart the fabric interconnect, or select “n” to go back and make any modifications that you need to.

Our first fabric interconnect is now completed. Connect to the console on the second device and start it up.

From this point, it’s just a matter of following the same steps.

The installation will detect the presence of Fabric Interconnect 1 (assuming you have connected the heartbeat ports together), and this switch will be added to the existing cluster. Type “y” to do this.

We now set the IP address for this fabric interconnect.

Save the configuration.

Navigate to https://10.99.1.200 using a browser to log into the UCS.

Summary

We started this chapter by downloading the latest version of UCSPE from the Cisco website, importing it into VMWare, and starting it up. We then compared this to how a real UCS installation works in a clustered environment.

In the next chapter, we will configure UCSPE according to a topology (instead of the random assortment of hardware that it generates) and, as we do this, we will look in greater depth at the various components of a UCS environment.