Cisco UCS Director 4.1 on FlexPod Express

Virtual Machine Self-Service Portal Quick-Start Guide

Last Updated: February 10, 2014

Contents

What You Will Learn.................................................................................................................................................................. 3

Cisco UCS C220 M3 Rack Server Benefits.......................................................................................................................... 3

Challenges This Solution Addresses.................................................................................................................................... 4

Challenges.............................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Proposed Solution................................................................................................................................................................. 4

Design Overview......................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Prerequisites............................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Cisco UCS Director Installation and Configuration............................................................................................................ 8

Performing OVF Setup.......................................................................................................................................................... 8

Performing the Initial Setup............................................................................................................................................... 10

Configuring the Admin Account......................................................................................................................................... 20

Installing the Licenses....................................................................................................................................................... 24

Creating a Converged Pod................................................................................................................................................ 25

Adding NetApp Storage...................................................................................................................................................... 28

Adding Cisco Nexus Switches.......................................................................................................................................... 30

Adding Cisco UCS C220 Servers..................................................................................................................................... 32

Adding a VMware Virtual Account...................................................................................................................................... 34

Configuring User Login with LDAP and Local Users................................................................................................... 36

Creating Local Users and Groups (Optional)................................................................................................................ 41

Self-Service Portal: Virtual Machine Lifecycle Management........................................................................................ 43

Validating the Virtual Machine Template......................................................................................................................... 43

Creating Computing Policy................................................................................................................................................ 43

Creating Storage Policy...................................................................................................................................................... 44

Creating Network Policy..................................................................................................................................................... 46

Creating System Policy....................................................................................................................................................... 50

Adding OS Licenses........................................................................................................................................................... 53

Creating a Virtual Data Center.......................................................................................................................................... 55

Publishing a Catalog.......................................................................................................................................................... 59

Creating Limits for the Number of Virtual Machines..................................................................................................... 65

Creating a Default Cost Model.......................................................................................................................................... 66

Creating a Virtual Machine Through the Self-Service Portal........................................................................................ 67

Connecting to the Virtual Machine.................................................................................................................................... 71

FlexPod Express Management and Monitoring................................................................................................................ 74

Creating the Main Dashboard View................................................................................................................................. 74

Performing Resource Management and Monitoring.................................................................................................... 80

Conclusion................................................................................................................................................................................. 93

For More Information............................................................................................................................................................... 94

What You Will Learn

In this document you learn how to use Cisco UCS^® Director 4.1 to add value to FlexPod Express by simplifying management operations. This document presents a sample deployment for a self-service portal for virtual machines. It also shows you how to use the reporting and management functions.

Cisco UCS Director delivers unified converged infrastructure management for administering computing, networking, virtualization, and storage resources from one web interface. With features such as a self-service portal, bare-metal deployment, service catalog, orchestrator, and resource management, Cisco UCS Director consolidates day-to-day management operations in either your small or enterprise cloud data center.

This document shows you how to:

● Offload virtual machine deployment to end users through the self-service portal

● Monitor and manage FlexPod Express computing, storage, and networking resources using a single tool

● Track chargeback for virtual machines

Cisco UCS C220 M3 Rack Server Benefits

The new Cisco^® UCS C220 M3 Rack Server (one rack unit [1RU]) offers superior performance and density over a wide range of business workloads. The enterprise-class Cisco UCS C220 M3 server further extends the capabilities of the Cisco^® portfolio with the addition of the Intel^® Xeon^® processor E5-2600 and E5-2600 v2 product families, which deliver significant performance and efficiency gains. The Cisco Integrated Management Controller (IMC), is used to manage and monitor Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers. Cisco IMC provides options such as a web GUI, command-line interface (CLI), and intelligent platform management interface (IPMI) for management and monitoring tasks. These features are built into Cisco IMC to help simplify deployment and remote management of servers and eliminate the need for expensive separate IP keyboard, video, and mouse (KVM) console solutions. This server, along with Cisco Nexus^® Family switches and NetApp FAS 2200 Series storage, provides a simple-to-manage cloud solution.

Challenges This Solution Addresses

The solution presented in this document presents a real-life set of challenges and shows how administrators can use Cisco UCS Director with FlexPod Express to address these issues.

