Matthew Wronkowski – Escalation Engineer Jose Martinez – Escalation Engineer Unified Computing System (UCS) 2.0 - New Hardware & Software Features

Matthew Wronkowski – Escalation Engineer

Jose Martinez – Escalation Engineer

Unified Computing System (UCS) 2.0 - New Hardware & Software Features

© 2011 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 2

Cisco Support Community – Expert Series Webcast Today’s featured experts are Cisco Support

Escalation Engineers Jose Martinez and Matthew Wronkowski

We also have Expert Panelists Dave McFarland & Mike Timm to help answering technical questions during the live session

2


Thank You for Joining Us Today Today’s presentation will include audience polling

questions

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Or, https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-22551





https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-22551




Polling Question 1

a) UCSM 2.0(1)

b) UCSM 1.4(1) or 1.4(3)

c) UCSM 1.3(1)

d) Don’t have a UCS system at this time

e) Other release

What Cisco UCS Manager (UCSM) software are you currently using?


Submit Your Questions NowUse the Q&A panel to submit your questions. Experts will start responding those

Matthew Wronkowski – Escalation Engineer

Jose Martinez – Escalation Engineer

Unified Computing System (UCS) 2.0 - New Hardware & Software Features


Agenda UCS 2.0 Hardware Introduction

UCS 6248 Fabric Interconnect

UCS 2208XP I/OM

Port-channel support

VIC 1280 adapter

UCS 2.0 Software IntroductioniSCSI boot support

Disjointed L2 support

VMDirectPath with vMotion

RedHat KVM with VM-FEX

HDD Health Status

UCS 2.0 Hardware Introduction

UCS 6248UP Fabric Interconnect


UCS 6248UP Fabric Interconnect 2nd Generation of 1RU Fabric Interconnect

PID: UCS-FI-6248UP

Total of 48 unified ports. 32 base board + 16 GEM

1/10GE and 1/2/4/8FC option

Slider based configuration for ports

New ASICs (Carmel / Sunnyvale) which improves many aspects of the switching capabilities:

• Lower latency (2 us)

• Bigger TCAM size (4k)

• Higher number of active VLANs (4k)

• Higher number of IGMP entries (2k)

• Better buffer allocation (higher number of buffer per port, number of unicast/multicast VoQ and egress queues among other)


UCS 6248UP Fabric Interconnect

Power Entry

Power Entry

Fan Module

Fan Module

Out of Band Mgmt10/100/1000

Console

Fabric InterconnectCluster Connectivity

N + N Redundant FANs

N + N Power Supplies

32 x Fixed ports: 1/10 GE or 1/2/4/8 FC Expansion Module (GEM)


UCS 6248UP Unified Ports

Use-cases

Native Fibre Channel

Flexible LAN & storage convergence based on business needs

Service can be adjusted based on the demand for specific traffic

FC Eth

Lossless Ethernet:1/10GbE, FCoE, iSCSI, NAS

Simplify switch purchase - remove ports ratio guess work

Increase design flexibility

Remove specific protocol bandwidth bottlenecks


UCS 6248UP Unified Ports

Ports on the base card or the Unified Port GEM Module can either be Ethernet or FC

Only a continuous set of ports can be configured as Ethernet or FC

Alternating Ethernet or FC are not supported

Ethernet Ports have to be the 1st set of ports

Port type changes take effect after next reboot of switch for Base board ports or power-off/on of the GEM for GEM unified ports.

Base card – 32 Unified Ports GEM – 16 Unified Ports

Eth FC Eth FC


UCS 6248UP Unified Ports• Each fabric is configured

independently

• Click on Fabric Interconnect

• Click on Configure Unified Ports

• Reboot warning displayed

• Require approx. 6 minutes

• Change SFP!


UCS 2208XP I/OM


UCS 2208XP I/OM

• 2nd Generation of IOModule (FEX)

• PID: UCS-IOM-2208XP

• 8x SFP+ uplinks for fiber or copper/twinax

• Total bandwidth per chassis 160Gig (80Gig per fabric)

• 32x GE ports to the backplane

• Access to blades can be discrete (pinned) or a port-channel connection

• Uses Woodside ASIC (Similar to Nexus 2232)

