Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card 1400 Series Data Sheet

Cisco Unified Computing System overview

The Cisco Unified Computing System^™ (Cisco UCS^®) is a next-generation data center platform that unites computing, networking, storage access, and virtualization resources in a cohesive system designed to reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increase business agility. The system integrates a low-latency, lossless 10/25/40-Gigabit Ethernet network fabric with enterprise-class blade and rack x86-architecture servers. The system is an integrated, scalable, multichassis platform in which all resources participate in a unified management domain.

Portfolio overview

The Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card (VIC) 1400 Series (Figure 1) extends the network fabric directly to both servers and virtual machines so that a single connectivity mechanism can be used to connect both physical and virtual servers with the same level of visibility and control. Cisco^® VICs provide complete programmability of the Cisco UCS I/O infrastructure, with the number and type of I/O interfaces configurable on demand with a zero-touch model.

Cisco VICs support Cisco SingleConnect technology, which provides an easy, intelligent, and efficient way to connect and manage computing in your data center. Cisco SingleConnect unifies LAN, SAN, and systems management into one simplified link for rack servers, blade servers, and virtual machines. This technology reduces the number of network adapters, cables, and switches needed and radically simplifies the network, reducing complexity. Cisco VICs can support 256 Express (PCIe) virtual devices, either virtual Network Interface Cards (vNICs) or virtual Host Bus Adapters (vHBAs), with a high rate of I/O Operations Per Second (IOPS), support for lossless Ethernet, and 10/40-Gbps connection to servers. The PCIe Generation 3 x16 interface helps ensure optimal bandwidth to the host for network-intensive applications, with a redundant path to the fabric interconnect. Cisco VICs support NIC teaming with fabric failover for increased reliability and availability. In addition, it provides a policy-based, stateless, agile server infrastructure for your data center.

The VIC 1400 series is designed exclusively for the M5 generation of UCS B-Series Blade Servers, C-Series Rack Servers, and S-Series Storage Servers. The adapters are capable of supporting 10/25/40-Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). It incorporates Cisco’s next-generation Converged Network Adapter (CNA) technology and offers a comprehensive feature set, providing investment protection for future feature software releases. In addition, the VIC supports Cisco’s Data Center Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX) technology. This technology extends the Cisco UCS fabric interconnect ports to virtual machines, simplifying server virtualization deployment.

Product overview

Cisco VIC 1440

The Cisco UCS VIC 1440 (Figure 2) is a dual-port 40-Gbps or dual 4x 10-Gbps Ethernet/FCoE capable modular LAN On Motherboard (mLOM) designed exclusively for the M5 generation of Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers. When used in combination with an optional port expander, the Cisco UCS VIC 1440 capabilities are enabled for two ports of 40-Gbps Ethernet. The Cisco UCS VIC 1440 enables a policy-based, stateless, agile server infrastructure that can present to the host PCIe standards-compliant interfaces that can be dynamically configured as either NICs or HBAs.

Cisco VIC 1480

The Cisco UCS VIC 1480 (Figure 3) is a dual-port 40-Gbps or dual 4x-Gbps Ethernet/FCoE capable mezzanine card (mezz) designed exclusively for the M5 generation of Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers. The card enables a policy-based, stateless, agile server infrastructure that can present PCIe standards-compliant interfaces to the host that can be dynamically configured as either NICs or HBAs.

Cisco VIC 1455

The Cisco UCS VIC 1455 (Figure 4) is a quad-port Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP28) half-height PCIe card designed for the M5 generation of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers. The card supports 10/25-Gbps Ethernet or FCoE. The card can present PCIe standards-compliant interfaces to the host, and these can be dynamically configured as either NICs or HBAs.

Cisco VIC 1457

The Cisco UCS VIC 1457 (Figure 5) is a quad-port Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP28) mLOM card designed for the M5 generation of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers. The card supports 10/25-Gbps Ethernet or FCoE. The card can present PCIe standards-compliant interfaces to the host, and these can be dynamically configured as either NICs or HBAs.