Challenges

These are the challenges that the solution needs to address:

● The engineering and quality assurance (QA) teams require virtual machines to test their software installations and validate problem fixes for their Microsoft Windows application. The current IT support ticket process takes 24 to 72 hours per virtual machine request. The engineering team needs to speed up deployment of virtual machines.

● The engineering team often requires virtual machines for only a few hours to check a problem, but the team doesn’t have the capability to remove virtual machines after tasks are completed. This causes the team to run out of resources. The engineering team wants to quickly remove unneeded virtual machines to free resources.

● The IT department is challenged by the need to measure virtual machine and storage use and keep up with demands. IT wants accurate reporting for chargeback for each Microsoft Windows Active Directory user group for better forecasting.

Note: Departments within a company often deploy and manage their own costly solutions to solve these challenges, which can lead to inefficient use of company resources and resource duplication. FlexPod Express and Cisco UCS Director can solve these and other common challenges to save money and simplify the solution.

Proposed Solution

For any solution, you should start with a few questions: What will success look like? How will you measure success? In response to these questions, the IT department is proposing a simple-to-deploy self-service portal that provides tracking data. IT is proposing deployment of FlexPod Express with the Cisco UCS Director self-service portal for the engineering team:

● With this solution, IT can create a web-based self-service portal to allow the engineering team to deploy its own virtual machines as needed. This process takes a few minutes, unlike the current process, which takes two days, and allows the engineering team to customize memory and CPU resources on demand. IT can also allow the engineering team to power off and remove virtual machines after the team is finished, to make better use of resources. Because the Cisco UCS Director portal is policy based, no additional overhead is needed for IT to provide additional customized virtual machine deployment options.

● Cisco UCS Director provides cost tracking and chargeback features for IT, so the solution is measurable. These features allow everyone involved to better plan resource allocation and to justify new purchases.

IT can connect through a single dashboard view for simple proactive management of the FlexPod Express deployment for simplified reporting and management of all FlexPod Express resources, including VMware, computing, storage, and network resources.

Design Overview

The FlexPod Express design used in this document (Figure 1) consists, at a physical level, of two Cisco Nexus 3048 Switches, two Cisco UCS C220 M3 Rack Servers, and a NetApp FAS2200 storage controller high-availability pair. The Cisco Nexus 3048 Switch, part of the Cisco Unified Fabric portfolio, is a 1 Gigabit Ethernet, top-of-rack (ToR) switch in a compact 1RU form factor. It delivers wire-rate Layer 2 and Layer 3 switching on the data center–class Cisco NX-OS Software operating system. Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers deliver unified computing in an industry-standard form factor to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and increase agility. NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP delivers all the enterprise capabilities you expect from NetApp, including unified storage (both SAN and network-attached storage [NAS]), integrated data protection, advanced storage efficiency, nondisruptive operations, and simplified management. The platform is designed with redundancy from the foundation to help ensure reliability for the networking, computing, and storage components that make up the pod.

At a logical level, Cisco UCS Director enables the administrator to connect to the entire hardware stack and manage it as single secure cloud container (Figure 2).

Prerequisites

This document assumes that you have followed the deployment procedure described in the NetApp Technical Report (http://www.netapp.com/us/media/tr-4261.pdf) for FlexPod Express with NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP.

The common core services listed here were enabled in the sample test environment and are thereby required to complete the steps in this document. The flexibility of Cisco UCS Director allows you to implement the deployment with local accounts instead of Microsoft Windows Active Directory and without Domain Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) if you prefer; however, the deployment described in this document uses those technologies.

Here are the prerequisites for the deployment described in this document:

● FlexPod Express deployed as described in the latest NetApp Technical Report at the NetApp website

● Working Active Directory infrastructure

● Routable network for resources accessed by end users such as virtual machines

● DHCP setup for virtual machines (preferred for ease of management)

● Optional: VMware vCenter Server configured for Microsoft Windows Active Directory login

● Microsoft Windows 2008 VMware template (already created as described in the NetApp Technical Report)

● Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) mail server that is accessible for status emails

● Recommended: Microsoft Windows Active Directory test group and test user account from which you can log in as the customer for testing (this document uses the Microsoft Windows group eng with a user in that group named enguser to log in and create a virtual machine through the self-service portal)

Table 1 lists the configuration values used in the sample deployment.

