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This chapter contains the following sections:
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:
Cisco UCS Director extends the unification of computing and network 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.
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, as needed, basis.
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
The features and benefits of Cisco UCS Director are as follows:
To avoid POODLE vulnerability, SSL Version 2 and SSL Version 3 are disabled on Cisco UCS Director north-bound HTTP interface by configuring Apache Tomcat to allow only TLS . Hence, any north-bound applications accessing Cisco UCS Director through REST API will be connected through TLS. Also, the browsers will be connected to Cisco UCS Director through TLS. For more information, refer http://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20141015-poodle.
Cisco UCS Director can be hosted on VMware vSphere or vCenter as well as HyperV Manager.
The minimum system requirements depend on the number of VMs you plan to manage. We recommend deploying a Cisco UCS Director VM on a local datastore with a minimum of 25 MBps I/O speed, or on an external datastore with a minimum of 50 MBps I/O speed.
For information about minimum system requirements for a multi-node setup, see the Cisco UCS Director Multi-Node Installation and Configuration Guide.
If you plan to manage up to 2,000 VMs, the Cisco UCS Director environment must meet at least the minimum system requirements in the following table.
Element | Minimum Supported Requirement |
---|---|
vCPU |
4 |
Memory |
12 GB |
Hard Disk |
100 GB |
If you plan to manage no more than 5,000 VMs, the Cisco UCS Director environment must meet at least the minimum system requirements and recommended configurations in the following tables.
Element | Minimum Supported Requirement |
---|---|
vCPU |
8 |
Memory |
20 GB |
Hard Disk |
100 GB |
Element | Minimum Supported Configuration |
---|---|
thread_cache_size |
100 |
max_connections |
1000 |
innodb_lock_wait_timeout |
100 |
query_cache_size |
128 MB |
innodb_buffer_pool_size |
4096 MB |
max_connect_errors |
10000 |
connect_timeout |
20 |
innodb_read_io_threads |
64 |
innodb_write_io_threads |
64 |
You must obtain a license to use Cisco UCS Director, as follows:
Before you install Cisco UCS Director, generate the Cisco UCS Director license key and claim a certificate (Product Access Key).
Register the Product Access Key (PAK) on the Cisco software license site, as described in Fulfilling the Product Access Key.
After you install Cisco UCS Director, update the license in Cisco UCS Director as described in Updating the License.
After the license has been validated, you can start to use Cisco UCS Director.
You need the PAK number.
Step 1 | Navigate to the Cisco Software License website. | ||||||||||||||||
Step 2 | If you are directed to the Product License Registration page, you can take the training or click Continue to Product License Registration. | ||||||||||||||||
Step 3 | On the Product License Registration page, click Get New Licenses from a PAK or Token. | ||||||||||||||||
Step 4 | In the Enter a Single PAK or TOKEN to Fulfill field, enter the PAK number. | ||||||||||||||||
Step 5 | Click Fulfill Single PAK/TOKEN. | ||||||||||||||||
Step 6 | Complete the
additional fields in
License
Information to register your PAK:
| ||||||||||||||||
Step 7 | Click
Issue
Key.
The features for your license appear, and you receive an email with the Digital License Agreement and a zipped license file. |
For more information on upgrading see Cisco UCS Director Upgrade Guide, Release 5.5.