• Can operate with 1st Generation hardware

• Non-disruptive upgrade path


UCS 2208XP I/OM Throughput Increase

1st Generation 2nd Generation

2208XP

80 GigPer fabric


UCS 2208XP I/OM Discrete Mode

Slot 1 Slot 2

Slot 3 Slot 4

Slot 5 Slot 6

Slot 7 Slot 8

Slot 1 Slot 2

Slot 3 Slot 4

Slot 5 Slot 6

Slot 7 Slot 8

Double blade throughput using “Discrete” mode

10Gb per blade 20Gb per blade

1st Generation 2nd Generation


Port-Channel Support


Port-channel Support

Up to 8 * 10 Gb aggregated bandwidth to each fabric in a chassis. Only supported with combination of 6248 FI and 2208 IOM. Port-channel is optional, default mode discrete (same as 1.4) UCSM automatically configures fabric-port-channel based on Discovery

Policy and Hardware Capability Per chassis connection policy Discrete to port-channel is per side change to minimize disruption (no

explicit re-ack is required) Better redundancy. Add/remove PO members will cause traffic re-

distribution Supported no of links in a port-channel: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 or 8 Load Balancing

• Better traffic distribution among IOM uplinks and thus better link utilization

• Load balancing NOT user-configurable, implicitly managed by UCSM


Chassis Discovery Policies• Global Discovery Policy

• Per-Chassis Policy


UCS I/OM Mode Comparison4 LINKS, DISCREET

slot 1

slot 2

slot 3

slot 4slot 5slot 6slot 7

slot 8

FEX

8 LINKS, DISCREET

slot 1

slot 2

slot 3

slot 4slot 5slot 6slot 7

slot 8

8 LINKS, PORT-CHANNEL

Available Bandwidth Per Blade—10 Gb(5gb Per Side)

Available Bandwidth Per Blade—20 Gb

(10 Gb Per Side)

Available Bandwidth Per

Blade—up to 160 Gb (80 Gb Per Side)

Fabric Interconnect

Fabric Interconnect

Fabric Interconnect

FEX

FEX

• Statically pinned to Individual fabric links

• Deterministic Path

• Statically pinned to Individual fabric links

• Deterministic Path

• No oversubscription, each blade gets 20 Gb

• Statically pinned to Port-channel

• Shared bandwidth, better bandwidth utilization.


UCS VIC1280


UCS VIC 1280

Dual 4x 10 GE port-channels to a single server slot Host connectivity PCIe Gen2 x16 HW Capable of 256 PCIe devices

• OS restriction apply PCIe virtualization OS independent (same as M81KR) Single OS driver image for both M81KR and 1280 VIC Fabric Failover supported

• 128 VIFs (116 user VIFs) when paired with UCS 6148 FI and 2208 I/OM

• Port-channel configuration done automatically by system


UCS VIC 1280

UCS Blade Server

VIC 1280

2208 IOM 2208 IOM

Fabric Interconnects

Adaptor Links PC

(user configurable)

(system configured)


UCS VIC 1280

Pinned to PC

IOM 2208VIC 1280 adaptor with DCE links in Port Channel

Regular adaptor with single 10G link

• No slot based pinning• Port-Channel to Port-Channel pinning• No Invalid Link Count


New Hardware CompatibilityFabric Interconnect

IOM Adapter Connectivity benefits per side

6100 2104 UCS M81 KR Fabric and host connectivity same as Balboa 1.4(1)

6100 2208 UCS M81 KR All 8 IOM ports in discrete mode10 Gb to the host

6100 2104 UCS1280 VIC 4 IOM ports in discrete mode5 Gb to the host

6100 2208 UCS1280 VIC All 8 IOM ports in discrete mode40 Gb to the host

6200 2104 UCS M81 KR 4 IOM ports in discrete mode5 Gb to the host

6200 2208 UCS M81 KR All 8 IOM ports can be leveraged in Port-channel mode10 Gb to the host

6200 2104 UCS1280 VIC All 8 IOM ports in discrete mode10 Gb to the host

6200 2208 UCS1280 VIC All 8 IOM ports can be leveraged in Port-channel mode40 Gb to the host


Maximum VIFs supported by hardware

Generation 1 hw Generation 2 hw

Fabric Interconnect

61xx (Gatos)512 max vifs

128 max vifs (per switch port)

62xx (Carmel)4096 max-vifs

Flexible allocation across switch ports

IO Module 2104 (Redwood) Pre-defined vntag offsets

for 8 slots

2208 (Woodside)Dynamic global vntag

translation

Adaptor Card

M81KR (Palo)128 vntag namespace

VIC 1280 (Sereno)256 vntag namespace


VIF Allocation Scheme

Max no. of user vifs (vnics+vhbas) available to a slot (adaptor) = (15*n) – 2 n = no. of acknowledged iom uplinks

Max no. of user vifs (vnics+vhbas) available to a slot (adaptor) = (63*n) – 2 n = no. of acknowledged iom uplinks

• Generation 1

• Generation 2


Polling Question 2

a) Yes, UCS 6248 FI

b) Yes, UCS 2208XP I/OM

c) Yes, UCS 6248 FI and UCS 2208XP I/OM

d) Not yet

Have you deployed new hardware in your environment?