Table 1. Configuration Values Used in the Sample Deployment

Cisco UCS Director Installation and Configuration

Cisco UCS Director is designed to be simple to install and configure so that within a few hours you have a working portal and are achieving the benefits of the application. This section demonstrates how to apply a license and add hardware resources and how to add Microsoft Active Directory users and groups.

Performing OVF Setup

Cisco UCS Director is installed as a 64-bit appliance using the standard OVF template.

1. Download the Cisco UCS Director VMware OVF template from http://software.cisco.com/cisco/pub/software/portal/select.html?&i=!m&mdfid=284775897.

2. Open the VMware vSphere client for FlexPod Express.

3. Choose File > Deploy OVF Template and click Browse to navigate to the location of the downloaded Cisco UCS Director OVF file.

4. Select the OVF file and click Open; then click Next.

5. Click Next on the OVF Template Details page.

6. Read the terms of the end-user license agreement (EULA) and click Accept; then click Next.

7. Leave CUCSD-4.1.0.0 as the virtual machine name and choose the FlexPod Express Data Center as the inventory location; then click Next.

8. Select your FlexPod Express cluster and click Next.

9. For the storage location, choose Datastore infra_datastore_1; then click Next.

10. On the Disk Format page, click Next.

11. Choose MGMT-Network as the destination network and click Next.

12. Leave DHCP selected on the IP allocation page and click Next.

13. Click Finish. The import process will begin, and the progress of the import process will be displayed on the screen.

14. Click Close after this operation is complete.

Performing the Initial Setup

In this section you configure the Cisco UCS Director virtual machine on VMware.

1. You should upgrade the reserved resources for the newly created virtual machine. Right-click the Cisco UCS Director virtual machine and choose Edit Settings.

2. Select the Resources tab.

3. Select CPU and change the Reservation value to 4000 MHz; then select Memory and change the Reservation value to 4000 MB.

4. Click the Options tab and select VMware Tools. Then select “Synchronize guest time with host” and click OK to save the changes.

5. Right-click the CUCSD-4.1.0.0 virtual machine and choose Power > “Power on.”

6. Right-click the CUCSD-4.1.0.0 virtual machine and choose Open Console to configure Cisco UCS Director. Wait for the first-time boot script to run to help you configure IP

7. For “Do you want to Configure static IP?” enter n for no because you will configure IP after bootup. The boot process will take a few minutes.

8. After bootup is complete, you will see a login screen. (A DHCP-assigned address may exist if you have DHCP running on this subnet.) Press Enter to select “Log in.” Log in as shelladmin and use the password changeme

9. At the Select prompt, enter 14 to configure the network interface.

10. For “Do you want to configure DHCP/STATIC IP?” enter s for static.

11. Enter Eth0 for the interface you will configure.

12. Enter y in response to the question about whether you want to configure static IP for eth0.

13. Enter the IP, netmask, gateway, and DNS server addresses.

14. Review the information and enter y to continue.

15. Press Enter to return to the menu and enter 1 to change the password.

16. Press Enter to return to the main menu.

17. Enter 26 to quit.

18. Note the URL to connect through your web browser.

19. Optional: For some browsers you may need to add the web URL to trusted sites to display them correctly. Open the browser and enter the URL for Cisco UCS Director. For example, choose Tools > Internet Options and select the Security tab. Select Trusted Sites and click Sites and add the address for your Cisco UCS Director system. Then click Add and then Close. Press F5 to refresh your browser.

20. Cisco UCS Director Release 4.1.0.2 or later is required to support FlexPod Express. To update your software, download the latest patch from http://www.cisco.com.

21. Place the software patch in the FTP or HTTP server that you plan to use to install the upgrade.

Note: You should take a snapshot of the virtual machine before you begin the upgrade.

22. Log into the Cisco UCS Director console through the VMware VSphere or SSH client as shelladmin and enter 3 to stop services. Enter y to confirm.

23. Enter 2 to display the status of services to confirm that all services are stopped.

24. Optionally, enter 7 to back up your database if you did not take a virtual machine snapshot.

25. Enter 19 to apply a patch and enter the full path to the ZIP file; then enter y to confirm

26. Wait for the download and installation process to complete; then press Enter to return to the main screen. Enter 4 to restart the services. You can enter 2 to check the service restart status.

