Overview

This chapter contains the following sections:

Cisco UCS Director

Cisco UCS Director is a complete, highly secure, end-to-end management, orchestration, and automation solution for a wide array of Cisco and non-Cisco data infrastructure components, and for the industry's leading converged infrastructure solutions based on the Cisco UCS and Cisco Nexus platforms. For a complete list of supported infrastructure components and solutions, see the Cisco UCS Director Compatibility Matrix.

Cisco UCS Director is a 64-bit appliance that uses the following standard templates:

  • Open Virtualization Format (OVF) and Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) for VMware vSphere

  • Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) for Microsoft Hyper-V

Management through Cisco UCS Director

Cisco UCS Director extends the unification of computing and networking layers through Cisco UCS to provide you with comprehensive visibility and management of your data center infrastructure components. You can use Cisco UCS Director to configure, administer, and monitor supported Cisco and non-Cisco components. The tasks you can perform include the following:

  • Create, clone, and deploy service profiles and templates for all Cisco UCS servers and compute applications.

  • Monitor organizational usage, trends, and capacity across a converged infrastructure on a continuous basis. For example, you can view heat maps that show virtual machine (VM) utilization across all your data centers.

  • Deploy and add capacity to converged infrastructures in a consistent, repeatable manner.

  • Manage, monitor, and report on data center components, such as Cisco UCS domains or Cisco Nexus network devices.

  • Extend virtual service catalogs to include services for your physical infrastructure.

  • Manage secure multi-tenant environments to accommodate virtualized workloads that run with non-virtualized workloads.

Automation and Orchestration with Cisco UCS Director

Cisco UCS Director enables you to build workflows that provide automation services, and to publish the workflows and extend their services to your users on demand. You can collaborate with other experts in your company to quickly and easily create policies. You can build Cisco UCS Director workflows to automate simple or complex provisioning and configuration processes.

Once built and validated, these workflows perform the same way every time, no matter who runs the workflows. An experienced data center administrator can run them, or you can implement role-based access control to enable your users and customers to run the workflows on a self-service basis, as needed.

With Cisco UCS Director, you can automate a wide array of tasks and use cases across a wide variety of supported Cisco and non-Cisco hardware and software data center components. A few examples of the use cases that you can automate include, but are not limited to:

  • VM provisioning and lifecycle management

  • Network resource configuration and lifecycle management

  • Storage resource configuration and lifecycle management

  • Tenant onboarding and infrastructure configuration

  • Application infrastructure provisioning

  • Self-service catalogs and VM provisioning

  • Bare metal server provisioning, including installation of an operating system

Features and Benefits

The features and benefits of Cisco UCS Director are as follows:

Feature Benefit

Central management

  • Provides a single interface for administrators to provision, monitor, and manage the system across physical, virtual, and bare metal environments

  • Provides unified dashboards, reports, and heat maps, which reduce troubleshooting and performance bottlenecks

Self-service catalog

  • Allows end users to order and deploy new infrastructure instances conforming to IT-prescribed policies and governance

Adaptive provisioning

  • Provides a real-time available capability, internal policies, and application workload requirements to optimize the availability of your resources

Dynamic capacity management

  • Provides continuous monitoring of infrastructure resources to improve capacity planning, utilization, and management

  • Identifies underutilized and overutilized resources

Multiple hypervisor support

  • Supports VMware ESX, ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Red Hat hypervisors

Computing management

  • Provisions, monitors, and manages physical, virtual, and bare metal servers, as well as blades

  • Allows end users to implement virtual machine life-cycle management and business continuance through snapshots

  • Allows administrators to access server utilization trend analysis

Network management

  • Provides policy-based provisioning of physical and virtual switches and dynamic network topologies

  • Allows administrators to configure VLANs, virtual network interface cards (vNICs), port groups and port profiles, IP and Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP) allocation, and access control lists (ACLs) across network devices

Storage management

  • Provides policy-based provisioning and management of filers, virtual filers (vFilers), logical unit numbers (LUNs), and volumes

  • Provides unified dashboards that allow administrators comprehensive visibility into organizational usage, trends, and capacity analysis details.

