Historically, server I/O connectivity to storage, local area networks, and other servers have been accommodated by hardware and software specifically designed and dedicated to the application, each with different traffic characteristics and handling requirements. Server access to storage in enterprises has been largely satisfied by Storage Area Networks (SAN) based on Fibre Channel. Server access to networking devices is almost  Full Article…

Welcome to the world of Network Virtualization… In the old world of physical servers, we have heard about NICs and HBAs. NIC is also called the Network Adapter. Step into the new world of server virtualization, we see a lot of new acronyms describing how the physical servers and virtual machines talk between themselves and  Full Article…

The Cisco® Unified Computing System (UCS) is a data center server architecture that unifies network virtualization, storage virtualization, and server virtualization, within open industry standard technologies and with the network as the platform. UCS Manager The Cisco® UCS Manager (UCSM) software integrates the components of a Cisco® Unified Computing System into a single, seamless entity. It manages all the server  Full Article…

UCS Fabric Interconnect The UCS 6100 Fabric Interconnects are derived from the hardware of the Nexus 5000 and as such, they can support a variety of network protocols and are capable of acting as Ethernet switches. In the definition of UCS, it became clear that the system is network centric. As such, it can be configured to behave  Full Article…

The Cisco® UCS 2104XP Fabric Extender is a special blade that plugs in the rear of a UCS 5108 chassis. The UCS 2104XP Fabric Extender has three subsystems inside: The Redwood IO_MUX The Chassis Management Controller (CMC) The Chassis Management Switch (CMS) Each of these subsystems is designed to perform a specific task in the UCS. Redwood  Full Article…

Two-Socket Blade Architecture The two-socket UCS blades are based on Intel® reference architecture for dualsocket Nehalem-EP and Westmere-EP servers. These blades have multiple components in them. See figures below. In computing, Direct Media Interface (DMI) is Intel’s proprietary link between the northbridge and southbridge on a computer motherboard. It was first used between the 9xx chipsets  Full Article…

UCS C-Series Rack Servers extend unified computing innovations to an industry-standard form factor. These servers operate in both standalone environments and as part of the Cisco Unified Computing System. The C-Series incorporates all the key technological innovations of the B-Series like standards-based unified network fabric, Cisco VN-Link virtualization support, and Cisco Extended Memory Technology. They can be mixed and matched with  Full Article…