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

Cisco UCS Director Shell

The Cisco UCS Director Shell is a text-based menu that you access through a secure shell (SSH) application and Cisco UCS Director administrator credentials. With the Shell, you can execute commands to perform various system administration tasks, including:

  • Patch updates

  • Database backup and restore

  • Certificate imports

  • Services management

About Cisco UCS Director Shell Commands

This guide describes all of the commands available to you when logging in to the Cisco UCS Director shell. You can use these commands to perform the following administrative tasks:

  • Quitting the shell

  • Changing ShellAdmin password

  • Displaying Service Status

  • Stopping/starting all Cisco services

  • Stopping/starting the database

  • Backing up/restoring the appliance database

  • Synching up time

  • Pinging hostname/IP address

  • Version (Cisco UCS Director appliance version)

  • Generating self signed certificate and certificate signing request

  • Importing CA/self-signed certificate

  • Configuring network interface

  • Displaying network details

  • Enabling the database for a BMA Appliance

  • Adding a BMA hostname/IP address to the appliance

  • Troubleshooting by using Tail Inframgr logs

  • Applying a patch to the appliance

  • Shutting down of the Appliance

  • Rebooting the Appliance

  • Managing root Access

  • Logging in as root

  • Configuring Multi-node Setup

  • Cleaning up Patch Files

  • Collecting logs from a node

  • Collecting diagnostics

  • Enabling/Disabling HTTP access

  • Resetting MariaDB user password

  • Applying signed patch to the appliance

  • Terminating active GUI session(s)

  • Regenerating device connector REST API access key

  • Granting/Denying client access to MariaDB port 3306

  • Managing VMRC Tunneling Service

  • Configuring scale setup

  • Configuring DNS

  • Managing ucsdadmin access

  • Logging in as ucsdadmin

  • Configuring password policy

  • Configuring hosts

For additional system administration information, refer to the Cisco UCS Director Administration Guide, Release 6.9.

Prerequisites

To successfully execute the commands described in this guide, you must meet the following prerequisites:

  • Cisco UCS Director should be up and running (and reachable).


Note
The information in this guide is based on Cisco UCS Director, release 4.0, and later releases.

Logging in to the Shell

The login procedure requires the use of a Secure Shell (SSH) client and the proper login credentials. After gaining access to Cisco UCS Director, you can perform a wide variety of system administration tasks.


Important

We recommend you not to use Ctrl+C while executing the shelladmin options in the Secure Shell (SSH) client, because the user session will be terminated.


Note

If you have not reset the default SSH password for shelladmin and ucsdadmin users during OVF/OVA deployment, you will be prompted to change your default password when you login to the Cisco UCS Director using SSH for the first time. Once you reset the default SSH password for the shelladmin and ucsdadmin users, you will be automatically logged out. After resetting the SSH password for the shelladmin and ucsdadmin users, you must login again and reset the default SSH password for the root user.

Before you begin

Obtain proper access to Cisco UCS Director and a secure shell (SSH) application.

Procedure

Step 1

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

Step 2

Press the Enter key.

The following services are available for selection: 

 
               Cisco UCS Director Shell Menu
Node:Standalone | Version:6.9.0.0 Build:69012  | UpTime:  05:44:00 up 21 days,  3:03                                                                                                                     
0)  Quit
1)  Change shelladmin Password
2)  Display Services Status
3)  Stop Services
4)  Start Services
5)  Stop Database
6)  Start Database
7)  Backup Database
8)  Restore Database
9)  Time Sync
10) Ping Hostname/IP Address
11) Show Version
12) Generate Self-Signed Certificate and Certificate Signing Request
13) Import CA/Self-Signed Certificate
14) Configure Network Interface
15) Display Network Details
16) Enable Database for Cisco UCS Director Baremetal Agent
17) Add Cisco UCS Director Baremetal Agent Hostname/IP
18) Tail Inframgr Logs
19) Apply Patch
20) Shutdown Appliance
21) Reboot Appliance
22) Manage root Access
23) Login as root
24) Configure Multi Node Setup (Advanced Deployment)
25) Clean-up Patch Files
26) Collect logs from a Node
27) Collect Diagnostics
28) Enable/Disable HTTP
29) Reset MariaDB User password
30) Apply Signed Patch
31) Terminate active GUI session(s) for user
32) Regenerate Device Connector REST API Access Key
33) Grant/Deny client access to MariaDB port 3306
34) Manage VMRC Tunneling Service
35) Configure Scale Setup
36) Configure DNS
37) Manage ucsdadmin Access
38) Login as ucsdadmin
39) Configure Password Policy
40) Hosts Configuration