Submit Your Questions NowUse the Q&A panel to submit your questions. Experts will start responding those

UCS 2.0 Software Introduction

iSCSI Boot Support


iSCSI Boot Support

Allows stateless model with no FC or FCoE in the environment Limited adapter support

• Cisco VIC and VIC-1280 (iBFT only, no iSCSI offloads)

• Broadcom 57711 M51KR (full offload, iSCSI HBA)

Operating System support • ESXi 4.1U1

• Windows 2008 R2 and R2SP1

• RHEL 5.6, 6.0 and 6.1

iSCSI Hardware Offload is not a requirement to support booting, only supporting iSCSI Boot Firmware Table (iBFT) in the option ROM

This is the first UCS release represents an iSCSI device in the model as well as the GUI/CLI/API

New pools and policies to support iSCSI vNIC attributes in the LAN tab


iSCSI Service Profiles

A service profile for iSCSI boot will have subtle changes from a normal Service Profile. There is now an iSCSI vnic that needs to be created. Creating a Service Profile iSCSI boot must be done from the Expert Service Profile creation tool.

There is an iSCSI adapter policy that needs to be used with the Service Profile. We will go over the policy and variables and what they do.

There is also a new IP pool that can be used to automatically assign IP addresses to the iSCSI vnics.

One caveat is an option for a pool of iqn initiator names that can automatically be assigned to iSCSI intitiators. For now this needs to be filled in by hand by the user. An enhancement for this is in the works.


iSCSI Adapter Policy Broadcom

• For installs, Boot to Target must be disabled. This forces the blade to bypass a bootable disk image and gain access to vMedia/DVD/PXE for installation

• After installation, Boot to Target must be enabled

• You can create an install policy and boot policy and change the SP as needed

• Or set the boot policy and during the initial install, break into Broadcom option ROM and disable Boot to Target (one time only)

• OS support for TCP off-load

VIC• No TCP off-load support

• Boot-to-Target is not used


Disjointed L2 Support


Disjointed L2 Support Non-symmetric VLANs on uplink

Multiple Layer 2 networks upstream

Native support in End-Host mode allows simplification of configuration (no need for Switch mode)

By default 1.4 behavior is preserved (all VLANs present in all uplinks)

Hardware independent feature (supported in 6100 and 6200 FI)

Max of 31 disjointed Layer 2 domains supported

Overlapping VLAns are not supported

Per VLAN broadcast/multicast listener


Disjointed L2 Support• UCS pre-2.x

Network 1VLAN 10,20,31,32

FI-A BIF 1 BIF 2 BIF 3

FI-BBIF 1 BIF 2 BIF 3



Network 1VLAN 10,20

BIF 1 BIF 2 BIF 3

Network 2VLAN 31,32

Network 3VLAN 11,12

BIF 1 BIF 2 BIF 3

• UCS 2.x

FI-A FI-B





Data traffic from VM bypasses hypervisor

Available in vSphere 5.0

Other names it is known by• VM-FEX High Performance Mode

• UPT

• VMDirectPath Gen2

Co-exists with standard mode – Cisco VIC required

Does not follow the vNetwork distributed switch model –PCI devices explicitly assigned

UCS specifically called out in vSphere 5 Networking Guide


Modes of VM-FEX

vSphere

Standard Mode

vEth

vEth

vNIC

vNIC vNIC

vNIC

High Performance Mode (UPT)

vSphere

vEth

vEth

Standard Mode Each VM gets a dedicated

PCIe device 12%-15% CPU performance

improvement Appears as distributed

vNetwork switch to hypervisor

vMotion supported

High Performance Mode

Co-exists with Standard mode

Bypasses Hypervisor layer

30% improvement in I/O performance

Appears as distributed vNetwork switch to hypervisor

vMotion supported


VMDirectPath Rules of Engagement

A VM vNIC always connects to VM-FEX in standard mode. If it is marked for UPT, ESX will attempt to switch it to UPT after few seconds. ESX will always switch a VM vNIC to standard mode before disconnecting from VM-FEX. Ex. vMotion.

• During mode switches, some packets are dropped. This is acceptable because the higher level protocols will retransmit.

• The mode switches are invisible to the guest OS. He does not know if his vNIC is in standard or UPT mode

• The mode switch between is not a link transition (up/down) on the network. As said before, it is invisible to the OS.


