Cisco Unified Computing System Ucs Data Center

The definitive guide to UCS and the Cisco® Data Center Server: planning, architecture, components, deployment, and benefits With its new Unified Computing System (UCS) family of products, Cisco has introduced a fundamentally new vision for data center computing: one that reduces ownership cost, improves agility, and radically simplifies management. In this book, three Cisco insiders thoroughly explain UCS, and offer practical insights for IT professionals and decision-makers who are evaluating or implementing it. The authors establish the context for UCS by discussing the implications of virtualization, unified I/O, large memories and other key technologies, and showing how trends like cloud computing and green IT will drive the next-generation data center. Next, they take a closer look at the evolution of server CPU, memory, and I/O subsystems, covering advances such as the Intel® XEON® 5500, 5600, 7500, DDR3 memory, and unified I/O over 10 Gbps Ethernet. Building on these fundamentals, the authors then discuss UCS in detail, showing how it systematically overcomes key limitations of current data center environments. They review UCS features, components, and architecture, and demonstrate how it can improve data center performance, reliability, simplicity, flexibility, and energy efficiency. Along the way, they offer realistic planning, installation, and migration guidance: everything decision-makers and technical implementers need to gain maximum value from UCS–now, and for years to come. Silvano Gai has spent 11 years as Cisco Fellow, architecting Catalyst®, MDS, and Nexus switches. He has written several books on networking, written multiple Internet Drafts and RFCs, and is responsible for 80 patents and applications. He teaches a course on this book’s topics at Stanford University. Tommi Salli, Cisco Technical Marketing Engineer, has nearly 20 years of experience with servers and applications at Cisco, Sun, VERITAS, and Nuova Systems. Roger Andersson, Cisco Manager, Technical Marketing, spent more than 12 years in the CLARiiON® Engineering Division at EMC, and 5 years as Technical Product Manager at VERITAS/Symantec. He is now focused on Cisco UCS system management. Streamline data centers with UCS to systematically reduce cost of ownership Eliminate unnecessary server components–and their setup, management, power, cooling, and cabling Use UCS to scale service delivery, simplify service movement, and improve agility Review the latest advances in processor, memory, I/O, and virtualization architectures for data center servers Understand the specific technical advantages of UCS Integrate UCS 6100 Fabric Interconnect, Cisco UCS 2100 Series Fabric Extenders, UCS 5100 Series Blade Server Enclosures, UCS B-Series Blade Servers, UCS C-Series Rack Servers, and UCS Adapters Use Cisco UCS Manager to manage all Cisco UCS components as a single, seamless entity Integrate third-party management tools from companies like BMC ®, CA ®, EMC ®, IBM ®, Microsoft ®, and VMware ® Practice all this with a copy of Cisco Unified Computing SystemTM Platform Emulator Lite (UCSPE Lite) on the DVD in the back of the book This book is part of the Networking Technology Series from Cisco Press®, which offers networking professionals valuable information for constructing efficient networks, understanding new technologies, and building successful careers.

A tutorial-based approach which will help you understand the practical methodologies and deploying of Cisco UCS components. If you are a professional such as a system, network, or storage administrator who is responsible for Cisco UCS deployments, this is the perfect book for you. You should have some basic knowledge of the server’s architecture, network, and storage technologies. Familiarity with virtualization technologies is also recommended (though not necessary) as the majority of real-world UCS deployments run virtualized loads. Knowledge of Nexus OS is not necessary as the majority of the management tasks are handled in a graphical user interface with very few exceptions using the CLI.

The Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) can be found in the majority of data centers across the world. However, getting hands-on practice to learn this infrastructure can be difficult, as many companies will push to have it production-ready as soon as possible. Home-labs are also cost-prohibitive, cumbersome, electricity-hungry, and noisy. So, how do you get hands-on experience? With Unified Computing System Platform Emulator (UCSPE) and this book. UCSPE is free and can run on a laptop. Using it along with this book, you will learn how to set up, manage and troubleshoot a UCS, including the fabric interconnects, chassis and IOMs, and servers through the GUI and the CLI. All from the comfort of your own home. Introducing Cisco Unified Computing System will show you how to set up a UCS (comparing the UCSPE to a real-world deployment), customize the hardware, configure the UCS system, and secure it. You'll start by creating an organization and then the policies to control storage, networking, boot options, maintenance policies, and server pools. Once you have the required policies you'll use them to create service profiles (using the policies) and templates and assign these to the blade and rack-mount servers in the virtual environment. You'll also be looking at real-life scenarios such as upgrades (and downgrades), northbound networking, and Storage Area Networking (SAN) connectivity. Using the GUI and the CLI you'll look at real-world examples that data center engineers may encounter. What You'll Learn Set up the Cisco UCSPE on VMWare Create UCS service profiles Secure the UCS system Troubleshoot the UCS Who This Book Is For Datacenter and network engineers and individuals studying for the CCNA and CCNP Cisco data center qualification.

Over 40 practical recipes to get your hands dirty with the powerful Cisco UCS and overcome various challenges About This Book Master the skills of minimizing cost, enabling your business to work faster by reducing cycle times for reporting and improving overall revenue Work through hands-on recipes for efficient deployment approaches, see computing techniques, and explore new operational models with UCS Render a better work-flow management, ensure effective monitoring, and learn new deployment paradigms for the operational infrastructure with the help of this book Who This Book Is For This book is for competent system/network or storage administrators who are working with Cisco UCS, but now want to learn new ways to compute UCS. What You Will Learn Familiarize yourself with information on the latest information on memory management practices, virtualization architectures, and the specific technical advantages of UCS Get a concrete understanding of integrating processes and techniques to ensure effective convergence of LAN/SAN Get to know the best practices of Cisco UCS, EMC Storage, and VMware vSphere Master migrating data from other band servers or Blade to Cisco UCS Comprehend how to replicate and back up UCS to remote sites UCS Assimilate innovative techniques to deploy UCS to leverage its full potential Gather information on installing and configuring automatic and manual Pinning Discover ways to integrate a system in Cisco UCS In Detail Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) is a data center server platform that is used for computing, deploying, and storing resources in data center environments. This cookbook aims to teach you about various tasks you can implement to improve your existing method of configuring and deploying UCS. You will start by learning how to upgrade your firmware on Brocade and Cisco Fibre Channel Switch and will move on to enhance your knowledge of LAN connectivity. We will then discuss how to configure Windows 2008 and 2012 local boot in Cisco UCS. Next, you will learn how to install the operating system on Cisco UCS and use Cisco UCS Power Calculator to calculate the UCS consumption. Finally, we'll take a look at backup solutions. By the end of the book, you will know several ways to build and compute in data center environment using Cisco UCS. Style and approach This guide explains every task in a conversational and easy-to-follow style. You can open this book up to the task you want to learn and will be able to perform that task by the end of the recipe.

Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals For many IT organizations, today’s greatest challenge is to drive more value, efficiency, and utilization from data centers. Virtualization is the best way to meet this challenge. Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals brings together the comprehensive knowledge Cisco professionals need to apply virtualization throughout their data center environments. Leading data center expert Gustavo A. A. Santana thoroughly explores all components of an end-to-end data center virtualization solution, including networking, storage, servers, operating systems, application optimization, and security. Rather than focusing on a single product or technology, he explores product capabilities as interoperable design tools that can be combined and integrated with other solutions, including VMware vSphere. With the author’s guidance, you’ll learn how to define and implement highly-efficient architectures for new, expanded, or retrofit data center projects. By doing so, you can deliver agile application provisioning without purchasing unnecessary infrastructure, and establish a strong foundation for new cloud computing and IT-as-a-service initiatives. Throughout, Santana illuminates key theoretical concepts through realistic use cases, real-world designs, illustrative configuration examples, and verification outputs. Appendixes provide valuable reference information, including relevant Cisco data center products and CLI principles for IOS and NX-OS. With this approach, Data Center Virtualization Fundamentals will be an indispensable resource for anyone preparing for the CCNA Data Center, CCNP Data Center, or CCIE Data Center certification exams. Learn how virtualization can transform and improve traditional data center network topologies Understand the key characteristics and value of each data center virtualization technology Walk through key decisions, and transform choices into architecture Smoothly migrate existing data centers toward greater virtualization Burst silos that have traditionally made data centers inefficient Master foundational technologies such as VLANs, VRF, and virtual contexts Use virtual PortChannel and FabricPath to overcome the limits of STP Optimize cabling and network management with fabric extender (FEX) virtualized chassis Extend Layer 2 domains to distant data center sites using MPLS and Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) Use VSANs to overcome Fibre Channel fabric challenges Improve SAN data protection, environment isolation, and scalability Consolidate I/O through Data Center Bridging and FCoE Use virtualization to radically simplify server environments Create server profiles that streamline “bare metal” server provisioning “Transcend the rack” through virtualized networking based on Nexus 1000V and VM-FEX Leverage opportunities to deploy virtual network services more efficiently Evolve data center virtualization toward full-fledged private clouds

Improve Manageability, Flexibility, Scalability, and Control with Hyperconverged Infrastructure Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) combines storage, compute, and networking in one unified system, managed locally or from the cloud. With HCI, you can leverage the cloud’s simplicity, flexibility, and scalability without losing control or compromising your ability to scale. In Hyperconverged Infrastructure Data Centers, best-selling author Sam Halabi demystifies HCI technology, outlines its use cases, and compares solutions from a vendor-neutral perspective. He guides you through evaluation, planning, implementation, and management, helping you decide where HCI makes sense, and how to migrate legacy data centers without disrupting production systems. The author brings together all the HCI knowledge technical professionals and IT managers need, whether their background is in storage, compute, virtualization, switching/routing, automation, or public cloud platforms. He explores leading solutions including the Cisco HyperFlex platform, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Enterprise Cloud, Cisco Application-Centric Infrastructure (ACI), VMware’s NSX, the open source OpenStack and Open vSwitch (OVS) / Open Virtual Network (OVN), and Cisco CloudCenter for multicloud management. As you explore discussions of automation, policy management, and other key HCI capabilities, you’ll discover powerful new opportunities to improve control, security, agility, and performance. Understand and overcome key limits of traditional data center designs Discover improvements made possible by advances in compute, bus interconnect, virtualization, and software-defined storage Simplify rollouts, management, and integration with converged infrastructure (CI) based on the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) Explore HCI functionality, advanced capabilities, and benefits Evaluate key HCI applications, including DevOps, virtual desktops, ROBO, edge computing, Tier 1 enterprise applications, backup, and disaster recovery Simplify application deployment and policy setting by implementing a new model for provisioning, deployment, and management Plan, integrate, deploy, provision, manage, and optimize the Cisco HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure platform Assess alternatives such as VMware vSAN, Nutanix, open source OpenStack, and OVS/OVN, and compare architectural differences with HyperFlex Compare Cisco ACI (Application- Centric Infrastructure) and VMware NSX approaches to network automation, policies, and security This book is part of the Networking Technology Series from Cisco Press, which offers networking professionals valuable information for constructing efficient networks, understanding new technologies, and building successful careers.

