Setting Up a Lab Using Cisco UCS Emulator

Cisco UCS Platform Emulator (PE) is an excellent tool to demonstrate and practice the salient features provided by the UCS platform in order to get hands-on experience without setting up a UCS platform lab. UCS Emulator can be used to improve familiarity with the UCS platform and to provide demos to prospective clients. UCS Emulator mimics real UCS hardware with a configurable hardware inventory, including multiple chassis with multiple blade servers and multiple rack-mount servers. Working with UCS Emulator provides the feeling of real hardware and allows the user to set up UCS hardware virtually and become comfortable before configuring actual UCS hardware. It is an excellent resource for getting hands-on experience with the UCS platform. UCS Emulator's requirements are minimal, and it can be easily installed in a home-based lab on a standard laptop or desktop computer.

UCS Platform Emulator is freely downloadable from the Cisco website. In order to download it, a Cisco Connection Online (CCO) login is required, which can be created by anyone interested in learning and working with Cisco technologies. UCS Emulator is available on the Cisco Communities website (https://communities.cisco.com). You can download the latest Emulator package from the Communities website, and it can be installed under various virtualization platforms. Archives of previous UCS Platform Emulator versions are also available for download on the same page.

Using UCS Platform Emulator, it is possible to import configuration from a live UCS system. Also, configuration created on UCS Platform Emulator can be exported in XML, which can then be imported into a production system. This is extremely helpful for duplicating a production UCS system configuration for troubleshooting, testing, and development purposes.

Cisco UCS Emulator can be downloaded from the following link:
https://communities.cisco.com/docs/DOC-67121

In this chapter, we will use the term UCSPE for Unified Computing System Platform Emulator and UCSM for Unified Computing System Manager.

This chapter will cover the following topics:

• Configuring Cisco UCS Emulator
• Configuring Cisco UCS Emulator hardware settings
• Launching UCSM using UCS Emulator
• Limitations of UCSPE