Physical and Virtual Management Features

Physical Server Management

  • Discover and collect configurations and changes

  • Monitor and manage physical servers

  • Perform policy-based server provisioning

  • Manage blade power

  • Manage server life cycle

  • Perform server use trending and capacity analysis

  • Perform bare metal provisioning using preboot execution environment (PXE) boot management

Virtual Computing Management

  • Discover, collect, and monitor virtual computing environments

  • Perform policy-based provisioning and dynamic resource allocation

  • Manage the host server load and power

  • Manage VM life cycle and snapshots

  • Perform analysis to assess VM capacity, sprawl, and host utilization

Physical Storage Management

  • Discover, collect, and monitor storage filers

  • Perform policy-based provisioning of vFilers

  • Provision and map volumes

  • Create and map Logical Unit Number (LUN) and iGroup instances

  • Perform SAN zone management

  • Monitor and manage network-attached storage (NAS) and SAN-based storage

  • Implement storage best practices and recommendation

Virtual Storage Management

  • Discover, collect, and monitor storage of vFilers and storage pools

  • Perform policy-based storage provisioning for thick and thin clients

  • Create new datastores and map them to virtual device contexts (VDCs)

  • Add and resize disks to VMs

  • Monitor and manage organizational storage use

  • Perform virtual storage trend and capacity analysis

Physical Network Management

  • Discover, collect, and monitor physical network elements

  • Provision VLANs across multiple switches

  • Configure Access Control Lists (ACLs) on network devices

  • Configure storage network s

  • Implement dynamic network topologies

Virtual Network Management

  • Add networks to VMs

  • Perform policy-based provisioning with IP and DHCP allocation

  • Configure and connect Virtual Network Interface Cards ( vNICs) to VLANs and private VLANs

  • Create port groups and port profiles for VMs

  • Monitor organizational use of virtual networks

Model-Based Orchestration

Cisco UCS Director includes a task library containing over 1000 tasks and out-of-the-box workflows. Model-based orchestration and a workflow designer enable you to customize and automate the infrastructure administrative and operational tasks. You can extend and customize the system to meet individual needs.

The following table shows the maintenance and update activities of the task library from day1 through day 3:

Day-1 Day-2 Day-3

  • Add tenants

  • Migrate or add applicants

  • Integrate with enterprise systems

  • Use End User Portal

  • Monitor performance

  • Start meeting and billing

  • Manage tenant change

  • Self-service Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

  • Add/upgrade hardware

  • Repurpose

User Interface of Cisco UCS Director

Cisco UCS Director introduces a new user interface for the administrative portal. This section introduces you to some of the key features of this new user interface.

Change in Navigation

In earlier releases, you could access screens using the main menu bar. Starting with this release, all navigation options are now available from a side bar, and not from the horizontal main menu bar. As a result, the main menu bar is no longer visible in the user interface. You can use your mouse or the cursor to hover over an option on the side navigation bar, and then click on any of the menu options.

Absence of User Interface Labels

The user interface no longer includes labels for actions such as Add, Edit, Delete, Export, and Filter. These actions are represented only with icons. If you use your mouse or cursor to hover over the icon, the label will display the action you can perform using that icon. You can also modify the icons in the user interface for all actions and status messages. For more information, see Modifying an Icon in the Cisco UCS Director User Interface.

Using Dashboard to Access Detailed Reports

If you have enabled the Dashboard, then it is the first screen that you will see when you login to Cisco UCS Director. Typically, you can use this dashboard to add important or frequently accessed report widgets. Now, you can click on any of the reports that are displayed on the Dashboard, and immediately access the screen in the user interface where more detailed information is displayed.

For more information, see Enabling the Dashboard

In addition, you can create multiple dashboards and delete them when you no longer need them. For more information, see Creating Additional Dashboards and Deleting a Dashboard.

