Building Blocks for Cisco Unified Computing System Initiative

by Jeffrey Burt

Cisco officials say that, compared with a four-socket, 256GB rack system, a UCS offering can save 40 percent on capital expenses, 19 percent in power and cooling costs over three years, 86 percent in cabling and 61 percent in rack space.

Key to Cisco’s blade server strategy is the use of Intel’s Xeon 5500 series chips—also known as Nehalem EP—which were built to offer greater performance and better virtualization support while driving down costs.

The fabric extenders, which connect the blade server chassis to the UCS fabric interconnects, helps simplify cabling, management and diagnostics, Cisco officials said.

The interconnects enable both network connectivity and management cabilities to all attached blades and chassis through 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet functions.

Virtualization is a key part of Cisco’s UCS strategy, and the vendor offers a choice of multiple adapters.

The management software is embedded into the entire system, driving down the overall cost, Cisco officials said. In addition, the management software will work with other popular management software platforms from rivals such as HP.