Varrow Blogs

I recently have had a few people ask me what Cisco UCS adapter placement policies are used for and how/when to use them. This post will hopefully answer those questions and give a few examples. First I will start with the Cisco definition of what vNIC/vHBA placement policies are. This definition was copied from the [...]

For those of you not on the vendor/reseller side of things this may not be very interesting unless you’re just curious how Cisco UCS configuration are built.  Netformix is just a tool that allows us to build these configurations and output a bill of materials that we can then place orders from.  I put together [...]

The last two days are basically a blur…  These sessions were more technical, deeper, and focused.  I had to skip the customer appreciation event on Wednesday night to study for my CCIE Routing & Switching written exam, which I very thankfully passed.  My primary focus on that isn’t to get my CCIE…at least this year. [...]

In this post I am going to walk through the northbound frame flows in the Cisco UCS system. Hopefully this information will help you better understand UCS networking. In other posts I will walk through the southbound and maybe east-west frame flows. I am breaking the posts down into multiple posts to make it easier [...]

Cisco UCS firmware 1.3 was released last week. There are lots of new features in this latest update and Dave Alexander (ucs_dave) outlined most of those in his blog post – http://www.unifiedcomputingblog.com/?p=151 What I will be covering here are the features that Dave didn’t cover nor were they mentioned in the release notes for 1.3 [...]

In my previous post I discussed Cisco UCS Server Pools and use cases. In this post I will be walking through the configuration of Server Pools, Server Pool Policies and Server Pool Policy Qualifications. As stated in my previous post one of the use cases for Server Pools is in the server farm model where [...]

This is a a two part blog post on Cisco UCS Server Pools. This first post will focus on what Server Pools are and use cases and the next post will focus on configuration. Cisco UCS Server pools are one of the more mysterious features of UCS. I say mysterious because in my opinion the [...]

******UPDATE****** There is a new VMware driver out that corrects this incompatibility. You can download it here – http://downloads.vmware.com/d/details/esx40_cisco_cna_v110110a/ZHcqYmRwKmViZHdlZQ I came across a much unexpected incompatibility this week between Cisco UCS VIC M81KR (Palo) and PowerPath VE. I was implementing Cisco Nexus 1000v and EMC PowerPath VE on Cisco UCS blades with the new Cisco [...]

If you are familiar with managing VMware ESX 3.5/4.x in an environment that includes Cisco LAN switches then you have probably used “CDP listen state” that is enabled by default on an ESX install. To view this information in vCenter select an ESX host, go to the configuration tab in the right pane, select the [...]

This week we installed another UCS, this time at Odyssey Logistics in Charlotte. This was my first UCS installation, but I had the help of our seasoned veteran Jeremy Waldrop. The installation and configuration went very smoothly, but for there to have been nothing learned, then androids could have installed the UCS… and androids we [...]

Last week I was in training for the Cisco Data Center Unified Computing Implementation course. This course prepares the student to implement the Cisco UCS from racking, cabling, creating VLANs/VSANs, service profiles, resource pools, and everything in between. Cisco and VMware have strict demands on what it takes for an individual to achieve the Cisco [...]

I’m wrapping up a week of training on Data Center Unified Computing Implementation, covering implementing the Cisco UCS. My employer, Varrow, sent me here because we’re selling UCS’s like hot cakes. My exposure to the UCS platform prior to this training had been minimal, but I knew that there must be something about UCS to [...]

Here is another video blog on Cisco UCS. In this video I walk through the implementation of VMware VN-Link in hardware on the Cisco UCS VIC (Palo) adapter. http://www.screencast.com/t/YWU3ZGVmYzAt Command line output of the ESX configuration esxupdate query —-Bulletin ID—- —–Installed—– ————Summary————- ESX400-Update01     2010-03-25T22:03:33 VMware ESX 4.0 Complete Update 1 VEM400-200912272-BG 2010-03-25T22:35:03 Cisco Nexus 1000V  [...]

My first attempt at a video blog demonstrating the UCSM Equipment tab. I hope to do more of these and get better as I go. Click the following link to view the Screencast video UCSM Equipment Tab Walkthrough Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: UCS