Cisco delivered a present to us at the end of 2012, a new UCS version (2.1) that brings a host of new features. Here I’ll present an overview of these and outline why you will want to upgrade. The exact Cisco version number I’m reviewing is known as 2.1(1a)
Mixed Version Support
UCS now supports mixing the ‘A’ bundle with the previous releases ‘B’ bundle. The A bundle consists of the main infrastructure components (UCS Manager, Fabric Interconnect NXOS, IOM Firmware) while the B bundle consists of all firmware dealing with actual blades. This may seem like a minor thing, but the biggest roadblock in many shops to getting a new UCS release rolled out is often dealing with the Blade firmwares. With this, you can update your UCS Manager and start taking advantage of the new features while rolling out your blade firmware updates over time.
New Hardware Features
Version 2.1(1a) supports the following new hardware devices:
- Cisco UCS CNA M73KR-Q Adapter for B-series M3 (More info on this part Here)
- Cisco UCS M73KR-E Adapter for Cisco UCS B22 M3 and Cisco UCS B200 M3 (More info on this part Here)
- VIC 1225 Adapter for C-series (More info on this part Here)
- C420 M3 Server (More info on this server Here)
Nothing too earth shattering here.
New Software Features
Storage
- UCS Manager based FC Zoning (for Direct Connect Topologies)
You can finally perform Fibre Channel zoning from within UCS Manager. UCS has had the capability to pass through zoning information for some time, but if you wanted to connect storage directly to your Fabric Interconnects, you were out of luck when it comes to one of the most basic aspects of Fibre Channel setup. In order to use this feature, you need to set your Fabric Interconnects to FC Switch Mode, and then you can configure policies and apply zoning through the UCS GUI. You can’t mix this with an existing upstream switch based zoning setup. I haven’t been able to play with this yet but I hope to lab it up soon. - Multi-Hop FCoE
This is a big one. Up until now connecting storage into the UCS ecosystem has always felt somewhat clunky. Even the cleanest setups, where you utilized FCoE everywhere within UCS and outside UCS, you still needed “regular” FC links from your Fabric Interconnects up to your storage. This isn’t such a big deal if your storage consists of a traditional FC SAN with it’s own storage switches, but if you’ve consolidated those functions onto something like the Cisco Nexus line, it just felt weird having all this converged infrastructure except for the links between the FI’s and your upstream switches. No more! Full FCoE end to end is now possible. - Unified Appliance Ports
Like the storage uplink ports of the past, you used to be fairly limited in what you could connect to them. Unified ports basically mean FCoE direct connect; you can link up say, a NetApp SAN using a unified link and connect over the wire via FC and Ethernet based protocols (iSCSI, NFS, CIFS) at the same time. - Inventory and Discovery Support for Fusion-IO and LSI PCIe Mezzanine Flash Storage (for UCS M3 blades)
You can now purchase a few different Flash Storage cards for your UCS blades; support here merely adds discovery and management of them.
C-Series
- C-series Single Wire Management
If you have VIC1225 Adapters in your C-Series Rack mount servers, you can now use a single cable to carry management and data traffic between an FI and a server. You previously needed a 1Gb link for Management and a 10Gb link for Data; now you can run over just the single 10Gb link.
Fabric Improvements
- Sequential Pool ID Assignment
A simple thing, when you enable this on any pool the objects are assigned in order as opposed to the random way they seemed to be assigned before. Good for control freaks. - PV Count Optimization
This feature (only supported on the 6200 series FI’s) supposedly gives you the capability to handle more VLAN’s over more vNIC’s. Still trying to figure out what this means to me. - VLAN Group
Minor feature; gives you a bit more control if you’re dealing with multiple uplink paths from your UCS setup with different VLAN’s going to each. You can now create group definitions to organize this better. - Multicast Policy with IGMP Snooping and Querier
If you’re using a UCS server as a Multicast source, this feature allows you to configure the FI’s to help prevent multicast sessions from timing out. - Org-Aware VLAN
If you’re using Organizations in your UCS setups (Tenanting or Service Provider installations), this gives you more control over which VLAN’s can be used by which organizations. - LAN/SAN Connectivity Policies for Service Profile Configuration
This is an enhancement / alternative to setting up LAN/SAN connectivity with Service Profiles that supposedly gives you a little more fine grained control over permissions. You can now define a set of vNICs / vHBAs and tie them to adapter policies, and you then link the LAN/SAN Connectivity Policy to a Service Profile or Template. Not sure this really adds anything, just a different way of dealing with LAN/SAN connections to service profiles. - VCON Enhancement
If you have UCS systems with multiple mezzanine cards in them (full width blades, or C-series systems), this adds an option to vNIC/vHBA placement policies to round-robin the various vNIC/vHBA assignments so they are spread amongst the separate physical adapters. - Cisco CNA NIC Multi-receiving Queue Support
Specific enhancement for RHEL / SUSE users. - VM FEX for KVM SRIOV
Adds the same VM FEX feature UCS has had for VMware to RHEL setups running KVM. More details on configuring this Here. - VM FEX for Hyper-V SRIOV
As above, adds VM FEX support for shops running Hyper-V. More details on configuring this Here.
Operational Enhancements
- Firmware Auto Install
One of a few nice new features to make firmware updates easier, especially for larger installations. This tool allows you to perform batch installs of firmware across a number of devices. Especially nice for large groups of servers. This is a supplementary tool, you can still perform manual installs a device at a time (still the most realistic way of doing it for a lot of setups if you actually take into account user desires to have their servers up and running most of the time). - Service Profile Renaming
It’s almost laughable that it took this long for this to become a feature. A lot of people read this and sigh with a collective “finally!”. - Fault Suppression
This is a nice maintenance feature. Basically it allows you to define maintenance windows (or simply turn the feature on and off manually) so you don’t get swarmed with alert emails when performing UCS maintenance (firmware updates, etc). - UCSM Upgrade Validation Utility
Part of the new Firmware Auto Install feature, provides better explanations of firmware validation failures. - FSM Tab Enhancement
More detail is now shown on the FSM tab when operations are executing on a UCS object, very useful for troubleshooting failures or errors. - Native JRE 64 bits Compatibility with OS and Browsers
Pretty much what it says. The UCS Manager Java app now works natively on 64-bit JRE installs; should provide better performance for those client machines. - Lower Power Cap Minimums for B Series
Can’t say if this is a big deal or not; I’m not personally using power caps anywhere. - RBAC Enhancement
More granular control over permissions you can assign to various user roles. Cisco has documentation on all of them Here. - CIMC is included in Host Firmware Package (Management Firmware Package deprecated).
You no longer handle Firmware for the CIMC (out of band) controllers on servers separately; they are now included in the Host Firmware Package feature. Another little thing to make dealing with firmware easier, you can now just put together a firmware package for your hosts and just think of that whole bundle of firmware as a single object. - Implicit upgrade compatibility check
Cosmetic feature. You no longer have to click the “Ignore Compatibility Check” checkbox when upgrading firmware.
Support for UCS Central
UCS Central is a new management application intended to serve as a central console for multiple UCS installations. It can’t do everything the base UCS Manager can, and it comes in the form of a virtual appliance rather than something that runs on the FI’s. I like the idea of having something to manage my multiple setups but doesn’t look like it’s ready to take everything on yet.
Release Notes
The official release notes are Here.