Enhanced Capabilities with Tabular Reports

Following are some of the enhanced capabilities with tabular reports available in the user interface:

  • Right-click to view additional options

    After you select a row, if you right-click on your mouse, a list of options relevant to the row you selected are displayed.

  • Filter and Search

    You can use a Filter option or a Search option with tabular reports in the Cisco UCS Director interface. On any page with a tabular report, you can use the Filter option that allows you to narrow down the tabular report results with a specific criteria. You can use this Filter option on tabular reports that do not span across pages. For tabular reports that do span across multiple pages, you can use the Search option to narrow down your search result.

  • Adding tabular reports to the Favorites menu

    You can add any tabular report displayed in the user interface as a Favorite. By adding a report as a favorite, you can access this report from the Favorites menu.

  • Resizing of columns

    You can resize all the columns that are displayed in the tabular report, including the last column. After you expand the columns, you can use the horizontal scroll bar to view the complete screen.

  • Informational message displayed in the absence of data

    If there is no information to be displayed in a report, the following message is displayed.

    No Data

Removing and Restoring Tabs

On any screen that has multiple tabs available, you can choose the number of tabs that you would like to see on that screen. If you close a tab on a screen, it will no longer be displayed in the row of tabs displayed in the user interface. If you would like to bring it back on the screen, then click the arrow facing downwards that is visible on the far right of the screen. It displays a drop-down list of tabs that are available but hidden from view. Choose the tab you would like to restore.


Note

You can remove and restore tabs on a screen only when there are a minimum of two tabs. This functionality is not available when there is only one tab displayed on a screen in the interface.

Enhancements to Reporting Capabilities

Following are some of the enhanced reporting capabilities available in the user interface:

  • Introduction of pie charts and bar graphs

    Each individual pie chart or bar graph can be exported out of the system in PDF, CSV or XLS format, or can be added to the Dashboard.

  • Availability of More Reports option

    Using the More Reports option, you can now generate reports on specific data for the resources in the cloud accounts. For more information, see Generating Additional Reports for a Cloud Account.

Landing Page

The landing page opens when you log in to the Cisco UCS Director administrator portal. The elements that you see on the landing page depend upon how you have configured the display. By default, the Converged View is displayed when you login to the portal.

The following are the available elements for your landing page:

  • Header—Displays across the top of the screen.

  • Navigation menu—The main navigation bar is no longer on the top of the screen. It is now available as a vertical menu on the left-side of the screen.


Note

The menu does not have a scroll bar. The menu only displays the number of options that fit in the space available. Some options may not appear if you minimize your screen or zoom in. You can click Site Map to view all available options.

Number

Name

Description

1

Header

Contains frequently accessed elements, including the menu. The header is always visible.

2

Link

Provides a link to the Cisco website from where you can access information on using the software.

3

Search icon

Allows you to search for and navigate directly to a specific report in the portal.

4

Diagnostic System Messages icon

Displays the number of diagnostic system messages that have been logged. Clicking on this link takes you to the Diagnostic System Messages screen from where you can view detailed information.

5 Claim Status icon Displays the claim status of the device in Cisco Intersight.

6

Service Request Quick View Panel

Launches the Service Request Quick View panel that displays the recent in-progress, completed and failed service requests.

This feature is not available in Cisco UCS Director instances that have been cross-launched from Cisco Intersight.

7

New Upgrade Notification

Displays the list of connector packs available for upgrade. Clicking on this link takes you to the Available System Upgrades screen from where you can view detailed information.

8

Help icon

Links to the online help system for the administrator portal.

9

About icon

Displays information about the software, and the version that is currently installed.

10

Home icon

Returns you to the landing page from any location in the user interface.

11

User icon

Allows you to edit your profile, enable or disable the dashboard, and log out.

12

Navigation menu

The vertical navigation menu using which you can access different screens in the interface.

Common Icons

The following table provides information about the common icons used in the user interface. You can see the name of an icon when you hover over it with your mouse. Some icons may have a different name, depending upon the context in which they're used.