27. After all services have restarted, enter 11 to display the new version.

Configuring the Admin Account

1. Connect to the URL for your Cisco UCS Director system using the IP address you assigned. For example, connect to https://10.29.100.179:443/.

2. Enter the username admin and the password admin; then click Login

3. Click OK to temporarily ignore the pop-up information message for the login profile.

4. Click Administration on the menu bar and choose Users and Group.

5. Click the Login Users tab, select admin, and click Change Password. Enter new password; then click Save and then OK.

6. Verify that you still have admin selected and click Edit

7. Enter the user email address, click Save, and then click OK.

8. Choose Administration > System.

9. Click the Mail Setup tab.

10. Enter the SMTP server IP address or hostname if you have a working DNS.

11. Enter the correct SMTP port (25 is the default).

12. Enter the outgoing email sender address.

13. Enter the server IP address of the Cisco UCS Director server.

14. Select Send Test Email.

15. Enter the test email address.

16. Click the Save button and verify that you get the message “Successfully update mail settings. Test email Succeeded.” Then click OK.

Installing the Licenses

Repeat this process for each license file provided.

1. Install the license by choosing Administration > License, then selecting the License Keys tab, and clicking Update License.

2. Click Browse and choose the license file that you received from Cisco. Select the file and click Open; then click Upload.

3. After you receive the message saying that the upload is complete, click OK and then click Submit.

4. Select the License Keys tab, click Refresh, and verify that you now have at least the base license and the FlexPod Express licenses installed.

Creating a Converged Pod

A pod is a collection of physical and virtual resources that can be managed together. You will create a site and a pod that will contain your FlexPod Express resources.

1. Add a site name by choosing Administration > Physical Accounts and then selecting the Site Management tab.

2. Click Add and enter the site name and contact name; then click Submit. After you see the message saying that the items have been added successfully, click OK.

3. Choose Converged from the main menu and click Add.

4. Enter a pod name and site and select either FlexPod Express Medium or Small depending on your license. Click Add.

Adding NetApp Storage

This procedure describes how to add the NetApp physical resources to the converged pod. Cisco UCS Director can report and manage these resources.

1. Choose Administration > Physical Accounts.

2. Click Add.

3. Choose the name of the pod that you created in the previous section.

4. For Category Type, choose Storage.

5. For Account Type, choose NetApp ONTAP.

6. For Account Name, enter the Data ONTAP cluster name.

7. For Server Address, enter the Data ONTAP cluster IP address.

8. For User ID, enter the Data ONTAP cluster administrator ID.

9. For Password, enter the Data ONTAP cluster password.

10. For Transport Type, choose https.

11. Optionally, enter details in the Description, Contact Email, Location, and Service Provider fields.

12. Click Add and then OK.

13. After the account has been added, select the newly added account from the list and click Test Connection.

14. A window displaying “Connection Successful” should appear. Click Close.

Adding Cisco Nexus Switches

In this section you add the Cisco switches to the pod. Repeat these steps for both Cisco Nexus 3048 Switches.

1. Choose Administration > Physical Accounts.

2. Click the Managed Network Elements tab.

3. Click Add Network Element.

4. Choose the pod you created.

5. For Device Category, choose Cisco Nexus OS.

6. For Device IP, enter the switch management IP address.

7. For Protocol, choose SSH.

8. For Port, enter 22.

9. For the login name, enter admin.

10. For the password, enter the switch administrator password.

11. In the Enable Password field, enter the password again.

12. Click Submit.

Note: This operation can take a few minutes to complete.

13. After the account has been added, repeat the same process for the other switch.

14. Select the newly added switches and click Test Connection. Then click Close.

Adding Cisco UCS C220 Servers

Here you add all the Cisco UCS C220 using the Cisco IMC management IP addresses.

1. Choose Administration > Physical Accounts and then click the Physical Accounts tab.

2. Click Add

3. Select the FlexPod Express pod that you created.

4. For Category Type, choose Computing.

5. For Account Type, choose Cisco Rack Server (CIMC).

6. For Account Name, enter the Cisco server host name.

7. For Server Address, enter the Cisco IMC IP address.

8. For User ID, enter a CIMC admin account.

9. For Password, enter the Cisco CIMC password.

10. For Transport Type, choose https.

11. For Port, enter 443.

12. Optionally add a description and contact email address.

13. Click Add and then OK.

14. After the account has been added, select the newly added account in the lower pane from the list of Cisco servers and click Test Connection. Then click Close.

