Cisco UCS 6200 Series Fabric Interconnect Hardware Installation Guide - Product Overview [Cisco UCS 6200 Series Fabric Interconnects] (2023)

FAQs

What is Cisco UCS fabric interconnects? ›

What is a Fabric Interconnect? Fabric interconnects mostly exist in the Cisco world. They are devices that connect servers and other network-attached equipment to the rest of the network. Fabric interconnects are typically found in the UCS line of Cisco products and services.

The Cisco UCS 6200 Series offers line-rate, low-latency, lossless 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) functions. The Cisco UCS 6200 Series provides the management and communication backbone for the Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers and UCS 5100 Series blade server chassis.

Cisco recommends changing the password once access is gained using the default “Cisco1234” password.

Cisco Unified Fabric is the interconnection point for. applications, stored data, and users that can help you: • Build an intelligent, high-performing infrastructure. with multidimensional scalability for the data center.

The Fabric Interconnect (FI) is the core component of a UCS solution, providing network, storage, and unified management capabilities to servers. Fabric Interconnects are typically configured as highly available clustered pairs in production environments and provide active-active data traffic.

The Cisco UCS 6296UP 96-Port Fabric Interconnect is a core part of the Cisco unified computing system. typically deployed in redundant pairs, the Cisco UCS 6296UP Fabric Interconnects provide uniform access to both networks and storage.

Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) is a data center server computer product line composed of server hardware, virtualization support, switching fabric, and management software, introduced in 2009 by Cisco Systems.

Cisco Systems was founded shortly thereafter, and the company's first product was the Router. The company that would become Cisco Systems was spun out of SCI, later known as Sun Microsystems, in 1982.

Cisco UCS B-series blade servers sits inside the UCS chassis and are managed by UCS manager running on Fabric Interconnect. Cisco UCS C-series rack server are independent 1RU or 2RU size servers, which can be independently managed or via UCS FI.

What is the benefit of Cisco UCS? ›

While the servers compared are based on similar specs, the Cisco UCS provides a lower hardware cost by deploying simplified intra-chassis switching for blades and minimizing the number of adapters and ports required for rack servers.

About Cisco UCS Central

Cisco UCS Central does not replace Cisco UCS Manager, which is the basic engine for managing a Cisco UCS domain. Instead, it builds on the capabilities provided by Cisco UCS Manager and works with Cisco UCS Manager to effect changes in individual domains.

The default user name is admin and the default password is password for your initial login. This information is stored in the database. Both the Fabric Manager Server and the Web Server share the same user credential database. Double-click the Fabric Manager Client icon on your workstation.

An RJ-45 rollover cable provided in the fabric interconnect accessory kit. Network cabling is routed to the location of the installed fabric interconnect. Connect an RJ-45 rollover cable to the console port on the fabric interconnect. You can find this cable in the accessory kit.

Note The default username and password for CIMC-E is “admin” and “password” respectively.

A fabric refers collectively to the equipment and configuration that implements a network. A network fabric describes the network topology in which components pass data to each other through interconnecting switches.

Switching fabric is a combination of hardware and software that controls traffic to and from a network node with the use of multiple switches.

Cisco Nexus Fabric Extenders (FEXs) provide ToR connectivity for Nexus 5000 and 7000 series switches. This 9-step plan shows you how to bring a FEX online, and includes configuration tips and code examples.

The Cisco UCS 6332-16UP 40-Port Fabric Interconnect is a 1RU 40 Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE interconnect offering up to 2.43-Gbps throughput with 40 ports (Figure 5). The switch has 24 x 40 Gigabit Ethernet and FCoE ports and 16 unified ports.

Fabric interconnects are typically deployed in active–active redundant pairs providing uniform access to storage arrays and other network resources.

How do you power off fabric interconnects in Cisco UCS? ›

UCS Fabric Interconnects are designed for continuous operation. In a production environment, there is no need to shut down or reboot Fabric Interconnects. Therefore, there is no power button on UCS Fabric Interconnects. In order to shut down UCS Fabric Interconnect, it is required to pull the power cable manually.

unified computing system (UCS)

Server Port: Port is configured for southbound connection to an IOM Fabric Extender (FEX) module in a blade chassis. Uplink Port: Port is configured for northbound connection to the upstream Ethernet switch. Uplink ports are always configured as trunk ports.

Uplink Ethernet Ports - Uplink Ethernet ports handle ethernet traffic between the UCS fabric interconnect and the next layer of the network. All network-bound Ethernet traffic is pinned to one of these ports. You can configure uplink Ethernet ports on either the fixed module or an expansion module.

Cisco announces the end-of-sale and end-of life dates for the Cisco UCS Manager Release 4.0. The last day to order the affected product(s) is February 7, 2022.

The Cisco UCS cluster is a grouping of hypervisors that can be distributed across multiple hosts.