The complete guide to provisioning and managing cloud-based Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) data center solutions Cloud computing will revolutionize the way IT resources are deployed, configured, and managed for years to come. Service providers and customers each stand to realize tremendous value from this paradigm shift--if they can take advantage of it. Cloud Computing brings together the realistic, start-to-finish guidance they need to plan, implement, and manage cloud solution architectures for tomorrow's virtualized data centers. It introduces cloud "newcomers" to essential concepts, and offers experienced operations professionals detailed guidance on delivering Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). This book's replicable solutions and fully-tested best practices will help enterprises, service providers, consultants, and Cisco partners meet the challenge of provisioning end-to-end cloud infrastructures. Drawing on extensive experience working with leading cloud vendors and integrators, the authors present detailed operations workflow examples, proven techniques for operating cloud-based network, compute, and storage infrastructure; a comprehensive management reference architecture; and a complete case study demonstrating rapid, lower-cost solutions design. Cloud Computing will be an indispensable resource for all network/IT professionals and managers involved with planning, implementing, or managing the next generation of cloud computing services. Venkata (Josh) Josyula, Ph.D., CCIE(R) No. 13518 is a Distinguished Services Engineer in Cisco Services Technology Group (CSTG) and advises Cisco customers on OSS/BSS architecture and solutions. Malcolm Orr, Solutions Architect for Cisco's Services Technology Solutions, advises telecoms and enterprise clients on architecting, building, and operating OSS/BSS and cloud management stacks. He is Cisco's lead architect for several Tier 1 public cloud projects. Greg Page has spent the last eleven years with Cisco in technical consulting roles relating to data center architecture/technology and service provider security. He is now exclusively focused on developing cloud/IaaS solutions with service providers and systems integrator partners. - Review the key concepts needed to successfully deploy clouds and cloud-based services - Transition common enterprise design patterns and use cases to the cloud - Master architectural principles and infrastructure designs for "real-time" managed IT services - Understand the Cisco approach to cloud-related technologies, systems, and services - Develop a cloud management architecture using ITIL, TMF, and ITU-TMN standards - Implement best practices for cloud service provisioning, activation, and management - Automate cloud infrastructure to simplify service delivery, monitoring, and assurance - Choose and implement the right billing/chargeback approaches for your business - Design and build IaaS services, from start to finish - Manage the unique capacity challenges associated with sporadic, real-time demand - Provide a consistent and optimal cloud user experience This book is part of the Networking Technology Series from Cisco Press(R), which offers networking professionals valuable information for constructing efficient networks, understanding new technologies, and building successful careers. Category: Cloud Computing Covers: Virtualized Data Centers

Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE) The complete guide to managing UCCE environments: tips, tricks, best practices, and lessons learned Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE) integrates multiple components and can serve a wide spectrum of business requirements. In this book, Gary Ford, an experienced Cisco UCCE consultant brings together all the guidance you need to optimally configure and manage UCCE in any environment. The author shares in-depth insights covering both the enterprise and hosted versions of UCCE. He presents an administrator’s view of how to perform key UCCE tasks and why they work as they do. He thoroughly addresses application configuration, agents, scripting, IVR, dial plans, UCM, error handling, reporting, metrics, and many other key topics. You’ll find proven, standardized configuration examples that help eliminate errors and reduce downtime, step-by-step walkthroughs of several actual configurations, and thorough coverage of monitoring and troubleshooting UCCE systems. Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE) is an indispensable resource to help you deploy and operate UCCE systems reliably and efficiently. · Understand the Cisco Unified Contact Center product portfolio and platform architecture · Choose the right single-site, multi-site, or clustered deployment model for your environment · Take a lifecycle services approach to UCCE deployment and application configuration-–including preparation, planning, design, and implementation · Implement traditional, current-generation, and next-generation call routing · Master the latest best practices for call flow scripting · Understand UCCE’s nodes and distributed processes and build a clean system startup sequence · Design, implement, and deliver unified CM/IP IVR solutions · Set up and efficiently manage UCCE databases · Make the most of UCCE’s reporting tools · Create advanced applications with Data-Driven Routing · Effectively maintain any UCCE deployment, including older versions · Use a best-practice methodology for troubleshooting, and master valuable, little-known Cisco diagnostic tools This IP communications book is part of the Cisco Press® Networking Technology Series. IP communications titles from Cisco Press help networking professionals understand voice and IP telephony technologies, plan and design converged networks, and implement network solutions for increased productivity.