Icon

Name

Description

Search

Search

Search is available on the header and on individual screens. Click Search on the header to find a report in the user interface. Click Search on an individual screen to find one or more items in the report.

Alerts

Alert

Alert is available on the header. Click Alert to view your diagnostic system messages.

User

User

User is available on the header. Click User to access your profile, or to log out of the user interface.

Export

Export

Export is available on individual screens. Click Export to export the content of the report that is visible on the screen.

Import

Import

Import is available on individual screens. Click Import to import a file.

Refresh

Refresh

Refresh is available on individual screens. Click Refresh to refresh the data that is visible on the screen.

View Details

View Details

View Details is available on individual screens. Click View Details to see details about the selected row in the table.

List View

Table View

Table view is available for your application containers and catalogs. Click Table View to view your application containers or catalogs in a table with details about each application container or catalog displayed.

Tile View

Tile View

Tile view is available for your catalogs and application containers. Tile View to view your catalogs and application containers in a tiled view of icons. With this view, you must click on an icon to see details about that catalog item or application container.

Create New

Create

Create is available on individual screens. Click Create to create a new object, such as a VM disk.

Add

Add

Add is available on individual screens. Click Add to add an item to an existing object, such as adding a catalog item to an existing catalog folder. The name of this icon may also include the item that you want to add, such as Add Catalog.

Expand List

Expand a list of values

Lists of values are available in forms when you must select one (single select) or more (multi select) items, for example IP addresses or VMs.

Tip

 

A multi-select list displays a check box in the upper left corner of the table next to the first column label. Click this check box to select all items in the table.

The item label appears to the right of the Expand icon. Click the Expand icon to display the list, then select an item or items.

Once an item is selected, its value appears in parentheses to the right of the Expand icon and label.

Collapse List

Collapse a list of values

Once a list of values is expanded, the Expand icon changes to a Collapse icon. Click the Collapse icon to hide the list of values, for example to see what is beneath the list.

Edit

Edit

Edit is available on individual screens. Click Edit to modify an existing object, such as a catalog item or a VM disk.

Delete

Delete

Delete is available on individual screens. Click Delete to delete an object, such as a catalog item or a VM disk.

Additional Actions

Custom Actions

This icon represents additional tasks that do not have an associated icon. It also represents the default icon available in the user interface.

Favorites

Favorites

Adds a page to the Favorites menu. You can use this option to view frequently accessed pages more quickly.

Filter

Filter

Provides filtering parameters on the page.


Note

You can view the complete list of icons and the details from the Administration > User Interface Settings > Icon Management screen. These icons are listed in the Action Icon Set category.

Converged View

When you login to the administrator portal for the first time, by default, the Converged screen is displayed. This screen displays the currently configured pods in your environment. From this screen, you can add additional pods, or you can select a pod and view additional details on the resources within the pod. Typically, the additional details displayed include the following:

  • Virtual resources

  • Compute resources

  • Network resources

  • Storage resources

You can click on any of these resources, and the screen loads additional information.

Cisco UCS Director allows you to configure the Dashboard as the first screen to be displayed when you login to the user interface. For more information, see Enabling the Dashboard.

Generating Additional Reports for a Cloud Account

You can use the More Reports option to generate specific reports for either a virtual cloud account or for a physical pod account. The type of reports that are generated using this More Reports option varies based on the type of account.

If there is no information available to generate this report, then a message stating that there is no data is displayed.

Procedure

Step 1

Navigate to the cloud account that you want to generate additional reports for.

Step 2

From the More Actions drop-down menu, click More Reports.

Step 3

From the Type drop-down list, and Report drop-down list, choose the type of report that you want to generate.

The report is generated and displayed in the user interface.

Step 4

(Optional) Click Settings > Export Report to choose the format in which you want the report to be exported in.

Guided Setup Wizards in Cisco UCS Director

Cisco UCS Director includes a set of wizards that guide you through configuring important features. The following are the available guided setup wizards:

  • Device Discovery—This wizard enables you to discover devices and assign them to a pod.

