In order for Cisco server equipment to work as reliably, efficiently and show high performance as possible, the company has created its own Cisco UCS Manager software platform.
This solution is extremely flexible, powerful and multifunctional. Thanks to it, it is possible to significantly simplify the administration of the IT infrastructure, increase fault tolerance, energy efficiency and improve the efficiency of equipment.
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Key Features of Cisco UCS Manager
Cisco UCS Manager software is compatible with absolutely all Cisco UCS hardware, as well as Cisco HyperFlex Series hyperconvergent infrastructures. Both within several management domains and on a corporate scale on tens of thousands of servers.The Cisco UCS Manager solution provides:
- timely detection of any hardware problems;
- configuring server machines;
- preparation of boot devices;
- configuring and collecting server performance analytics;
- monitoring;
- diagnostics;
- audit.
With the help of additional software from Cisco, you can significantly expand the capabilities of Cisco UCS Manager. Both within several management domains and on a corporate scale on tens of thousands of servers.
Platform extensibility
Cisco UCS Manager allows you to significantly expand the functionality of existing popular management tools, complementing them with plug-ins. Fits well into the DevOps paradigm, helps to improve the efficiency of each employee, in-network processes and tools.
With open software interfaces (APIs), Cisco UCS Manager provides integration tools with a huge set of additional software tools for collecting analytics, configuration, deployment, management, etc. from third-party software developers and with its own client developments.
Among the main features of Cisco UCS Manager, it is worth highlighting the following:
- supports Cisco UCS B-series blade servers, as well as rack-mounted C-series, including C3260, is the central control and switching system for HyperFlex Series hypercovergent infrastructure;
- management efficiency due to the ability to fine-tune and control policy-based resources, up to individual server BIOS settings and control traffic priorities for connections to external LAN and SAN networks;
- It has a command line user interface (CLI) and graphical with support for HTML 5 and Java;
- It can automatically recognize, inventory and put into operation new components that are being added;
- It has a simple integration with third-party controls.
According to the conducted research (there are more than 150 of them), Cisco UCS Manager customers were able to achieve savings in part:
- reducing the cost of administration and resource management by an average of 66%;
- reduction of the time required to provide new infrastructures by about 83%;
- reducing the time spent on launching a project by 75%.
Functional features and benefits of Cisco UCS Manager
The Cisco UCS Manager management system allows you to achieve a high level of automation of implementation and operation tasks in the data center. This increases the speed of response to any changes in the business, as well as accelerates the scalability of business systems, reduces the associated risks.
The system is managed on the basis of group policies using profiles and templates, which allows for more efficient maintenance of the infrastructure as a whole and each of its elements individually. It also allows you to use reference architectures defined by solution vendors (Cisco Validated Designs, Netapp Validated Architectures, etc.).
One of the key advantages of Cisco UCS Manager is the ability to create large well—managed clusters, hardware resources for which will be allocated in minutes and without errors. Quick replacement of a failed, unstable cluster node or transfer of a server from one cluster to another while maintaining the identity of the server from the point of view of the operating system and external LAN/SAN networks (determined by the hardware identifiers UUID, hostid, MAC, WWN, WWPN, etc.) helps to significantly save on hardware that is embedded under ensuring high availability.