Cisco UCS Director
Cisco UCS Director is a complete, highly secure, end-to-end management, orchestration, and automation solution for a wide array of Cisco and non-Cisco data infrastructure components, and for the industry’s leading converged infrastructure solutions based on the Cisco UCS and Cisco Nexus platforms. For a complete list of supported infrastructure components and solutions, see the Cisco UCS Director Compatibility Matrix.
Cisco UCS Director is a 64-bit appliance that uses the following standard templates:
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Open Virtualization Format (OVF) for VMware vSphere
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Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) for Microsoft Hyper-V
Management through Cisco UCS Director
Cisco UCS Director extends the unification of computing and networking layers through Cisco UCS to provide you with comprehensive visibility and management of your data center infrastructure components. You can use Cisco UCS Directorto configure, administer, and monitor supported Cisco and non-Cisco components. The tasks you can perform include the following:
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Create, clone, and deploy service profiles and templates for all Cisco UCS servers and compute applications.
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Monitor organizational usage, trends, and capacity across a converged infrastructure on a continuous basis. For example, you can view heat maps that show virtual machine (VM) utilization across all your data centers.
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Deploy and add capacity to converged infrastructures in a consistent, repeatable manner.
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Manage, monitor, and report on data center components, such as Cisco UCS domains or Cisco Nexus network devices.
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Extend virtual service catalogs to include services for your physical infrastructure.
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Manage secure multi-tenant environments to accommodate virtualized workloads that run with non-virtualized workloads.
Automation and Orchestration with Cisco UCS Director
Cisco UCS Director enables you to build workflows that provide automation services, and to publish the workflows and extend their services to your users on demand. You can collaborate with other experts in your company to quickly and easily create policies. You can build Cisco UCS Director workflows to automate simple or complex provisioning and configuration processes.
Once built and validated, these workflows perform the same way every time, no matter who runs the workflows. An experienced data center administrator can run them, or you can implement role-based access control to enable your users and customers to run the workflows on a self-service basis, as needed.
With Cisco UCS Director, you can automate a wide array of tasks and use cases across a wide variety of supported Cisco and non-Cisco hardware and software data center components. A few examples of the use cases that you can automate include, but are not limited to:
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VM provisioning and lifecycle management
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Network resource configuration and lifecycle management
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Storage resource configuration and lifecycle management
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Tenant onboarding and infrastructure configuration
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Application infrastructure provisioning
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Self-service catalogs and VM provisioning
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Bare metal server provisioning, including installation of an operating system
Features and Benefits
The features and benefits of Cisco UCS Director are as follows:
Feature | Benefit |
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Central management |
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Self-service catalog |
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Adaptive provisioning |
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Dynamic capacity management |
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Multiple hypervisor support |
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Computing management |
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Network management |
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Storage management |
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Physical and Virtual Management Features
Physical Server Management
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Virtual Computing Management
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Physical Storage Management
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Virtual Storage Management
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Physical Network Management
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Virtual Network Management
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Cisco UCS Director Installation Guidelines
Before you install Cisco UCS Director, be aware of the following:
Cisco UCS Director VM Disks
During Cisco UCS Director installation, on either VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V, the installer creates two hard disks.
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Primary disk—Contains the Cisco UCS Director appliance and operating system. Post-installation, the primary disk is named Hard Disk 1.
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Secondary disk—Contains the Cisco UCS Director database. Post-installation, the secondary disk is named Hard Disk 2.
Both disks are automatically created during the installation with the same disk format and parameters.
Cisco UCS Director OVF and VHD Zip Files
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Cisco UCS Director OVF and VHD zip files are created using zip 3.x in CentOS 6.x. For Linux systems, you can extract the zip files with unzip 6.x or higher or with the latest version of the 7-Zip archiving tool. For Windows systems, you can extract the zip files with the native Extract All in Windows Explorer for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012 or with the latest versions of archiving tools such as 7-Zip or WinRAR. |
About Licenses
You must obtain a license to use Cisco UCS Director, as follows:
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Before you install Cisco UCS Director, generate the Cisco UCS Director license key and claim a certificate (Product Access Key).
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Register the Product Access Key (PAK) on the Cisco software license site, as described in Fulfilling the Product Access Key.
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After you install Cisco UCS Director, update the license in Cisco UCS Director as described in Updating the License.
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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.
Procedure
Step 1 |
Navigate to the Cisco Software License website. |
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Step 2 |
If you are directed to the Product License Registration page, you can take the training or click Continue to Product License Registration. |
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Step 3 |
On the Product License Registration page, click Get New Licenses from a PAK or Token. |
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Step 4 |
In the Enter a Single PAK or TOKEN to Fulfill field, enter the PAK number. |
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Step 5 |
Click Fulfill Single PAK/TOKEN. |
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Step 6 |
Complete the additional fields in License Information to register your PAK:
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Step 7 |
Click Issue Key. The features for your license appear, and you receive an email with the Digital License Agreement and a zipped license file. |
Digitally Signed Images
Cisco UCS Director images are delivered in digitally signed zip files. These signed zip files are wrapped in a container zip file that includes the following:
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Digitally signed zip file—Contains the Cisco UCS Director installation or upgrade image
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Verification program—Verifies the certificate chain and signature. During certificate chain validation, the program verifies the authenticity of the end-entity certificate using Cisco’s SubCA and root CA certificates. Then, the authenticated end-entity certificate is used to verify the signature.
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Digital signature file—Contains the signature that you can verify before installation or upgrade.
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Certificate file—Enables you to verify the digital signature. This Cisco-signed x.509 end-entity certificate contains a public key that can be used to verify the signature. This certificate is chained to the Cisco root posted onhttp://www.cisco.com/security/pki/certs/crcam2.cer.
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ReadMe file—Provides the information and instructions required to verify the digitally signed zip file.
Verify the image offline. Once the image is verified, you can begin the installation or upgrade of Cisco UCS Director.
Requirements for Verifying Digitally Signed Images
Before you verify a Cisco UCS Director digitally signed image, ensure that you have the following on your local machine:
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Connectivity to https://www.cisco.com during the verification process
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Python 2.7.4
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OpenSSL
Verifying a Digitally Signed Image
Before you begin
Download the Cisco UCS Director image from Cisco.com.
Procedure
Step 1 |
Unzip the file you downloaded from Cisco.com and verify that it contains the following files:
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Step 2 |
Review the instructions in the ReadMe file.
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Step 3 |
Run the signature verification program from the directory where you have unzipped the downloaded content. Example: Signature Verification for Upgrade Patch
Example: Signature Verification for VMware OVF Installation
Example: Signature Verification for Hyper-V VHD Installation
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Step 4 |
Review the output and ensure that the verification has succeeded. Example: Expected Output for Upgrade
Example: Expected Output for VMware OVF Installation
Example: Expected Output for Hyper-V VHD Installation
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What to do next
Install or upgrade Cisco UCS Director.
Upgrading a Single Node Setup
For information on upgrading Cisco UCS Director, see the Cisco UCS Director Upgrade Guide for this release.