Introducing Cisco Unified Computing System

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.

STUART FORDHAM, CCIE 49337, is the Network Manager and Infrastructure Team Leader for SmartCommunications SC Ltd, which is the only provider of a cloud-based, next-generation customer communications platform. Stuart has written a series of books on SD-WAN, BGP, MPLS, VPNs, and NAT, as well as a CCNA study guide and a Cisco ACI Cookbook. He lives in the UK with his wife and twin sons.

Chapter 1: Setting up UCSPE ( Cisco UCS Platform Emulator)

CHAPTER GOAL: TO SET UP UCSPE

NO OF PAGES 20

SUB -TOPICS

1. Downloading UCSPE

2. Importing UCSPE into VMWare

3. Starting UCSPE

4. Real-world UCS setup

Chapter 2: The hardware chapter

CHAPTER GOAL: AN EXPLANATION OF THE DIFFERENT HARDWARE THAT MAKES UP A UCS (Cisco Unified Computing System)

NO OF PAGES: 20

SUB - TOPICS

1. The Fabric Interconnect

2. Chassis and IOMs

3. FEX

4. Blade servers

5. Rackmount servers

Chapter 3: Northbound Networking and SAN

CHAPTER GOAL: TO UNDERSTAND THE UCS IN RELATION TO THE REST OF THE NETWORK

NO OF PAGES: 10

SUB - TOPICS

1. Physical connectivity and port-channels

2. VLANs

Chapter 4: Policies

CHAPTER GOAL: TO CREATE THE POLICIES WE NEED FOR CHAPTER 4

NO OF PAGES : 20

SUB - TOPICS:

1. Policies

2. Storage Policies

3. Dynamic vNIC connection policies

3. vNIC/vHBA Placementpolicies

4. vMedia policies

5. Server boot policies

6. Maintenance Policies

7. Server Pool policies

8. Operation policies

Chapter 5: Service Profiles and Templates

CHAPTER GOAL: TO USE THE POLICIES WE HAVE TO CREATE SERVICE PROFILES AND ASSIGN THEM TO OUR SERVERS

NO OF PAGES: 30

SUB - TOPICS:

1. Creating an Organization

2. Creating a Service Profile Template

3. Creating a Service Profile from a template

4. Assigning templates

Chapter 6: UCS Security

CHAPTER GOAL: TO SECURE OUR UCS ENVIRONMENT

NO OF PAGES: 20

SUB - TOPICS

1. AAA

2. Hardening the web interface

3. Hardening SSH

Chapter 7: Troubleshooting

CHAPTER GOAL: TO SECURE OUR UCS ENVIRONMENT

NO OF PAGES: 20

SUB - TOPICS

1. Error messages

2. SNMP

3. Call-home