  • Initial System Configuration—This wizard helps you complete initial tasks to set up Cisco UCS Director, such as uploading licenses, and setting up SMTP, NTP, and DNS servers.

  • vDC Creation—This wizard enables you to configure the policies required to provision VMs in private clouds.

  • FlexPod Configuration—This wizard helps you set up a FlexPod account.

  • Vblock Pod Configuration—This wizard enables you to discover and assign accounts to Vblock pods.

  • VSPEX Pod Configuration—This wizard enables you to discover and assign accounts to VSPEX pods.

  • Virtual SAN Pod Configuration—This wizard enables you to set up a Virtual SAN Pod and add devices.

When you first log into Cisco UCS Director, a Wizard Explorer window is displayed. From this window, you can view the details of the available guided setup wizards and choose to launch any of them. If you do not want this Wizard Explorer to appear every time you log in, you can check the Do not show this page again checkbox. To launch these wizards later on, click Administration > Guided Setup.

In addition to these system-provided wizards, you can create a wizard from a workflow that you have previously configured. For more information, see Creating a Wizard from a Workflow.

Creating a Wizard from a Workflow

You can convert valid workflows into wizards, and save them in Cisco UCS Director.

Before you begin

You must have created valid workflows in Cisco UCS Director.

Procedure

Step 1

Choose Administration > Guided Setup.

Step 2

On the Guided Setup page, click Setup.

Step 3

From the More Actions drop-down menu, click Create from Workflow.

Step 4

In the Create Wizard from Workflow screen, complete the required fields, including the following:

Name

Description

Select Workflow field

Click Select to view a list of available workflows in the Select Workflow screen.

Check the check boxes of the workflows that you want to convert to a wizard and click Select.

Carry over static field values check box

Check this check box if you want the static values from the selected workflow tasks to be carried over into the wizard pages.

Label field

The name of the wizard. This is the primary name of the wizard.

Second Label field

A secondary name of the wizard.

Description field

A description of the wizard.

Icon Image field

Click Select to view a list of available icons in the Icon Image screen.

Check the check box of the icon that you want to associate with this workflow and click Select.

Step 5

Click Submit.

What to do next

You can perform the following tasks:

  • Launch the wizard.

  • Edit the wizard.

  • View details of the wizard.

  • Re-order the wizard in the interface.

  • Delete the wizard.

Setting up Non-Secure Connection to the Cisco UCS Director User Interface

By default, the Cisco UCS Director user interface launches in the secure mode. If you want to bypass the secure mode, and launch the user interface in a non-secure mode (HTTP), you must follow this procedure.

Procedure

Step 1

Log in to the Shell Admin.

Step 2

Enable the shell admin option 28--Enable/Disable HTTP. For more information, see Enabling HTTP Access section in the Cisco UCS Director Shell Guide, Release 6.9.

Step 3

Restart the services.

Step 4

Launch the user interface and log in to the system.

You can now log into the system in the non-secure mode using the following URL format:

http://<IP-Address>:8080 or http://<IP-Address>

You can launch the user interface in both, secure and non-secure modes.

Initial Login

Starting with Cisco UCS Director Release 6.9(2.0), the 'root' access is disabled and 'ucsdadmin' access is enabled by default. You must log in to Cisco UCS Director using 'ucsdadmin' as the login ID and password.

When you access the Cisco UCS Director using the hostname or IP address for the first time, you will be prompted to change your password according to the password policy. However, you cannot save the new password information unless you have also reset the default SSH password for root and shelladmin users.

To reset these passwords, connect to Cisco UCS Director using SSH and perform the password reset. After you reset the SSH root and shelladmin passwords, the Save button on the GUI screen is enabled.

For more information, see 'Managing ucsdadmin Access' section in the Cisco UCS Director Shell Guide, Release 6.9.


Important

We recommend you to access the Cisco UCS Director using 'ucsdadmin' account. However, you can also perform the necessary operations using 'root' account. If you want to access the Cisco UCS Director using 'root' account, you must enable the 'root' account as it is disabled by default. For more information, see 'Enabling root Access' section in the Cisco UCS Director Shell Guide, Release 6.9.


