The recent release firmware for Cisco UCS version 1.4 had enabled the support of new blade B230M1 and C series rack mount server integration allow server management from UCS manager. This is a big major changes to the IT market today. Now you will enjoy service profile functionality similar to blade system in Cisco UCS even though if you choose to deploy a rack mount base solution. Not every environment will go with blade system only, therefore Cisco UCS C series rack mount solution integrate with UCS manager is important. It is interesting to monitor the respond from others server vendor such as HP, IBM, DELL, SUN and etc for this major improvement.
This morning when I woke up, I receive an email from my counterpart regarding Cisco UCS R-Series. At first, I I thought it was just another model of blade or rack mount system Cisco had added to their product line. Once I open up the official link and found that is nothing related to the blade or rack mount base UCS machines. Is a RACK!!!! after years of Cisco UCS come into the market, there had been number of users asking why Cisco UCS does not come with their own rack? Finally, I think Cisco has the answer to the customers who had asked the similar question before. Not a bad idea to add the R series as part of the offering, which may looks cool to deploy the full set of UCS & Cisco solutions in Cisco Rack itself now.
With my last 3 years of experience, I had seen numbers of companies require significant expansion in the data center to support the business growth, just because of the additional 200 to 2000 servers or storage shelves they need to put in to the data center. With the technology today, it does help us to reduce the space we need to slot in the servers, and storage thanks to the success of virtualization and higher capacity disk drives in the market. To run a full solution of data center with less number of server racks for SME and enterprise, will no longer be a dream due to some facts below,
Higher consolidation ratio in virtualization with the latest CPU, memory and servers performance
Higher capacity disk drive which significant reduce the number of storage expansion require
Virtual I/O which allow the higher utilization of the available bandwidth in data center
UCS to provide consolidation and higher capacity of bandwidth to support network and storage utilization in the data center
