| Question: Which ports can access the Cisco IMC if you select Shared LOM NIC mode in the Cisco IMC Configuration Utility for a Cisco UCS C-Series server ? |
| Answer: These are the two 1GB ethernet ports that are available in C series server to configure shared alom nic |
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| Question: Can you please specify the policies which are used to update adapter firmware. |
| Answer: Cisco host upgrade utility are the policies that are used, we normally boot the server with that iso image and upgrade the firmware. |
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| Question: How does a dynamic vNIC get allocated? |
| Answer: We usually bound these dynamic vnics to the service profiles that we create at the time of configuration of UCS box. |
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| Question: What is true with respect to recovery from failure with automatic pinning that is configured on a cluster of Cisco Unified Computing System 62XX Fabric Interconnects? |
| Answer: When the fabric interconnect link goes down, the fabric interconnect will send an ARP, will announce the server on another port. |
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| Question: How many links are there between a second-generation IOM (Cisco UCS 2204 or 2208) and a third-generation half-width blade (Cisco UCS B200 M3 or B22 M3) in a Cisco UCS system? |
| Answer: There are 4 links that are possible. |
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| Question: Which operating systems (OS) are supported on UCS? |
| Answer: UCS blade servers are certified for following OS: Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8 Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 VMware vSphere 4 VMware Infrastructure 3.5 Update 4 |
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| Question: What are the downlink possibilities in Cisco UCS? |
| Answer: Different possibilities 1,2,4 etc |
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| Question: What is stateless computing? |
| Answer: In Unified Computing system (UCS) the underlying hardware (or server) can be made completely transparent to the OS or applications that run over it. The kind of environment which an OS or application requires can be moved from one server to another or can be changed very easily. This is made possible by moving resources, such as MAC addresses, WWN values, IP addresses, UUID, firmware versions and even server BIOS, from one server to another at the time of deploying the server. This is accomplished by using the concept of Service profiles; which is like software definition of a server. The concept of stateless computing facilitates much greater scalability and can be used in conjunction with virtualization to achieve maximum data center utilization |
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| Question: What are UCS Blade Servers and Rack Servers? |
| Answer: UCS Blade Servers sit inside the UCS chassis and are managed using UCS manager. UCS Rack Servers work independently and do not require the full UCS infrastructure; however they can also be integrated in your existing UCS infrastructure |
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| Question: Which hypervisors are supported on UCS? |
| Answer: Cisco UCS supports several hypervisors including VMware ESX, ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer and others. |
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| Question: How to specify the feature to allow you to specify multiple LDAP servers for user authentication? |
| Answer: We can make this happen through the help of LDAP provider group. |
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| Question: When a service profile is disassociated from a server, what happens to the identity and connectivity information for the server? |
| Answer: The service profiles are reset to its factory default configuration. |
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| Question: What is UCS express.? |
| Answer: UCS express is compact, all-in-one computing and networking system targeted at different offices. |
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| Question: Can I use a Nexus 5000 as a UCS 6100 fabric interconnect? |
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| Answer: No, Nexus 5000 is a general purpose L2 switch and UCS 6100 series is an integral part of the unified computing system. The software that runs on the UCS 6100 is different from the Nexus 5000, as the UCS 6100 has both control and management planes. |
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| Question: What are different I/O modules in cisco UCS? |
| Answer: These are different 2200 series, like 2204, 2208. |
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| Question: The Cisco UCS 6200 Series Fabric Interconnects offer a new feature that allows dynamic port allocation for all of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. What are these ports called? |
| Answer: These are Unified ports that are available in Cisco UCS, all ports are unified and can be used for SAN and LAN uplinks. |
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| Question: In which situation would you be required to change a Cisco UCS system from end-host mode to switching mode? |
| Answer: In this case routers are directly connected the Fabric interconnect in Cisco UCS system. |
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| Question: Which hypervisors are supported on UCS ? |
| Answer: Cisco UCS supports several hypervisors including VMware ESX, ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer and others. |
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| Question: During the initial implementation is it mandatory to configure UCS manager IP and mgmt IP pool in same series? |
| Answer: We generally take this in same VLAN’s. |
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| Question: What is vm-fex ? |
| Answer: Cisco Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX) collapses virtual and physical networking into a single infrastructure. |
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| Question: How to recover password in UCS? |