Note

We recommend that you delete the startup admin account after you create the first admin account. To access the End User Portal, you must have a valid email address.

Generating a Self-Signed Certificate

Prior versions of Cisco UCS Director required a Cisco-signed SSL certificate. Cisco UCS Director now requires a user-signed certificate instead of a Cisco-signed certificate. After installing or upgrading Cisco UCS Director, if the SSL certificate in the system is identified as a Cisco-signed certificate, you will be prompted post login to generate a self-signed certificate. After you generate the self-signed certificate, the Tomcat service is restarted to associate with the new certificate. After the Tomcat service is restarted, you are prompted to re-login to the user interface.


Note

Do not use this self-signed certificate for the Device Connector.

To generate the self-signed certificate, do the following:

Procedure

Step 1

Log into the Cisco UCS Director user interface.

Step 2

In the Generate Self-Signed Certificate screen, complete the required fields, including the following:

Field

Description

Local Domain field

Enter the domain name. For example, cisco.com.

Certificate Validity (in days) field

Enter the number of days that you want the self-signed certificate to be valid. For example, 1825.

We recommend that you enter a number between 1825 days (5 years) and 5475 days (15 years).

Keystore Password field

Enter the Java KeyStore (JKS) password to generate the self-signed certificate.

The Java KeyStore (JKS) file is a repository for certificates used by the Tomcat service, and is password protected. Enter this password for this field.

Confirm Keystore Password field

Confirm the Java KeyStore (JKS) password to generate the self-signed certificate.

Step 3

Click Save.

Initial System Setup


Note

When Skip is selected, the optional steps will be bypassed and the default or existing settings for the particular screen will be retained automatically.

Although the Guided Setup wizard allows you to uncheck and skip steps, the recommended approach is to perform all steps in the process.

Procedure

Step 1

Log in to Cisco UCS Director.

Step 2

Choose Administration > Guided Setup.

Step 3

On the Guided Setup page, double-click Initial System Configuration.

Note

 

Although the Guided Setup wizard allows you to uncheck and skip steps, the recommended approach is to perform all steps in the process.

Step 4

Drop the license file or Click Select a File to specify the location of the license file for the Cisco UCS Director software that you downloaded from the Cisco website.

To enter the license text, check the Enter License Text checkbox and enter the license text in the Licese Text field.

Note

 

If you have uploaded license file already according to the procedure given in Updating the License section, click Skip.

Step 5

After the upload is complete, click Next.

Step 6

From the Language drop-down list, choose your preferred language setting.

Note

 

After completing all the tasks in the wizard, you must log out and log back into the system for the locale changes to take effect.

Step 7

Click Next.

Step 8

In the DNS Server screen, enter the IP address of the one or more DNS servers.

Step 9

Click Next.

Step 10

In the Mail Server screen, configure the mail server settings. This configuration allows Cisco UCS Director to send email notifications to administrators and users.

Check the Send a Test Email check box in the Mail Server screen, to send a test message to verify that Cisco UCS Director can communicate with the mail server. In the Test Email Address field, enter the email address to receive notification and approval messages from Cisco UCS Director.

Note

 

Consider naming the outgoing email address with Cisco UCS Director nomenclature so that administrators and users can easily identify the source of email messages.

Step 11

In the Email Address screen, enter your email address in the Administrator Email Address field to receive notification and approval messages from the system.

Step 12

Click Next.

Step 13

In the NTP Server screen, enter the name or IP address of one or more Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers.

Step 14

Click Next.

Cisco UCS Director displays a summary of the configurations. Review the settings and modify them as needed.

Step 15

Click Next to view the recommended next steps.

Step 16

Click Close to save the configurations.

Recommended Order of System Setup

The following figure illustrates the workflow to set up your environment using Cisco UCS Director:

Figure 1. Sample Workflow to Set up Your Environment


The following table describes the chapters available in this book using which you can complete setting up your environment.