Adding a VMware Virtual Account

In this section you add the VMware vCenter server to the converged pod so that Cisco UCS Director can manage the VMware infrastructure.

1. Choose Administration > Virtual Accounts and then click the Virtual Accounts tab.

2. Click Add.

3. In the Add Cloud pop-up menu, choose VMware as the cloud type.

4. After you choose VMware as the cloud type, the Add Cloud screen opens.

5. Enter the cloud name (for example, expresscloud).

6. For Server Address, enter the VMware vCenter IP address.

7. For Server User ID, enter the VMware vCenter administrator login account.

8. For Server Password, enter the VMware vCenter administrator password.

9. Leave Server Access Port setting and Server Access URL set to /sdk.

10. For Pod, enter the name of the pod you created (for example, FlexPod Express).

11. Click Add.

12. It can take a few minutes for Cisco UCS Director to complete the query of the VMware vCenter objects and the connection status to change to Success. After this process is complete, select the account and click Test Connectivity. Then click Close.

Configuring User Login with LDAP and Local Users

With Cisco UCS Director, you can use local accounts or integrate with Microsoft Active Directory. The example here shows how to integrate with Microsoft Active Directory so that all members of the Eng domain group can create virtual machines without the need to create new user accounts. You will also see how to create local accounts.

1. Choose Administration > Users and Groups.

2. Select the Authentication Preferences tab.

3. Change the authentication preference to “LDAP First, failback to Local.”

4. Enter the user name (a domain administrator user or account with proper Microsoft Active Directory permissions).

5. Enter the password.

6. Enter the port number (the standard port for LDAP is 389).

7. Enter the IP address of the domain controller for the server.

8. For Domain Name, enter fully qualified domain name.

9. Select Test LDAP.

10. Click Save and then OK.

11. Select the LDAP Integration tab.

12. To get basic information, force synchronization by clicking Request LDAP Sync and clicking Submit; then clickOK.

13. Click Search BaseDN.

14. Choose Select from the pop-up menu to display a list, and select the box for the correct search base domain name (for example, cn=users).

15. Click Select.

16. Click Submit and then OK.

17. To update the records again, click Request LDAP Sync and then click Submit; then click OK.

18. Click Refresh. This time you should see success messages.

19. Select the Login Users tab and click Refresh. You should see the domain users listed.

Creating Local Users and Groups (Optional)

With Cisco UCS Director, you can use local accounts instead of Microsoft Windows Active Directory accounts. Here you create a group and user in that group. You can use these users for production or test purposes prior to rollout. If you already set up Microsoft Active Directory integration and you don’t need local accounts, you can skip this section.

1. Create a local group by choosing Administration > Users and Groups. Then, on the Users Groups tab, clickAdd.

2. Enter the local group name and email address and click Add. Then click OK when the group is addedsuccessfully.

3. Click the Login Users tab and click Add to add a new user. Leave the user type set to the default and choose the local user group created in the previous step. Enter the login name, password, and user email address. Click Add and then OK when the user is created successfully.

Self-Service Portal: Virtual Machine Lifecycle Management

This section discusses how to create and manage provisioning service requests to create the self-service portal to create virtual machines. In this example, you will allow customers to create, modify, connect, power on, power off, and destroy virtual machines from their web portals in Cisco UCS Director.

Validating the Virtual Machine Template

You should have a virtual machine template with Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 that you created when you deployed you FlexPod Express. If you do not have a template, refer to the NetApp Technical Report and create a template to deploy. Validate that the template is on the correct VMware network. The template must have Remote Desktop connections enabled.

Creating Computing Policy

Cisco UCS Director provides a self-service portal through which virtual machines are provisioned from a pool of assigned resources using predefined policies set by administrators.

A policy is a group of rules that determines where and how a new virtual machine is provisioned within the infrastructure on the basis of the availability of system resources.

Cisco UCS Director requires the setup of four policies to provision virtual machines: computing, storage, network, and system. Here you create the policies for the portal starting with the computing policy, which will allow you to select certain VMware attributes that the end user can change.

