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This chapter includes the following sections:
Cisco UCS Central, release 1.2 allows you to take charge of the data center environment by delivering easy to use, integrated solution for managing Cisco UCS Domains from a single management point, both in data centers and remote management locations, with high availability. With Cisco UCS Central 1.2, you can efficiently manage server, storage and network policies and generate network traffic reports for your entire data center. The following table lists major new features and functions in this release:
Feature | Functions |
---|---|
Unified KVM Launcher |
Ability to launch Cisco UCS Manager KVM console from Cisco UCS Central log in panel. |
Estimate Impact on Reconnect |
Ability to estimate impact when a Cisco UCS domain reconnects after lost visibility or suspended state. |
Precision Boot Order Control |
Ability to support additional options including Local Drives, SD Card, Remote Virtual Device, etc in boot policy. |
Fault Summary Panel |
One click navigation ability to UCS Central Faults, UCS Domains Faults and Pending Activities panel from the new top level fault summary panel. |
Virtual MIT |
Single interface, XML API endpoint for all Cisco UCS Central DMEs. Simplifies scripting and product integration using XML API. |
Other enhancements |
WAN optimizations, FI configuration for Server and Ethernet uplink FI ports, Inventory for 6324 FI-IOM and scalability ports. |
Cisco UCS Central, release 1.1(2a) and newer provides you the ability to manage multiple Cisco UCS domains with different versions of Cisco UCS Manager at the same time. Cisco UCS Central identifies feature capabilities of each Cisco UCS domain at the time of domain registration. This ability enables you to seamlessly integrate multiple versions Cisco UCS Manager with Cisco UCS Central for management and global service profile deployment.
When you upgrade your Cisco UCS Central to a newer release, based on the features you are using, you might not have to upgrade all of your Cisco UCS Manager release versions to make sure the registered UCS domains are compatible with Cisco UCS Central.
When you register a Cisco UCS domain in Cisco UCS Central, along with the inventory information Cisco UCS Central receives the following information from the domain:
The available features are sent as a management capability matrix to Cisco UCS Central. Based on this information Cisco UCS Central builds a list of supported features for each registered domain. Based on the feature capabilities in a Cisco UCS domain, Cisco UCS Central decides if certain global management options are possible in the domain. When you perform management tasks, such as deploying a global service profile on a group of domains that include earlier versions of Cisco UCS Manager instances, based on the feature capability matrix, Cisco UCS Central does the following:
Delivers the task only to the supported domains.
Displays a version incompatibility message for the domains where the feature is not supported.
You can view supported features in a Cisco UCS domain using the Cisco UCS Central CLI. Based on the Cisco UCS Manager versions in the registered Cisco UCS domains, Cisco UCS Central CLI builds list of supported features in the following four categories:
Multi-version support also provides you the ability to exclude some features from global management. You can log into a registered UCS domain and turn off a specific feature from Cisco UCS Manager CLI. You can disable the following global management capabilities:
Global service profile deployment: If you deploy global service profile on a server pool, and you have disabled global service profile deployment in one of the servers in the pool, Cisco UCS Central excludes the server from the global service profile deployment.
In band management: A service profile with inband management capability will not be deployed on the servers where you have excluded inband management feature.
Policy mapping: This will disable importing policies or policy components from this Cisco UCS domain into Cisco UCS Central.
Remote management: This will restrain controlling physical devices in a Cisco UCS domain from Cisco UCS Central.
You can enable these features any time using the Cisco UCS Manager CLI to restore global management capabilities in the registered Cisco UCS domains at anytime.
The following table provides a list of features in Cisco UCS Central, and Cisco UCS Manager release versions in which these features are supported:
Cisco UCS Central Features |
Supported Cisco UCS Central Versions |
Supported Cisco UCS Manager Versions |
|||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2.1(2a)/2.1(3x) |
2.2(1x) |
2.2(2x)/2.2(3x) |
3.0(1x) |
||||||
Multi-version management support and viewing supported Cisco UCS Manager features |
1.1(2a) |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
||||
Importing policy/policy component and resources |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|||||
Specifying remote location for backup image files |
No |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
|||||
3rd party certificate |
No |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
|||||
IPv6 inband management support |
No |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
|||||
Estimate Impact on Reconnect |
1.2(1a) |
No |
No |
Yes
|
Yes |
||||
Precision Boot Order Control |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|||||
Scriptable vMedia |
1.2(1e) and later |
No |
No |
Yes
|
No
|