Cisco UCS X-Fabric Technology At-a-Glance
Available Languages
Bias-Free Language
The documentation set for this product strives to use bias-free language. For the purposes of this documentation set, bias-free is defined as language that does not imply discrimination based on age, disability, gender, racial identity, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and intersectionality. Exceptions may be present in the documentation due to language that is hardcoded in the user interfaces of the product software, language used based on RFP documentation, or language that is used by a referenced third-party product. Learn more about how Cisco is using Inclusive Language.
Applications are the heartbeat of your business
Many applications need specialized infrastructure to make them perform at their best. In-memory databases need large amounts of nonvolatile memory. Big-data applications need vast amounts of local disk storage. Artificial intelligence and machine learning applications need GPU accelerators. Virtual desktop environments need GPUs to enhance user experiences. Supporting this range of applications once required a diverse set of server types including blade and rack servers—until now. Today you can support the entire range of requirements with the Cisco UCS® X-Series Modular System with Cisco Intersight™.
Cisco UCS X-Fabric Technology gives you the capability to support a wider range of workloads—including those typically supported on rack servers—with the benefits of shared power, cooling, networking, and Intersight management. X-Fabric Technology extends each compute node’s PCIe bus to include devices such as Intel® and NVIDIA GPUs.
● Adaptable to any application with a single platform that blurs the line between blade and rack servers.
● Future-ready for new X-Fabric devices as they are made available.
● Cloud-operated with Cisco Intersight™.
The UCS X-Series modular system’s flexible design combines the density and efficiency of blade servers with the expandability of rack servers for better performance, automation, and efficiency. With compute nodes only, you can support applications such as big data and in-memory databases with their exceptional on-board storage and memory capacity. PCIe expansion nodes connected to compute nodes through Cisco UCS X-Fabric Technology can support applications such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and virtual desktop infrastructure.
This approach helps you:
● Standardize on a single system to support a wider range of applications, reducing staff and support costs.
● Simplify operations by eliminating silos and blurring the line between blade and rack servers.
● Increase operational efficiency and reliability through shared power, cooling, and management.
● Achieve your sustainability goals when modernizing your infrastructure.
Cisco UCS X-Fabric Technology is how we have engineered the Cisco UCS X-Series to be ready for whatever connectivity innovations the future brings. We chose “X” because it is the variable that can change over time.
The Cisco UCS 9416 X-Fabric Modules connect UCS X210c, X215c, and X410c server nodes to Cisco UCS X440p PCIe Nodes and the Cisco UCS 9516 X-Fabric Module to the Cisco UCS X580p PCIe Node. Tested and validated devices are AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA GPUs appropriate for accelerating AI/ML and VDI applications.
As new interconnect technologies emerge, new X-Fabric modules can provide more sophisticated capabilities.
Cisco UCS X-Series is powered by the Cisco Intersight cloud-operations platform. This Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering helps you define and shape compute, GPU, and fabric resources to the needs of your applications.
Cisco UCS X-Series with Intersight is designed to change and evolve as new technologies become available. Enhanced I/O, expanded NVMe capacity, pools of nonvolatile memory, liquid cooling, silicon photonics—all of these are future possibilities that the Cisco UCS X-Series is ready to support. With SaaS-based management, you get a constant stream of management innovations with new features to drive better outcomes. You don’t have to worry about inconsistency from product to product or management that doesn’t support new hardware features. They all arrive at the same time and they all work together.
Cisco UCS X-Fabric connectivity
For more information about modernizing your infrastructure with Cisco UCS X-Fabric Technology, go to https://cisco.com/go/ucsx. For all Cisco UCS Servers, please visit https://www.cisco.com/go/ucs.