If you register 100 Cisco UCS domains , the minimum storage space required to store statistics data for 1 year would be 2 TB. The minimum memory required for client system is 4 GB. However if you have 40 or more registered Cisco UCS Domains, it is recommended to have at least 8 GB memory on the client system.

A Cisco router connects different networks together whereas, a switch connects multiple devices together to create a network. 2. Routers work on the Physical layer; Data link layer and the Network layer whereas Switches, as well as advanced switches, work on the Data link layer and the Network layer too.

Cisco Routers For Home Use

For the home, Cisco offers a range of routers. The most popular out there is the Cisco 800 Series.

What is the difference between Cisco UCS manager and director? ›

Cisco UCS Director is not a replacement for Cisco UCS Manager. Rather, Cisco UCS Director uses orchestration to automate some of the steps required to configure a Cisco UCS domain. In this way, Cisco UCS Director provides a statistical analysis of the data and a converged view of each pod.

UCS Fabric Interconnect supports two types of switching modes: End Host Mode (EHM) and standard Ethernet switching mode. The default switching mode is the End Host Mode which eliminates the use of Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) on Fabric Interconnect.

Cisco products are designed to improve productivity and customer experience. Cisco network switches provide application visibility and control, as well as intelligent traffic management to help prioritise business-critical traffic over recreational traffic.

Provide secure communications with access rights tailored to individual users, such as employees, contractors, or partners.

“Intersight is subsuming and replacing UCS Central,” Todd Brannon, director of product marketing at Cisco, told ServerWatch. “All the functionally we had in UCS Central, that's what Intersight has been built to replace and expand.”

Brocade fibre channel switches containing the Fabric OS (FOS) will be delivery with the preconfigured default accounts admin, root and user. It is important not to use default passwords in a productive environment, so therefor please change the passwords.

The default username is cisco. The default password is cisco.

The default user name is admin with no passphrase set.

What is required to cluster a pair of fabric interconnects? ›

To use the cluster configuration, the two fabric interconnects must be directly connected together using Ethernet cables between the L1 (L1-to-L1) and L2 (L2-to-L2) high availability ports, with no other fabric interconnects in between.

Normal Ethernet Cables

This type of cable is a “regular” or straight-through cable. You use this type of cable to connect a PC to a hub/switch or a router to a switch.

At the fabric interconnect, the server-facing Ethernet port receives the Ethernet and Fibre Channel traffic.

To access the switch by using the web-based interface, you must know the IP address the switch is using. The switch uses the factory default IP address of 192.168. 1.254 by default. When the switch is using the factory default IP address, the System LED flashes continuously.

Default Root and Shelladmin Passwords

Root user for the CentOS operating system of the Cisco UCS Director VM. The default password is cisco123.

Most routers and switches by Cisco have default passwords of admin or cisco, and default IP addresses of 192.168. 1.1 or 192.168. 1.254.

Switch Fabric Overview

The switch fabric is the core of the Cisco CRS 4-slot line card chassis. The switch fabric is implemented through switch fabric cards installed in the chassis. The switch fabric uses a cell-switched, buffered three-stage Benes switch fabric architecture.

If you are using blade servers, you must have FEXes in the back of it to provide connectivity to the Cisco UCS system. The FEXes are connected to the Fabric Interconnects. There are two FEX slots in the Blade Chassis, one for A side connectivity and one for B side connectivity.

Switched fabric or switching fabric is a network topology in which network nodes interconnect via one or more network switches (particularly crossbar switches).

The Install mode and the Bundle mode of operation have the following restrictions: Booting from a USB driver or TFTP in Install mode is not supported. Booting the switch in Bundle mode consumes more memory than the Install mode because the packages are extracted from the bundle and copied to the RAM.

What is Cisco fabric path? ›

Cisco FabricPath is an innovation in Cisco NX-OS Software that uses routing principles to allow Layer 2 scaling in a way that was not possible before. This technology provides the flexibility and the performance required to make data centers a service for the applications that use them.

Cisco Fabric Services (CFS) provides a common infrastructure for automatic configuration synchronization in the network. It provides the transport function and a set of common services to the features.

Cisco Nexus Switches are sometimes used with Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders (FEX) units. These separate units provide additional Ports for some Nexus 5000, 7000 or 9000 series switches, and have an up-link connection to the main Switch.

Switch mode allows the fabric interconnect to connect directly to a storage device.

The default switching mode is the EHM, which eliminates the use of the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) on Fabric Interconnect.

40 Gbps QSFP+ port plus 4 uplink SFP+ ports * 10Gbps plus 16 server internal ports * 10 Gbps plus 1 crosslink port * 10Gbps = 250 Gbps.

To enable CDP the first thing you must do is to create a new Network Control policy. To do this go to the LAN tab in UCSM, expand Policies, right-click Network Control Policies to create a new policy. Name it something like “Enable-CDP” and select the option to enable CDP.