Features and benefits

The Cisco UCS VIC 1400 series provides the following features and benefits:

●   Stateless and agile platform: The personality of the card is determined dynamically at boot time using the service profile associated with the server. The number, type (NIC or HBA), identity (MAC address and World Wide Name [WWN]), failover policy, bandwidth, and Quality-of-Service (QoS) policies of the PCIe interfaces are all determined using the service profile. The capability to define, create, and use interfaces on demand provides a stateless and agile server infrastructure.

●   Network interface virtualization: Each PCIe interface created on the VIC is associated with an interface on the Cisco UCS fabric interconnect, providing complete network separation for each virtual cable between a PCIe device on the VIC and the interface on the Fabric Interconnect.

Next-generation data center features

A hardware classification engine provides support for advanced data center requirements, including stateless network offloads for VXLAN and NVGRE. Additional features support low latency kernel bypass for performance optimization via usNIC, DPDK, and server virtualization support using NetQueue and VMQ/VMMQ. The Cisco UCS VIC 1400 series provides high network performance and low latency for the most demanding applications:

●   Big data, High-Performance Computing (HPC)

●   Large-scale virtual machine deployments

●   High-bandwidth storage targets and archives

When the Cisco UCS VIC 1400 Series is connected to Cisco Nexus^® 9000 Series Switches, pools of virtual hosts scale with greater speed and agility. Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches provide native FCoE connectivity from the VIC to both Ethernet and Fibre Channel targets.

The Cisco VIC provides industry-leading performance and features.

Table 1 summarizes the main features and benefits of the Cisco UCS VIC 1400 Series.

Table 1.       Features and benefits

Product specifications

Table 2 lists the specifications for the Cisco UCS VIC 1400 Series.

Table 2.       Cisco UCS VIC 1400 Series specifications

Table 3.       Cisco UCS VICs, Fabric Interconnect, IOM, and Server Support

Transceiver and cable support

The Cisco UCS VIC supports a wide variety of Ethernet connectivity options using Cisco 10/25-Gbps transceivers and 10/25/40/100-Gbps passive cables and active optical cables.

Table 4 lists the supported transceiver options.

Table 4.       Cisco UCS VIC transceiver matrix

Table 5.       Cisco UCS VIC cable support matrix

Ordering information

Table 6 presents ordering information for the Cisco UCS VIC 1400 Series.

Table 6.       Ordering information

System requirements

The Cisco UCS VIC 1400 Series is designed for use only on Cisco UCS B-Series M5 Blade Servers, C-Series M5 Rack Servers, and S-Series M5 Storage Servers. Only one VIC 1457 mLOM can be supported on a Cisco UCS C220 M5 or C240 M5 Rack Server.

Warranty information

Find warranty information at Cisco.com on the Product Warranties page.

Cisco Unified Computing Services

Using a unified view of data center resources, Cisco and our industry-leading partners deliver services that accelerate your transition to a unified computing architecture. Cisco Unified Computing Services help you quickly deploy your data center resources, simplify ongoing operations, and optimize your infrastructure to better meet your business needs. For more information about these and other Cisco Data Center Services, visit https://www.cisco.com/go/unifiedcomputingservices.

Why Cisco?

The Cisco Unified Computing System continues Cisco’s long history of innovation in delivering integrated systems for improved business results based on industry standards and using the network as the platform. Recent examples include IP telephony, LAN switching, unified communications, and unified I/O. Cisco began the unified computing phase of our unified data center strategy several years ago by assembling an experienced team from the computing and virtualization industries to augment our own networking and storage access expertise. As a result, Cisco delivered foundational technologies, including the Cisco Nexus Family, supporting unified fabric and server virtualization. Cisco UCS completes this phase, delivering innovation in architecture, technology, partnerships, and services. Cisco is well positioned to deliver this innovation by taking a systems approach to computing that unifies network intelligence and scalability with innovative ASICs, integrated management, and standard computing components.

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For more information

For more information about Cisco UCS, visit

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