The Cisco UCS FIs

The Cisco UCS FIs provide network connectivity and management for the connected servers. The UCS FIs run the UCSM control software and consist of the following components:

The Cisco UCS blade servers

The Cisco UCS blade servers require a mother chassis where these servers can be installed. The UCS blade server solution consists of the following components:

The Cisco UCS rack-mount servers

The Cisco UCS rack-mount servers are standalone servers that can be installed and controlled individually. Cisco provides Fabric Extenders (FEXs) for the rack-mount servers. FEXs can be used to connect and manage rack-mount servers from FIs. The UCS rack-mount server solution consists of the following components:

In this chapter we will provide details about hardware options available for both blade servers and rack-mount servers. Most of the field deployments of UCS servers are based on blade servers. Therefore, our main focus will be on blade server configuration in this book. However, if proper connectivity is established between rack-mount servers and FIs, rack-mount servers can also be managed in the same fashion.

The following figure depicts the FIs running the UCSM software, a blade server chassis with IOM modules, and the main components of a blade server:

In this chapter, we will go into the details of various UCS components and will focus on their physical specifications and installation in the subsequent sections.