| Answer: If you have forgotten the password, you can set a new password. Connect to the console of UCS 6100 series fabric interconnect. Reload the fabric interconnect and when it boots up hit ctrl+L or ctrl+shift+R to go to loader prompt then boot the kickstart image; if you have two fabric interconnects connected in HA then first reload the subordinate fabric interconnect and bring it in loader prompt and then reload the primary and bring it in loader prompt, after this load kickstart image on primary. Configure the admin password using “admin-password” command by going to config terminal mode. Now load the system image on the fabric interconnect or if you have HA load system image on the primary fabric interconnect. The password is now set to the new password you have just configured; if you have HA then now you can load the kickstart and system images on the subordinate fabric interconnect. |
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| Question: How are the ports mapped from server to fabric interconnect in UCS? |
| Answer: After initial connectivity, we can configure server ports from UCSM. |
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| Question: What is the maximum number of user sessions supported on UCS? |
| Answer: There can be maximum of 48 sessions possible. |
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| Question: Is it possible to specify vlan for CIMC IP? |
| Answer: Actually, there are 2 options, we can use the same MAC address as well as virtual. The difference is that if the MAC address will be physical, if the server fails and we replace the server due hardware failure, the MAC address will change and the UCS system there is a concept of stateless computing irrespective of these things. Like we dont usually depend on the physical MAC address, we can change the blade and everthing is fine. |
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| Question: what is Split Brain scenario in UCS? |
| Answer: failure of the Cisco Unified Computing System L1-L2 management network disturbances in cisco UCS |
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| Question: What is the difference between end host mode and switching mode |
| Answer: In end-host mode, Cisco UCS presents an end host to an external Ethernet network; the external LAN sees the Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect as an end host with multiple adapters. |
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| Question: Which ports can access the Cisco IMC if you select Shared LOM NIC mode in the Cisco IMC Configuration Utility for a Cisco UCS C-Series server ? |
| Answer: The two 1 GB ethernet ports. |
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| Question: Which two items can you provision in a vHBA Template |
| Answer: Max Data Field Size and threshold policies are required in vHBA template. |
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| Question: Whether we need to configure static pin group or leave it to UCS to use dynamic pinning? What is the recommended practice? |
| Answer: We configure pin groups in cisco UCS system depends on customer requirements, we can configure this on the LAN tab by specifying the PIN groups created and to enable those PIN groups. |
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| Question: Whether we need to configure pin group or leave it to UCS to use dynamic pinning? What is the recommended practice? |
| Answer: As stated earlier, if we have different network switch, then static else if one network switch then dynamic that is by default. |
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| Question: why we enable persistent binding in UCS..? |
| Answer: This feature allows the binding of the SCSI targets to the vHBA, even across reboots. |
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| Question: Does UCS provides any server/Blade level HA in physical and virtual Setup, If yes how does it work |
| Answer: Yes it does, in form of stateless computing. We can have minimal impact on application. |
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| Question: What are the licensing schemes in Cisco UCS FI…? |
| Answer: 6120:- preinstalled with 8 licenses 6140:- pre installed with first 16 ports. |
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| Question: What are the main functionality level differences in HP and UCS Chassis.? |
| Answer: The cisco UCS FI is a pair of redundant that acts as convergence and that combines SAN and LAN. In contrast HP provides HP virtual connect that provides datacenter and networking in blade chassis level. |
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| Question: What is drawback in UCS? |
| Answer: Locking Into Single Vendor, LAN and SAN infrastructure can be supplied by any vendor’s FC or 10 Gb switch |
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| Question: How it is different from other Blade server? |
| Answer: The cisco UCS FI is a pair of redundant that acts as convergence and that combines SAN and LAN. In contrast HP provides HP virtual connect that provides datacenter and networking in blade chassis level. |
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| Question: Is there any license for Fabric interconnect? |
| Answer: as stated before 6120:- preinstalled with 8 licenses 6140:- pre installed with first 16 ports. |
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| Question: How many chassis can we add in one fabric interconnect? is there any limitation? |
| Answer: Up to 40 chassis |
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| Question: What is Cisco Flexpod , does it comes in UCS suite or a separate product ? |
| Answer: flexpod comes with Cisco UCS, netapp and vmware product |
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| Question: Is there any BIOS setting is required for a VMware ESXi 5.0 host to support Cisco VM-FEX universal pass-through mode? |
| Answer: yes there are settings like VT for direct IO |
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| Question: How does it deal with in Virtual Environment Level HA like vSphere HA & Hyper-V CLuster , any server failure should also invoke virtual level HA. What would happen in such case ? |
| Answer: It totally depends upon the architecture, Cisco UCS will provide HA in terms of hardware and stability. And it also supports various hypervisors , so it totally depends on how we architect vmware for supproting its HA. |
