Cisco UCS Director Integration with VMware vSphere

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:

Open Virtualization Format (OVF) for VMware vSphere
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:

Create, clone, and deploy service profiles and templates for all Cisco UCS servers and compute applications.
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.
Deploy and add capacity to converged infrastructures in a consistent, repeatable manner.
Manage, monitor, and report on data center components, such as Cisco UCS domains or Cisco Nexus network devices.
Extend virtual service catalogs to include services for your physical infrastructure.
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:

VM provisioning and lifecycle management
Network resource configuration and lifecycle management
Storage resource configuration and lifecycle management
Tenant onboarding and infrastructure configuration
Application infrastructure provisioning
Self-service catalogs and VM provisioning
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
Central management	Provides a single interface for administrators to provision, monitor, and manage the system across physical, virtual, and bare metal environments Provides unified dashboards, reports, and heat maps, which reduce troubleshooting and performance bottlenecks
Self-service catalog	Allows end users to order and deploy new infrastructure instances conforming to IT-prescribed policies and governance
Adaptive provisioning	Provides a real-time available capability, internal policies, and application workload requirements to optimize the availability of your resources
Dynamic capacity management	Provides continuous monitoring of infrastructure resources to improve capacity planning, utilization, and management Identifies underutilized and overutilized resources
Multiple hypervisor support	Supports VMware ESX, ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Red Hat hypervisors
Computing management	Provisions, monitors, and manages physical, virtual, and bare metal servers, as well as blades Allows end users to implement virtual machine life-cycle management and business continuance through snapshots Allows administrators to access server utilization trend analysis
Network management	Provides policy-based provisioning of physical and virtual switches and dynamic network topologies Allows administrators to configure VLANs, virtual network interface cards (vNICs), port groups and port profiles, IP and Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP) allocation, and access control lists (ACLs) across network devices
Storage management	Provides policy-based provisioning and management of filers, virtual filers (vFilers), logical unit numbers (LUNs), and volumes Provides unified dashboards that allow administrators comprehensive visibility into organizational usage, trends, and capacity analysis details.

Physical and Virtual Management Features


Physical Server Management Discover and collect configurations and changes Monitor and manage physical servers Perform policy-based server provisioning Manage blade power Manage server life cycle Perform server use trending and capacity analysis Perform bare metal provisioning using preboot execution environment (PXE) boot management	Virtual Computing Management Discover, collect, and monitor virtual computing environments Perform policy-based provisioning and dynamic resource allocation Manage the host server load and power Manage VM life cycle and snapshots Perform analysis to assess VM capacity, sprawl, and host utilization
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 and recommendation	Virtual Storage Management Discover, collect, and monitor storage of vFilers and storage pools Perform policy-based storage provisioning for thick and thin clients Create new datastores and map them to virtual device contexts (VDCs) Add and resize disks to VMs Monitor and manage organizational storage use Perform virtual storage trend and capacity analysis
Physical Network Management Discover, collect, and monitor physical network elements Provision VLANs across multiple switches Configure Access Control Lists (ACLs) on network devices Configure storage network s Implement dynamic network topologies	Virtual Network Management Add networks to VMs Perform policy-based provisioning with IP and DHCP allocation Configure and connect Virtual Network Interface Cards ( vNICs) to VLANs and private VLANs Create port groups and port profiles for VMs Monitor organizational use of virtual networks

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.

Primary disk—Contains the Cisco UCS Director appliance and operating system. Post-installation, the primary disk is named Hard Disk 1.
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

Note

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:

Before you install Cisco UCS Director, generate the Cisco UCS Director license key and claim a certificate (Product Access Key).
Register the Product Access Key (PAK) on the Cisco software license site, as described in Fulfilling the Product Access Key.
After you install Cisco UCS Director, update the license in Cisco UCS Director as described in Updating the License.
After the license has been validated, you can start to use Cisco UCS Director.

Fulfilling the Product Access Key

Fulfilling the Product Access Key

Before you begin

You need the PAK number.

Procedure

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:


Name	Description
Organization Name	The organization name.
Site Contact Name	The site contact name.
Street Address	The street address of the organization.
City or Town	The city or town.
State or Province	The state or province.
Zip or Postal Code	The zip code or postal code.
Country	The country name.

