Server Hardware

Cisco UCS Blade System – Part 2 – my vSphere ESXi & UCS woes

Okay, so now that we’ve tested different OS installations, now it’s time to test the real purpose we acquired these blades for: Virtualization

A little info on the hardware: Cisco N20-B6620-1, dual Xeon E5540s, 24GB of RAM, and two 73gb drives

We’re using VMware ESXi 4.0u1 for our testing, and booting from the SAN. Yes, I know, it’s only still experimental with vSphere, I don’t like it, but that’s the path I was lead down by my superiors.

Cisco no longer makes switches for other blade enclosure manufacturers

I heard today that Cisco will no longer make their Nexus-line of switches for non-Cisco brand blade enclosures.

What does this mean exactly? Those of us with the Dell M1000e blade chassis who are currently using pass-throughs and were waiting for the promised Cisco Nexus 4000 won’t have to wait anymore because it’s NEVER coming out.

Am I the only one who thinks Cisco shot themselves in the foot by doing this?

I mean, I have hands-on experience with UCS and wouldn’t wish that evil on anyone.

*EDIT*
I just wanted to add that this affects all OEM vendors like Dell, HP, and IBM, as Cisco dropped production of new switches for other blade systems.

Cisco UCS Blade System – Part 1 – drawing back the veil

We were some of the earliest of ‘adopters’ for a paid POC to get the Cisco UCS system in-house.

Cisco sent the hardware & a group of techs to get this thing off the ground. Any new hardware being deployed shouldn’t require a group of people from the vendor to come out to set it up, should it? In today’s society, it should be user friendly, plug-n-play, which we all know Cisco to be, right? Heh, okay, or not, but anyway, our trouble had just begun.

ThepHuck

Server Hardware