1. Choose Polices > Computing.

2. Verify that the VMware Computing Policy tab is open and select the default policy and click Edit.

3. Change the name in the Policy Description field (for example, enter FlexPod Express Computing Policy), leave the other values at the default settings, and click Save; then OK.

Creating Storage Policy

The storage policy allows you to select the storage based on the attributes and customize the actions that the end user can perform for virtual machine creation. In this procedure, you restrict the policy to the NFS datastore.

1. Choose Policies > Storage.

2. Click the VMware Storage Policy tab. Select the default policy and click Edit.

3. Change the policy description (for example, enter FlexPod Express Storage Policy).

4. Deselect the storage options for local storage and SAN, leaving only NFS selected.

5. Click Next.

6. Click Submit on the System Disk Policy page and then click OK.

Creating Network Policy

The network policy allows you to add a specific network interface card (NIC) to a virtual machine. Here you will customize the NIC to use a certain VLAN ID.

1. Choose Policies > Network

2. Click the VMware Network Policy tab.

3. Select the default policy.

4. Click Edit and rename the description (for example, enter FlexPod Express Network Policy).

5. Click the plus sign to add a network.

6. Enter a NIC alias name (for example, nic1).

7. For Adapter Type, choose VMXNET

8. In the Port Groups pane, click the plus sign to add a port group; for Port Group Name, choose Select.

9. Select a network for the virtual machine network with the VLAN; then click Select.

10. Leave use DHCP selected and click Submit.

11. Click OK at the success message; then click Submit in the Add entry screen.

12. Click OK for at success message; then click Submit on the network policy main screen.

13. Click OK.

Creating System Policy

The system policy allows you to make changes to the virtual machine that is created through the portal: the name generated, the template used, DNS settings, etc.

1. Choose Policies > Service Delivery.

2. Click the VMware System Policy tab.

3. Click Add.

4. Enter the policy name (for example, FlexPod Express VMware System Policy).

5. Change the VM Name Template to vm-SR${SR_ID} (avoid exceeding the 15-character name limitation). Make sure there are no trailing spaces.

6. Enter the DNS domain.

7. Change time zone to your time zone.

8. If desired, change the DNS Suffix List entry.

9. Change the DNS Server List entry to list the DNS server IP addresses. Use commas to separate entries for more than one server.

10. Change the virtual machine image type to Windows and Linux.

11. Scroll down using the right scroll bar.

12. In the Product ID field, enter Window2008. You will use this same value later when you enter licensinginformation.

13. Change the license mode to Per-Server.

14. Enter the number of licensed users.

15. Enter the password for administration.

16. Choose Workgroup.

17. Enter the name for the workgroup (for example, Myworkgroup).

18. Click Add and then click OK.

Adding OS Licenses

Cisco UCS Director can apply licenses to multiple catalogs through on OS license object. In this section, you create the object for later use.

1. Add OS licenses by choosing Policies > Service Delivery.

2. Select the OS License tab.

3. For Windows Version Name, enter Windows2008.

4. Enter your volume license key (or refer to the Microsoft knowledgebase article about client setup keys at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj612867.aspx).

5. Enter the license owner name.

6. Enter the organization name.

7. For License Mode, choose Per-Server.

8. Enter the number of licensed users.

9. Click Submit and then OK.

Creating a Virtual Data Center

A virtual data center (vDC) is an environment that combines virtual resources, operation details, rules, and policies to manage specific group requirements.

A group or organization can manage multiple vDCs, images, templates, and policies. Organizations can allocate quotas and assign resource limits for individual groups at the vDC level.

You can also define approvers’ specific to a vDC. The approver for a particular vDC must approve the request from users for virtual machine provisioning.

1. Choose Policies > Virtual Data Centers.

2. Click the vDC tab.

3. Click Add.

4. In the vDC Name field, enter a value (for example, FlexPod Express vDC).

5. Optionally enter a description.

6. Choose group that has access to this vDC (these users will be able to create virtual machines through the self-service portal. (This example uses the Microsoft Active Directory group eng)

7. Choose the cloud name.

8. Leave the approver blank for now.

9. Enter the provider support email address.

10. For System Policy, choose your edited VMware System Policy.

11. For Computing Policy, choose your edited Computing Policy.

12. For Network Policy, choose your edited Network Policy.

13. For Storage Policy, choose your edited Storage Policy.

14. Leave the default cost model.

15. Scroll to the bottom of the window with the right scroll bar and in the End User Self-Service Options lists, select VM Power Management and VM Deletion.

