Cisco intends for Cisco UCS Central to be the focal point of Cisco UCS management. For data centers with existing Cisco UCS domains, implementing minimizes challenges to future growth and management.

While Cisco UCS Central has a great deal in common with Cisco UCS Manager, you should take the time to become familiar with its unique features.

For new deployments of Cisco UCS domains, the best practice is to adopt Cisco UCS Central from the start, especially for new workloads, and to reference global pools, policies and templates.

For installations with no previous Cisco UCS footprint, Cisco urges the exclusive use of Cisco UCS Central, avoiding instances of locally managed objects. Global service profiles that refer exclusively to global pools and policies help to ensure global consistency.

Initially using Cisco UCS Central can greatly simplify and enhance the Cisco UCS management experience. Environments that do not initially use Cisco UCS Central are deploying a Brownfield environment. Retrofitting a Brownfield environment to Cisco UCS Central is challenging. However, a well-planned migration to Cisco UCS Central is achievable. Even in a mixed Brownfield-Greenfield environment, there is tremendous value in registering all UCS domains to Cisco UCS Central.