{"id":593,"date":"2012-05-08T16:11:28","date_gmt":"2012-05-08T22:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benincosa.com\/blog\/?p=593"},"modified":"2014-11-19T11:24:53","modified_gmt":"2014-11-19T17:24:53","slug":"ucs-rainbows-6500s-and-the-soul-of-a-server","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benincosa.com\/?p=593","title":{"rendered":"UCS: Rainbows, 6500s, and the Soul of a Server"},"content":{"rendered":"

My day job is to be an advocate for Cisco UCS<\/a> in my customer’s data center. \u00a0Its a great gig. \u00a0Its much easier to back a product when you actually believe in it. \u00a0I thought I’d write down some of the ideas that I talk about with my customers on this blog.<\/p>\n

Rainbows In the Data Center<\/h2>\n

Rack mount servers are still all the rage in many organizations. \u00a0And so is Gigabit Ethernet. \u00a0VMware best practices<\/a> suggest that you have separate networks for management, vMotion, I\/O, and VM traffic. \u00a0Using NIC Teaming you get something that looks like this beautiful picture:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(source: \u00a0Not sure, some Cisco person’s power point I stole)<\/p>\n

You’ll notice that people color code these cables so they can tell which network goes to what. \u00a0The result is a beautiful rainbow flowing out of each server. \u00a0Then, Rainbow Brite<\/a> and her sprite buddy Wink and her stallion Starlite can aid you in managing this big mess.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The account team at Cisco responsible for selling you switches loves this because for every cable you buy, you need to connect it to a switch port. \u00a0This is why we tell everybody that going with UCS is a strategic decision. \u00a0Do you want to continue investing in lots of Gigabit Ethernet Switches or consolidate with 10GbE? \u00a0UCS gets rid of the rainbows. \u00a0Yes, rainbows are pretty, but you don’t want them to get out of hand. \u00a0Rainbows do strange things to people (especially if you have more than one)<\/a>. \u00a0Sometimes they can be just too much, and too intense.<\/p>\n

UCS gets you instant 10GbE as well as consolidation. \u00a0I did a comparison for a customer who was looking to buy a “pod” of rack mount servers and compared it to what it would take to buy the\u00a0equivalent\u00a0UCS. \u00a0Each “pod” consisted of 44 2-socket CPU servers. \u00a0Each server had 6 Gigabit Ethernet ports required as well as 2 HBAs to connect to the SAN. \u00a0The comparison was pretty eye opening. \u00a0By going with a UCS strategy the following benefits were realized:<\/p>\n