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:

Digitally signed zip file—Contains the Cisco UCS Director installation or upgrade image
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.
Digital signature file—Contains the signature that you can verify before installation or upgrade.
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.
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:

Connectivity to https://www.cisco.com during the verification process
Python 2.7.4
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:

ReadMe file
Digitally signed zip file, for example CUCSD_6_6_0_0_66365_VMWARE_GA.zip, CUCSD_6_6_0_0_66717_HYPERV_GA.zip, or cucsd_patch_6_6_0_0_66365.zip
Certificate file, for example UUCS_GENERIC_IMAGE_SIGNING-CCO_RELEASE.cer
Digital signature generated for the image, for example CUCSD_6_6_0_0_66365_VMWARE_GA.zip.signature, CUCSD_6_6_0_0_66717_HYPERV_GA.zip.signature, or cucsd_patch_6_6_0_0_66365.zip.signature
Signature verification program, for example cisco_x509_verify_release.py

Step 2

Review the instructions in the ReadMe file.

Note

If there are any differences between these instructions and those in the ReadMe, follow the ones in the ReadMe.

Step 3

Run the signature verification program from the directory where you have unzipped the downloaded content.

Example: Signature Verification for Upgrade Patch

python ./cisco_x509_verify_release.py -e UCS_GENERIC_IMAGE_SIGNING-CCO_RELEASE.cer 
-i cucsd_patch_6_6_0_0_66365.zip -s cucsd_patch_6_6_0_0_66365.zip.signature -v dgst -sha512

Example: Signature Verification for VMware OVF Installation

python ./cisco_x509_verify_release.py -e UCS_GENERIC_IMAGE_SIGNING-CCO_RELEASE.cer 
-i CUCSD_6_6_0_0_66365_VMWARE_GA.zip -s CUCSD_6_6_0_0_66365_VMWARE_GA.zip.signature -v dgst -sha512

Example: Signature Verification for Hyper-V VHD Installation

python ./cisco_x509_verify_release.py -e UCS_GENERIC_IMAGE_SIGNING-CCO_RELEASE.cer
 -i CUCSD_6_6_0_0_66717_HYPERV_GA.zip -s CUCSD_6_6_0_0_66717_HYPERV_GA.zip.signature -v dgst -sha512

Step 4

Review the output and ensure that the verification has succeeded.

Example: Expected Output for Upgrade

Downloading CA certificate from http://www.cisco.com/security/pki/certs/crcam2.cer ...
Successfully downloaded and verified crcam2.cer.
Downloading SubCA certificate from http://www.cisco.com/security/pki/certs/innerspace.cer ...
Successfully downloaded and verified innerspace.cer.
Successfully verified root, subca and end-entity certificate chain.
Successfully verified the signature of cucsd_patch_6_6_0_0_66365.zip using UCS_GENERIC_IMAGE_SIGNING-CCO_RELEASE.cer

Example: Expected Output for VMware OVF Installation

Downloading CA certificate from http://www.cisco.com/security/pki/certs/crcam2.cer ...
Successfully downloaded and verified crcam2.cer.
Downloading SubCA certificate from http://www.cisco.com/security/pki/certs/innerspace.cer ...
Successfully downloaded and verified innerspace.cer.
Successfully verified root, subca and end-entity certificate chain.
Successfully verified the signature of CUCSD_6_6_0_0_66365_VMWARE_GA.zip using UCS_GENERIC_IMAGE_SIGNING-CCO_RELEASE.cer

Example: Expected Output for Hyper-V VHD Installation

Downloading CA certificate from http://www.cisco.com/security/pki/certs/crcam2.cer ...
Successfully downloaded and verified crcam2.cer.
Downloading SubCA certificate from http://www.cisco.com/security/pki/certs/innerspace.cer ...
Successfully downloaded and verified innerspace.cer.
Successfully verified root, subca and end-entity certificate chain.
Successfully verified the signature of CUCSD_6_6_0_0_66717_HYPERV_GA.zip using UCS_GENERIC_IMAGE_SIGNING-CCO_RELEASE.cer

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.

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Cisco UCS Director Integration with VMware vSphere