Cisco UCS Central Overview

Introducing Cisco UCS Central

Cisco UCS Central provides scalable management solution for growing Cisco UCS environment. Cisco UCS Central simplifies the management of multiple Cisco UCS domains from a single management point through standardization, global policies and global ID pools. Cisco UCS Central does not replace Cisco UCS Manager, which is the policy driven management for single UCS domain. Instead Cisco UCS Central focuses on managing and monitoring the UCS domains on a global level, across multiple individual Cisco UCS Classic and Mini management domains worldwide.

Cisco UCS Central enables you to manage individual or groups of classic, mini or mixed Cisco UCS domains with the following:

  • Centralized Inventory of all Cisco UCS components for a definitive view of the entire infrastructure and simplified integration with current Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) processes.

  • Centralized, policy-based firmware upgrades that can be applied globally or selectively through automated schedules or as business workloads demand

  • Global ID pooling to eliminate identifier conflicts

  • Global administrative policies that enable both global and local management of the Cisco UCS domains

  • An XML API, building on the Cisco UCS Manager XML API for easy integration into higher-level data center management frameworks

  • Remote management to manage various end points in registered Cisco UCS domains

Cisco UCS Central does not reduce or change any local management capabilities of Cisco UCS Manager, such as its API. This allows you to continue usingCisco UCS Manager the same way as when you did not have Cisco UCS Central, and also allows all existing third party integrations to continue to operate without change.

New Features in Cisco UCS Central Release 2.1

Cisco UCS Central 2.1 supports new features listed in the sections in this topic. Some of these features are built in Cisco UCS Central to be compatible with Cisco UCS Manager release 4.1(3) and later. For more information about the appropriate supported Cisco UCS Manager releases, see Feature Support Matrix.

Feature

Description

Where Documented?

A warning for Native VLAN changes on vNICs

Cisco UCS Central now supports an enhanced Native VLAN Configuration on vNICs, providing a warning message for Native VLAN changes that highlights the required port flap and brief connectivity impact (approximately 20–40 seconds).

Smart Licensing

The Cisco Smart Transport URL can now be edited.

Detect Low Virtual Memory assigned to UCS Central instance

Detect low virtual memory conditions in Cisco UCS Central and recommend the optimal memory size based on workload requirements.

Upgrading from Cisco UCS Central 2.1 Release

UEFI Boot Parameters for SAN Boot

UEFI boot parameters for SAN boot specify the boot loader’s name, location, and description to enable booting from SAN storage in Cisco UCS.

Creating or Editing a Service Profile Template

Support for Cisco UCS 6664 Fabric Interconnect

Cisco UCS 6664 Fabric Interconnect—The Cisco UCS 6664 Fabric Interconnect is a 2-rack unit (RU), fixed-port system designed for Top-of-Rack deployment in data centers. The fabric interconnect has both Ethernet and unified ports. Unified ports provide Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), Fibre Channel, NVMe over Fabric, and Ethernet. By supporting these different protocols, you can use a single multi-protocol Virtual Interface Card (VIC) in your servers.

Support for Cisco UCS X-Series Direct (Fabric Interconnect 9108 100G)

Cisco UCS X-Series Direct (Fabric Interconnect 9108 100G) now supports Cisco UCS C-Series rack servers, enabling unified management of both UCS X-Series compute nodes and C-Series servers in one domain. It also adds secondary chassis support, allowing deployment of a second UCS X9508 chassis and up to 20 servers in a single X-Direct domain. These enhancements improve scalability and simplify data center hardware management.

Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) support

Cisco UCS Central now provides support for SR-IOV that allows multiple VMs running a variety of guest operating systems to share a single PCIe network adapter within a host server.

Single Root I/O Virtualization Overview

Cisco UCS Central User Documentation Reference

The Cisco UCS Central following use case-based documents to understand and configure Cisco UCS Central:

Guide

Description

Cisco UCS Central Release Notes

 Provides a scalable management solution for a growing Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) environment.

Cisco UCS Central Getting Started Guide

 Provides a brief introduction to the Cisco UCS infrastructure, Cisco UCS Manager, and Cisco UCS Central. Includes an overview of the HTML5 UI, how to register Cisco UCS domains in Cisco UCS Central, and how to activate licenses.

Cisco UCS Central GUI User Guide

 The guide provides the combined information from the following task:

  • Administration—Provides information on administrative tasks, such as user management, communication, firmware management, backup management, and Smart Call Home.

  • Authentication—Provides information on authentication tasks, such as passwords, users and roles, RBAC, TACACS+, RADIUS, LDAP, and SNMP.

  • Server Management—Provides information on server management, such as equipment policies, physical inventory, service profiles and templates, server pools, server boot, and server policies.

  • Storage Management—Provides information on storage management, such as ports and port channels, VSAN and vHBA management, storage pools, storage policies, storage profiles, disk groups, and disk group configuration.

  • Network Manageent—Provides information on network management, such as ports and port channels, VLAN and vNIC management, network pools, and network policies.

Cisco UCS Central CLI User Guide

Provides detailed instructions, examples, and reference materials for executing various administrative and operational tasks using the UCS Central CLI. It enables users to efficiently manage compute, network, and storage resources, as well as to configure and maintain policies, templates, and profiles across UCS domains.

Cisco UCS Central Faults Reference Manual

Provides administrators to identify and address issues proactively to maintain the health and performance of the infrastructure.