Overview

This chapter contains the following sections:

• About Cisco UCS Director, page 1

• About Cisco UCS Director for VMware vSphere, page 4

• Prerequisites, page 4

• Minimum System Requirements for a Single-Node Setup, page 5

• About Licenses, page 6

About Cisco UCS DirectorCisco UCS Director (formerly Cisco Cloupia Unified Infrastructure Controller) is a 64-bit appliance that usesthe following standard templates:

• Open Virtualization Format (OVF) for VMware vSphere

• Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) for Microsoft Hyper-V

Cisco UCS Director delivers unified, highly secure management for the industry's leading convergedinfrastructure solutions, which are based on the Cisco UCS and Cisco Nexus platforms.

Cisco UCS Director extends the unification of computing and network layers through Cisco UCS to providedata center administrators with a comprehensive visibility and management capability. It supports NetAppFlexPod and ExpressPod, EMC Isilon, EMC VSPEX, EMC VPLEX, and VCE Vblock systems, based on theCisco UCS and Cisco Nexus platforms.

Cisco UCS Director automates the provisioning of resource pools across physical, virtual, and baremetalenvironments. It delivers native, automated monitoring for health, status, and resource utilization. You cando the following using Cisco UCS Director:

• Create, clone, and deploy service profiles and templates for all servers and applications

• Monitor organizational usage, trends, and capacity across a converged infrastructure on a continuousbasis, such as by viewing heat maps that show virtual machine (VM) utilization across all your datacenters

• Deploy and add capacity to ExpressPod and FlexPod infrastructures in a consistent, repeatable manner

Cisco UCS Director Installation and Upgrade on VMware vSphere, Release 5.1 1

• Manage, monitor, and report on Cisco UCS domains and their components

• Extend virtual service catalogs to include physical infrastructures services

• Manage secure multitenant environments to accommodate virtualized workloads that run withnonvirtualized workloads

Features and BenefitsThe features and benefits of Cisco UCS Director are as follows:

BenefitFeature

• Provides a single interface for administrators to monitor, provision, andmanage the system across physical, virtual, and baremetal environments

• Provides unified dashboards, reports, and heat maps, which reducetroubleshooting and performance bottlenecks

Central management

• Allows end users to order and deploy new infrastructure instancesfollowing IT-prescribed policies and governance

Self-service catalog

• Provides a real-time available capability, internal policies, and applicationworkload requirements to optimize the availability of your resources

Adaptive provisioning

• Provides continuous monitoring that indicates real-time infrastructureconsumption to improve capacity planning and management

• Identifies underutilized and overutilized resources

Dynamic capacitymanagement

• Supports VMware ESX, ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Red Hathypervisors

Multiple hypervisor support

• Monitors, manages, and provisions physical, virtual, and baremetalservers, as well as blades

• Allows end users to implement virtual machine life-cycle managementand business continuance through snapshots

• Allows administrators to access server utilization trending analysis

Computing management

Cisco UCS Director Installation and Upgrade on VMware vSphere, Release 5.12

OverviewFeatures and Benefits

BenefitFeature

• Provides policy-based provisioning of physical and virtual switches anddynamic network topologies

• Allows administrators to configure VLANs, virtual network interfacecards (vNICs), port groups and port profiles, IP and Dynamic HostControl Protocol (DHCP) allocation, and access control lists (ACLs)across network devices

Network management

• Provides policy-based provisioning and management of filers, virtualfilers (vFilers), logical unit numbers (LUNs), and volumes

• Provides unified dashboards that allow administrators comprehensivevisibility into organizational usage, trends, and capacity analysis details.

Storage management

• Provides mobile management from Apple iPad and iPhone and Androiddevices

• Supports mobile self-service provisioning, virtual machine management,and viewing of administrative dashboards

Cisco CloudGenie

Physical and Virtual Management FeaturesVirtual Computing Management

• Discover, collect, andmonitor virtual computingenvironments

• Perform policy-based provisioning and dynamicresource allocation

• Manage the host server load and power

• Manage the VM life cycle and snapshots

• Perform analytics to assess VM capacity,sprawl, and host utilization

Physical Server Management

• Discover and collect configurations and changes

• Monitor and manage physical servers

• Perform policy-based server provisioning

• Manage blade power

• Manage the server life cycle

• Perform server use trending and capacityanalysis

• Perform baremetal provisioning using prebootexecution environment (PXE) bootmanagement

Cisco UCS Director Installation and Upgrade on VMware vSphere, Release 5.1 3

OverviewPhysical and Virtual Management Features

Virtual Storage Management

• Discover, collect, andmonitor storage of vFilersand storage pools

• Perform policy-based storage provisioning forthick and thin clients

• Create new datastores and map them to virtualdevice contexts (VDCs)

• Add and resize disks to VMs

• Monitor andmanage organizational storage use

• Perform virtual storage trend and capacityanalysis

Physical Storage Management

• Discover, collect, and monitor storage filers

• Perform policy-based provisioning of vFilers

• Provision and map volumes

• Create and map Logical Unit Number (LUN)and iGroup instances

• Perform SAN zone management

• Monitor and manage network-attached storage(NAS) and SAN-based storage

• Implement storage best practices andrecommendation

Virtual Network Management

• Add networks to VMs

• Perform policy-based provisioning with IP andDHCP allocation

• Configure and connect Virtual NetworkInterface Cards ( vNICs) to VLANs and privateVLANs

• Create port groups and port profiles for VMs

• Monitor organizational use of virtual networks

Physical Network Management

• Discover, collect, andmonitor physical networkelements

• Provision VLANs across multiple switches

• Configure Access Control Lists (ACLs) onnetwork devices

• Configure the storage network

• Implement dynamic network topologies

About Cisco UCS Director for VMware vSphereCisco UCS Director can be hosted on VMware vSphere or vCenter as well as HyperV Manager.