16. Click Add and then OK.

Publishing a Catalog

The end user will see a catalog (or multiple catalogs) for self-provisioning of virtual machines. A catalog item is created by the system administrator and defines parameters such as the cloud name and the name of the group to which the virtual machine is bound.

1. Choose Policies > Catalogs.

2. Click the Catalog tab.

3. Click Add.

4. In the Catalog Name field, enter FlexPod Express catalog.

5. Leave the catalog type set to Standard.

6. For the catalog icon, choose VM Windows Image 1.

7. For Selected Groups, choose Select and choose your Microsoft Windows group from the drop-down list. (In the example here, this catalog is available only to the Microsoft Active Directory eng group.)

8. Leave the cloud name set to Expresscloud or the name you entered.

9. Choose the template image created for Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 using the NetApp Technical Report.

10. Choose the Microsoft Windows license pool you created: Windows2008.

11. Click Next.

12. Enter the support contact email address.

13. Choose the correct OS.

14. Click Next.

15. Click Next on the “User credentials” screen.

16. Click Next on the Customization page.

17. Select the box to enable Remote Desktop configuration.

18. Click Next.

19. Click Submit

20. Click OK.

21. Select the catalog you created and click Deployability Assessment.

22. Verify that both host nodes are listed as deployable. (If they are not, revisit the preceding policy steps to correct any mistakes.)

Creating Limits for the Number of Virtual Machines

You can place limits on the number of resources that a group can create. Here you will create a limit of 50 total virtual machines for the Eng group.

1. Choose Administration > Users and Groups.

2. Select the Eng group.

3. Click Edit Resource Limits.

4. Choose Enable Resource Limits.

5. Select the Enable Resource Limits box.

6. For Maximum Active VM Count, enter a number for the group (for example, 50). Then click Save and then OK.

Creating a Default Cost Model

You will edit the default cost model to create a very simple cost model to see how the cost model can help you. A variety of options are available to track use costs. You can track unit-level costs such as and RAM and CPU.

1. Choose Policies > Service Delivery and click the Cost Model tab.

2. Click Edit for the default cost model.

3. For One Time Cost, enter 50.

4. For VM Costs, enter 0.25 for both the active and inactive virtual machine costs.

5. Click Save and then OK.

Creating a Virtual Machine Through the Self-Service Portal

In this section you create a virtual machine from a Microsoft Active Directory user account to see how the self-service portal can simplify deployment. You can provide this service to individual groups in your company to save time. For example, when the engineering group needs a virtual machine to test the latest version of software, the group no longer needs to burden the IT group. The engineering group can create the virtual machine through the portal. Other groups can have unique settings and virtual machines, too.

1. Log into Cisco UCS Director as a member of the Microsoft Active Directory Eng group. This is the account previously assigned to the catalog (for example, enter enguser).

2. Click the Catalog icon in the top menu.

3. Select the FlexPod Express catalog that you created.

4. Click Create Request.

5. Click Next.

6. Click Next.

7. Choose 2 CPU cores.

8. Choose 4 GB of memory.

9. Click Next.

10. Click Next.

11. Click Submit and then OK.

12. Check the progress of the job. Click the Services icon.

13. Select the request and click View Details.

14. You will see the service request proceeding as well as costs for three months, etc.

15. Click Close.

Connecting to the Virtual Machine

The Microsoft Active Directory users named Enguser can use the Cisco UCS Director interface to connect and manage the virtual machines they created. The web interface allows them to connect through the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) session to the virtual machine and to power the virtual machines on and off. Because you added the capability to destroy a virtual machine in the policy you created, after a user powers off a virtual machine, the user can delete it. Users also can see the costs of the virtual machines they are using.

1. After virtual machine creation is complete, connect to the virtual machine by clicking Virtual Resources and the VMs tab. (Note all the virtual machine operations available through the web portal.)