Name Chapter Description
Initial set up 2, 3, 4 and 5

Describes how to apply a license, set up the Admin profile, create groups, and create users. You will learn how to access language support, apply portal customization, and system settings

Physical Infrastructure 6

Describes how to optionally add a pod and physical account, add network elements, test the connections, and verify account discovery.

Note

 
You can create the virtual infrastructure before the physical infrastructure if you want.
Virtual Infrastructure 7

Describes how to create a cloud, verify cloud discovery and connectivity, test the connections, and view vCenter plug ins.

Policies 8

Describes how to create and manage computing policies, storage policies, network policies, and system policies. You will learn how to add OS licenses for Microsoft Windows catalogs.

Virtual Data Centers 9

Describes how to set up VDCs to manage specific environments for groups. policies, and cost models, and how resource limits are configured and managed at the VDC level.

Catalogs 10

Describes how to set up catalog items, attach groups with access to a catalog, and publish catalog items.

Self-Service Provisioning 11

Describes how you can create and manage provisioning service requests.

Multi-Disk Provisioning 12

Describes how to configure VM disk provisioning on a preferred single datastore or multiple datastores. It also provides instructions on how to configure individual disk policies for each additional disk in a template.

Chargeback 13

Describes how to create chargeback summary reports, detailed reports, and resource accounting reports. It shows how cost models are defined and assigned to policies within departments and organizations.

Cloud Management 14

Describes how you can get complete cloud visibility, monitor resource usage, and manage the cloud stack—clouds, clusters, host servers, and virtual machines.

Life Cycles 15

Describes how to perform post provisioning life cycle management actions on VMs, such as VM power management, VM resizing, VM snapshot management, and other VM actions.

CloudSense 16

Describes the analytical reports about the underlying physical and virtual infrastructure that Cisco UCS Director can generate.

Configuring the Host Name for Cisco UCS Director

If you changed the default host name of the appliance of Cisco UCS Director using the command prompt, then you must follow this procedure to ensure that the name is updated in the /etc/hosts file.

Procedure

Step 1

Log in to Cisco UCS Director as 'ucsdadmin' using your SSH terminal client.

Step 2

Execute the following command to obtain write permission for the hosts file. 

sudo chmod o+w /etc/hosts

Step 3

Edit the /etc/hosts file to update the new host name.

In a single node environment, you must update the file in the following format: 

vi /etc/hosts
198.51.100.1 new_hostname

In a multi-node environment, if the host names of other nodes are changed, then you must update the IP address and the new host name on the primary node, service nodes and database nodes. For example: 

vi /etc/hosts
198.51.100.1 new_hostname
Ex:
198.51.100.2 UCSD_Primary
198.51.100.3 UCSD_Service
198.51.100.4 UCSD_Inv_DB
198.51.100.5 UCSD_Mon_DB

Step 4

Restart the appliance services.

Working with Ciphers

As an administrator in Cisco UCS Director, you have the capability to enable or disable ciphers from the property file. In the event that you enable a cipher with a potential security risk, a warning message is logged in the Cisco UCS Director log file. By default, all ciphers that pose a risk are disabled. You can configure specific ciphers from the defaultEnabledCipherSuites.properties file, located in the /opt/infra/inframgr folder. For more information, see Editing Cipher Usage.

In addition, you can change the preference order of the standard set of ciphers, based on your system requirements. By default, the standard ciphers are listed according to the preference order.

Editing Cipher Usage

CipherSuites are maintained in the defaultEnabledCipherSuites.properties file. You can edit the list of ciphers in this file, based on the application requirements for your network.

We recommend that you always use the standard ciphers and not enable any broken or risky ciphers for your application.

Procedure

Step 1

Open the defaultEnabledCipherSuites.properties file.

It is available in the opt/infra/inframgr/ directory.

Step 2

To use a broken cipher, locate the cipher in the file, and uncomment it.

Step 3

Save the file.

Step 4

Restart the service.