Cisco UCS Director Express for Big Data can be hosted on VMware vSphere or vCenter.

Prerequisites• Installation of VMware vSphere or vCenter

• Configured system administrator privileges

• Cisco UCS Director deployed on a VMware vSphere or vCenter host

Cisco UCS Director Installation and Upgrade on VMware vSphere, Release 5.14

OverviewAbout Cisco UCS Director for VMware vSphere

Minimum System Requirements for a Single-Node SetupThe minimum system requirements depend upon how many VMs you plan to manage.

For optimal performance, reserve additional CPU andmemory resources.We recommend that you reservethe following resources in addition to the minimum system requirements listed in the tables below: CPUresources of more than or equal to 3000MHz, and additional memory of more than or equal to 4GB.

Note

For information about minimum system requirements for a multi-node setup, see Minimum SystemRequirements for a Multi-Node Setup.

Up to 2,000 VMs

If you plan to manage up to 2,000 VMs, the Cisco UCS Director environment must meet at least the minimumsystem requirements in the following table.

Table 1: Minimum System Requirements for up to 2,000 VMs

Minimum Supported RequirementElement

4vCPU

8 GBMemory

100 GBHard Disk

Up to 5,000 VMs

If you plan to manage no more than 5,000 VMs, the Cisco UCS Director environment must meet at least theminimum system requirements and recommended configurations in the following tables.

Table 2: Minimum System Requirements for up to 5,000 VMs

Minimum Supported RequirementElement

4vCPU

20 GBMemory

100 GBHard Disk

Cisco UCS Director Installation and Upgrade on VMware vSphere, Release 5.1 5

OverviewMinimum System Requirements for a Single-Node Setup

Table 3: Recommended Memory Configuration for Cisco UCS Director Services

ParameterFile LocationRecommendedConfiguration

Service

-Xms -Xmx/opt/infra/broker/run.sh256 MBbroker

-Xms -Xmx/opt/infra/client/run.sh512 MBclient

-Xms -Xmx/opt/infra/controller/run.sh256 MBcontroller

-Xms -Xmx/opt/infra/eventmgr/run.sh512 MBeventmgr

-Xms -Xmx/opt/infra/idaccessmgr/run.sh512 MBidaccessmgr

-Xms -Xmx/opt/infra/inframgr/run.sh8 GBinframgr

JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS-Xmsm -Xmxm"

/opt/infra/web_cloudmgr/apache-tomcat/bin/catalina.sh

1 GBTomcat

Table 4: Minimum Database Configuration

Minimum Supported ConfigurationElement

100thread_cache_size

1000max_connections

100innodb_lock_wait_timeout

128 MBquery_cache_size

4096 MBinnodb_buffer_pool_size

10000max_connect_errors

20connect_timeout

64innodb_read_io_threads

64innodb_write_io_threads

About LicensesYou must obtain a license to use Cisco UCS Director, as follows:

Cisco UCS Director Installation and Upgrade on VMware vSphere, Release 5.16

OverviewAbout Licenses

1 Before you install Cisco UCSDirector, generate the Cisco UCSDirector license key and claim a certificate(Product Access Key).

2 Register the Product Access Key (PAK) on the Cisco software license site, as described in Fulfilling theProduct Access Key, on page 7.

3 After you install Cisco UCS Director, update the license in Cisco UCS Director as described in Updatingthe License.

4 After the license has been validated, you can start to use Cisco UCS Director.

Fulfilling the Product Access Key

Before You Begin

You need the PAK number.

Step 1 Navigate to the Cisco Software License website.Step 2 If you are directed to the Product License Registration page, you can take the training or click Continue to Product

License Registration.Step 3 On the Product License Registration page, click Get New Licenses from a PAK or Token.Step 4 In the Enter a Single PAK or TOKEN to Fulfill field, enter the PAK number.Step 5 Click Fulfill Single PAK/TOKEN.Step 6 Complete the additional fields in License Information to register your PAK:

DescriptionName

The organization name.Organization Name

The site contact name.Site Contact Name

The street address of the organization.Street Address

The city or town.City/Town

The state or province.State/Province

The zip code or postal code.Zip/Postal Code

The country name.Country

Step 7 Click Issue Key.The features for your license appear, and an email with the Digital License Agreement and a zipped license file is sentto the email address you provided.

Cisco UCS Director Installation and Upgrade on VMware vSphere, Release 5.1 7

OverviewFulfilling the Product Access Key

Cisco UCS Director Installation and Upgrade on VMware vSphere, Release 5.18

OverviewFulfilling the Product Access Key