2. Select the virtual machine and click Launch VM Client.

3. Make sure pop-ups are allowed for this website.

4. For Access Scheme, choose Remote Desktop; then click Proceed.

5. In the file download box, select open, click Connect, and accept the warnings.

6. Log into the windows virtual machine.

FlexPod Express Management and Monitoring

In this section you will see how you can use Cisco UCS Director to both monitor and manage FlexPod Express. You can not only perform operations on your VMware environment, but also on your computing, networking, and storage resources, saving time and simplifying management.

Creating the Main Dashboard View

In Cisco UCS Director, you can customize the main dashboard to easily see the information that is important to you. In this section you will add and remove reports from the dashboard.

1. Log in as Admin; then click the admin link in the top right of the screen.

2. Click the Dashboard tab.

3. Select Enable Dashboard.

4. Select Apply and then close the window (click the x at the top right).

5. Click the newly created Dashboard tab in the upper-left corner. Notice that it is blank.

6. Choose Physical > Pod > Compute and make sure that the Summary tab is selected.

7. Click the drop-down arrow on the CIMC Server Inventory item and choose Add to Dashboard; then click OK.

8. Choose Physical > Storage > Storage Accounts and select the cluster file name.

9. Double-click the NetApp cluster to display the full view and make sure that you are on the Summary tab.

10. Open the Aggregate Free vs Used drop-down menu and choose Add to Dashboard; then click OK.

11. Choose Virtual > Compute and click the Summary tab. Open the VMs Active vs Inactive menu and choose Add to Dashboard. Then click OK.

12. Add chargeback for the Eng group from the main screen by choosing Organizations > Chargeback.

13. Scroll down to the Eng group. Click the right arrow and choose Add to Dashboard. Then click OK.

14. Click Dashboard at the top left of the screen to review your changes. Here you can easily see disk space as well as chargeback information for the Microsoft Windows Eng group.

15. To remove a report, open the CIMC Server Inventory menu and choose Close View. Click Yes in the confirmation pop-up window.

Performing Resource Management and Monitoring

Cisco UCS Director lets you manage and monitor FlexPod Express from a single point for various administrative functions. This section provides a quick overview to familiarize you with the GUI.

1. Click Converged.

2. Double-click the pod to expand the components.

3. Double-click the VMware section.

4. Make sure that the Summary tab is selected (and any desired monitoring screens on the dashboard).

5. Use the scroll bar to change the view size.

6. Scroll to the right and click Map Reports to view CPU utilization.

7. Click a machine to see check CPU utilization.

8. Change the type of map by choosing Memory Utilization Map. Click a virtual machine to see the percentage of memory it is using, and notice that you can see unused memory as well.

9. Check the topology by selecting the Topology tab.

10. Select Hostnode-VM Topology.

11. Click View Connectivity and notice the various views available.

12. Click Close.

13. Click the VMs tab.

14. Highlight a virtual machine and click the drop-down arrow button at the right to see the operations that you can perform on the virtual machine.

15. Select Stack View.

16. Note that you can easily see resources used by the virtual machine for computing, networking, and storage to help you troubleshoot any problems.

17. Click Close.

18. Click the left arrow to navigate back to the main screen

19. Double-click Compute server one.

20. In the right pane, highlight and double-click server one.

21. Select the Product Name field.

22. Note you can power the server on and off as well as access the KVM console.

23. Click the server and choose View Details to get more server information.

24. Click the left arrow to return to the main Converged screen.

25. Double-click Network switch 1.

26. Click the drop-down arrow to familiarize yourself with the management tasks that are available for the switch.

27. Click the left arrow to return to the main Converged network screen.

28. Double-click the NetApp storage device.

29. Click the Summary tab.

30. Click the Vserver tab and click Create.

31. Note the information needed to create a Vserver; then click Close.

32. Click the SnapMirrors tab and select your mirror

33. Click Update.

34. Click OK to close the window.

35. Click the left arrow to return to the Converged screen.

Conclusion

This exercise was intended to demonstrate how valuable Cisco UCS Director can be for your data center with FlexPod Express. In a few hours you have created a self-service portal and offloaded administrative tasks to your end customer to provide better service. Now that you have some of the core functions working, you can add more value by deploying other virtual machine images, exploring custom orchestration workflows, and customized dashboards. (Figure 3).

For More Information

Please refer to the Cisco UCS Director website for other product documentation http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps13050/.

For more information regarding Cisco designs visit:
http://www.cisco.com/go/designzone