RedHat KVM with VM-Fex


RedHat KVM with VM-Fex Adapter FEX extends port-extender (Pre-standard 802.1Qbh) architecture

to PCIe bus on hosts – to virtualize the network/cable/NIC construct

VM-FEX further extends port-extender architecture to virtual machines

Each VM gets its own PCIe device and a virtual port on the UCS Fabric Interconnect

Architecture for VMware has been around since ESX4.0 update 1

VM-FEX with KVM works with the VIC adapters for hardware-based switching to VM interfaces


RedHat KVM with VM-Fex

……

UCS Switch

Cis

co V

IC

Adapter Port

Switch Port

……

Use

rK

erne

l

Macvtap Interface

Netdev Interface

Libvirt

ManagementTools

Netlink Socket

Application

virtio-net

eth1

Macvtap 1

vhost-net

KVM

Guest OS

Guest 2

Application

virtio-net

Guest OS

Guest 1

eth2

Macvtap 2

vhost-net

eth0 ethn

PF VF1 VF2 VFn

Port Profile1: Qos1, vlan1


Veth 1 Veth 2




HDD Health Status


HDD Health Status New HDD Fault Monitoring provides UCSM with blade-resident HDD

status

Important because: Previous releases provided no HDD status to UCSM

Feature only applies to B200 and B250 blade (LSI 1064E Raid Controller)

No support for c-series

Only error conditions that can be reported by the LSI1064E to the CIMC are covered

For each HDD slot only one unidirectional fault signal from the LSI1064E to the CIMC


References Cisco Support Community

https://supportforums.cisco.com/

Unified Computing System Communityhttps://supportforums.cisco.com/community/netpro/data-center/unified-computing

Cisco.com pageshttp://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10265/index.html

Support pages: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/ps11544/tsd_products_support_series_home.html

Designing Secure Multi-Tenancy into Virtualized Data Centershttp://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Data_Center/Virtualization/securecldg.html

https://supportforums.cisco.com/




http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps10265/index.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/ps11544/tsd_products_support_series_home.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/ps11544/tsd_products_support_series_home.html

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Data_Center/Virtualization/securecldg.html





Books Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS)

http://www.ciscopress.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=1587141930

I/O Consolidation in the Data Centerhttp://www.ciscopress.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=158705888X

Network Virtualizationhttp://www.ciscopress.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=1587052482

Data Center Fundamentalshttp://www.ciscopress.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=1587050234



http://www.ciscopress.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=158705888X

http://www.ciscopress.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=158705888X







Recommended Reading For YourReference


Polling Question 3

a) Yes

b) No, I am using Fibre Channel

c) No, but planning to migrate

d) No, I have no plans of migrating

Are you currently doing stateless boot with Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI)?


Q&A


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Ask The Experts Event (with Jose and Matthew

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You can watch the video or read the Q&A 5 business days after the event athttps://supportforums.cisco.com/community/netpro/ask-the-expert/webcasts

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Next CSC Expert Series Webcast in Portuguese

Tuesday February 14, at 1:30 p.m. Rio de Janeiro time (UTC-2 hours)

3:30 p.m WET Lisbon (UTC),

7:30 a.m PST San Francisco (UTC -8 hours)

Join Cisco Support Engineer

Valter Pereira

During the live event you will learn about the features of Cisco IronPort ESA (Cisco IronPort Email Security Appliance), how to manage it and how to troubleshoot most common issues.

During this interactive session you will be able ask all your questions related to this topic.

You can register at: https://supportforums.cisco.com/community/portuguese or directly athttp://tools.cisco.com/gems/cust/customerSite.do?METHOD=E&LANGUAGE_ID=P&PRIORITY_CODE=4&SEMINAR_CODE=S15938

Topic: Cisco IronPort Email Security Technology

https://supportforums.cisco.com/community/portuguese


http://tools.cisco.com/gems/cust/customerSite.do?METHOD=E&LANGUAGE_ID=P&PRIORITY_CODE=4&SEMINAR_CODE=S15938





Next CSC Expert Series Webcast in Polish

Tuesday February 21, at 10:00 a.m CEST Warsaw

9:00 a.m London

Join Cisco Support Engineer

Mateusz Grajewski

During the live event you will learn how to increase the effectiveness and reliability of wireless transmission through the use of Cisco wireless network technologies such as ClientLink, BandSelect, VideoStream, and CleanAir

During this interactive session you will be able ask all your questions related to this topic.

You’ll be able to register starting next Thursday at

https://supportforums.cisco.com/community/etc/netpro-polska

Topic: Wireless Transmission Optimization Technologies Available at Cisco Devices




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Matthew Wronkowski – Escalation Engineer Jose Martinez – Escalation Engineer Unified Computing System (UCS) 2.0 - New Hardware & Software Features