New product: Cisco UCS "Mini"

Cisco has a new update few days ago to her Unified Computing System (UCS): the UCS Mini. Here is what I have known of it from the public web sites.

Sun is rising at Hualian County of Taiwan on August 30, 2014.

I was misled by the name at first. I thought it was an every-component-smaller new UCS. In fact, the only component changed smaller is the Fabric Interconnect (FI). The blades, chassis, and even the C-Series rack servers are exactly the same as normal UCS.

Components of Cisco UCS Mini.
Captured on Cisco.com.

The FI for UCS Mini is exactly the same size of normal I/O Module (IOM), and installed right at the slot of IOM on one chassis. Two FIs occupy two IOM slots in the chassis. There is only one model at this moment: UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect.

Cisco UCS 6324 FI. Captured on Cisco.com.

We can only install one chassis in UCS Mini, and optionally up to 7 C Series rack server. Counting 8 half-width blades in the chassis, the maximum number of servers in a single UCS Mini installation is 15. Therefore, UCS Mini is a middle sized member of the family, compared to a full UCS (up to 160 servers) and UCS Express (up to 4 in single ISR G2 router).

We might wonder there are only 4x 10G and 1x 40G ports on UCS 6324 FI, how could 7 C-Series rack servers being hooked in. In fact, we can install breakout cable at this 40G port to convert it into 4x 10G ports. So UCS 6324 FI is a FI with 8x 10G external ports. Excluding at least one 10G for external connection, the maximum seats for C-Series rack server is now 7.

Cisco QSFP to Four SFP+ Copper Breakout Cables.
Captured on Cisco.com.

Cisco 40G QSFP to Four SFP+ Breakout Active Optics Cables.
Captured on Cisco.com.

For internal connection inside the chassis to all the blades, there are 16 x 10GBASE-KR lanes for single FI. Therefore, 2x 10G lanes are reserved for each half-width blades to A-side FI (FI-A), and another 2x 10G lanes to FI-B.

Just like the normal FI, there is also the same full-featured UCS Manager (UCSM) running inside UCS 6324 FI. Managing UCS Mini is exactly the same as full UCS, except for its smaller size. We can also manage multiple UCS Mini installations with UCS Central. This is very important because UCS Mini installations would surely spread out many branch facilities.


Official video introducing Cisco UCS Mini

One more thing…

Next time when we see a working UCS installation with only single UCS 5108 chassis, we don't have to be surprised. It could be UCS Mini.