UCS Performance Manager

Today I deployed UCS Performance Manager.  At first glance It appears to be a customized version of Zenoss with all the UCS goodies built into it so you can graph and trend over time the different metrics made available by the UCS API.  Therefore there is no agents that need to be installed.  I’m a…

UCS Reverse Path Forwarding and Deja-Vu checks

UCS Fabric Interconnects are usually always run in end-host mode.  At this point in the story there really isn’t that many reasons to use switch-mode on the Fabric Interconnects. Two checks, or features that make End Host Mode possible are Reverse Path Forwarding (RPF) checks and Deja-Vu checks. Reverse Path Forwarding Checks Each server in…

Fusion IO: Software Defined Storage

Originally Posted Dec 14, 2012 This week I was very privileged to go to Salt Lake City to Fusion IO headquarters and get a deep dive on their technology and how it differentiates from other competitors in the high speed, low latency storage market.  (Which is really starting to just be the general storage market these days…

Comparing HP blades to UCS in a 10 rack config

I really like infographics, so I thought I’d try to make my own.  I looked at a paper I wrote comparing 10 racks of UCS to 10 racks of HP blades.  The most astonishing numbers are the management.  My graphics can still use some work, but hey, you have to start somewhere, right?  Let me…

UCS: The Soul of a Server

One of the messages I’ve been putting to people in my UCS messaging lately is the concept of the soul of a server.  The soul of the server in a nutshell is its configuration, its policies, its associated hardware identifiers, its boot parameters etc.  Imagine the concept of a server you formerly loved.   When…

One of my favorite features of Cisco UCS: BIOS in service profiles

At the  Gartner data center conference in December 2010 they reported that  38% of IT costs are personnel.  Given that almost 40% of your cost in IT is personnel, it would make sense to invest in tools and equipment that make it so they can be as efficient as possible.  I’d like to illustrate how…