Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) is a

data center A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunic ...

server computer In computing, a server is a piece of computer hardware or software ( computer program) that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called " clients". This architecture is called the client–server model. Servers can provide var ...

product line composed of server hardware,

virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...

support,

switching fabric Switched fabric or switching fabric is a network topology in which network nodes interconnect via one or more network switches (particularly crossbar switches). Because a switched fabric network spreads network traffic across multiple physical li ...

, and

management software Project management software (PMS) has the capacity to help plan, organize, and manage resource tools and develop resource estimates. Depending on the sophistication of the software, it can manage estimation and planning, scheduling, cost control an ...

, introduced in 2009 by

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

. The products are marketed for

scalability Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system. In an economic context, a scalable business model implies that a company can increase sales given increased resources. For example, a ...

by integrating many components of a

that can be managed as a single unit.

Computing

The UCS product line was announced in March and first installed in September 2009, at the customer premises of

Tutor Perini Tutor Perini Corporation (formerly Perini Corporation) is one of the largest general contractors in the United States. At the end of 2013, it reported annual revenue of approximately $4.2 billion. Tutor Perini is headquartered in Sylmar, Cal ...

. The first customer purchase of UCS was by Fiserv, a financial services customer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The entire project was code named "California". The computing component of the UCS is available in two versions: the B-series (a powered chassis and full and/or half slot

blade server A blade server is a stripped-down server computer with a modular design optimized to minimize the use of physical space and energy. Blade servers have many components removed to save space, minimize power consumption and other considerations, whil ...

s), and the C-series for

19-inch rack A 19-inch rack is a standardized frame or enclosure for mounting multiple electronic equipment modules. Each module has a front panel that is wide. The 19 inch dimension includes the edges or "ears" that protrude from each side of the equ ...

s (that can be used with fabric interconnects). The computer hardware managed by the UCS Manager software on the fabric Interconnects can be any combination of the two. Both form factors use standard components, including

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging mod ...

processors and

DIMM A DIMM () (Dual In-line Memory Module), commonly called a RAM stick, comprises a series of dynamic random-access memory integrated circuits. These memory modules are mounted on a printed circuit board and designed for use in personal compute ...

memory. The servers are marketed with

converged network adapter A converged network adapter (CNA), also called a converged network interface controller (C-NIC), is a computer input/output device that combines the functionality of a host bus adapter (HBA) with a network interface controller (NIC). In other words ...

s and port virtualization. Around 2010, an extended memory technology expanded the number of memory sockets that can be connected to a single memory channel in some models. A fifth generation was announced in July 2018.

Virtualization

Cisco UCS supports several

hypervisors A hypervisor (also known as a virtual machine monitor, VMM, or virtualizer) is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is calle ...

including

VMware ESXi VMware ESXi (formerly ESX) is an enterprise-class, type-1 hypervisor developed by VMware for deploying and serving virtual computers. As a type-1 hypervisor, ESXi is not a software application that is installed on an operating system (OS); ...

, Microsoft

Hyper-V Microsoft Hyper-V, codenamed Viridian, and briefly known before its release as Windows Server Virtualization, is a native hypervisor; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems running Windows. Starting with Windows 8, Hyper-V superseded Win ...

and

Citrix Systems Citrix Systems, Inc. is an American multinational cloud computing and virtualization technology company that provides server, application and desktop virtualization, networking, software as a service (SaaS), and cloud computing technologies. C ...

Xen Xen (pronounced ) is a type-1 hypervisor, providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently. It was originally developed by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory an ...

server.

VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

provides a special version of ESXi. In 2017 Cisco announced a partnership with Docker to include its enterprise software in UCS products to directly provide

operating-system-level virtualization OS-level virtualization is an operating system (OS) paradigm in which the kernel allows the existence of multiple isolated user space instances, called ''containers'' ( LXC, Solaris containers, Docker, Podman), ''zones'' (Solaris containers), '' ...

(containerization).

Networking

The Cisco fabric interconnects (FI) provide network connectivity for the chassis, blade servers and rack servers connected to it through different speeds of

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

and

Fibre Channel over Ethernet Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is a computer network technology that encapsulates Fibre Channel frames over Ethernet networks. This allows Fibre Channel to use 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks (or higher speeds) while preserving the Fibre Channel ...

(FCoE). The fabric interconnects are derived from the Nexus 5500 and 9300 series switch families and run

NX-OS NX-OS is a network operating system for the Nexus-series Ethernet switches and MDS-series Fibre Channel storage area network switches made by Cisco Systems. It evolved from the Cisco operating system SAN-OS, originally developed for its MDS swi ...

as well as UCS Manager software. FCoE allows connection to

storage area network A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access data storage devices, such as disk arrays and tape libraries from serve ...

storage, To allow stateless compute in addition to local storage capacity. Cisco has produced the following series for fabric interconnects: 6100 Series (discontinued), 6200 Series (discontinued), 6300 Series, and 6400 Series. The fabric interconnect can further connect to multiple fabric extenders (FEX), into what they call a "unified fabric". By 2012, analysts noticed that

Fibre Channel Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to servers in storage area networks (SAN) in commercial data cen ...

vendors such as

Brocade Communications Systems Brocade is an American technology company specializing in storage networking products, now a subsidiary of Broadcom Inc. The company is known for its Fibre Channel storage networking products and technology. Prior to the acquisition, the comp ...

had already lost market share to Cisco.

Management

Management of the system devices is handled by the UCS Manager software integrated with fabric interconnects.

Virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...

s can be moved from one physical chassis to another, applications may be moved between virtual machines, and management may even be conducted remotely from an iPhone using SiMU - Simple iPhone Management of UCS. In addition to the embedded software, administrators may also manage the system from VMware's

vSphere VMware vSphere (formerly VMware Infrastructure 4) is VMware's cloud computing virtualization platform. It includes an updated vCenter Configuration Manager, as well as vCenter Application Discovery Manager, and the ability of vMotion to move m ...

. The Cisco Integrated Management Controller (CIMC) is used to configure and manage C-Series servers not connected to a manager. The CIMC can also be used to manage B-series blades in addition to the UCS Manager application if configured. In November 2012, Cisco announced UCS Central which extends management across multiple domains of UCS, and then something called UCS Director. A security flaw in UCS Central was disclosed when it was patched in 2016. Many configuration details are set up on the UCS manager in a service profile and applied to the servers. Cisco offers a UCSM Platform Emulator, where the full logical configuration of a server can be created from the user interface or the API methods, and later applied to the physical hardware. In 2017, Cisco announced a cloud-hosted management offering for UCS infrastructure called Cisco Intersight. This platform augmented the UCS management platform.

References

External links

UCS Blade Server Comparison

Cisco and Docker Solutions - At a Glance
{{Cisco Systems Cloud platforms Servers (computing) Cisco Systems Cisco products Ultra-dense servers