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| Cisco Unified Computing System | |
|---|---|
| Name | Cisco Unified Computing System |
| Developer | Cisco Systems |
| Introduced | 2009 |
| Type | Data center converged infrastructure |
| Cpu | Intel, AMD |
| Os | VMware ESXi, Microsoft Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server |
Cisco Unified Computing System is a data center converged infrastructure platform introduced by Cisco Systems that integrates computing, networking, and storage access into a single system. It combines blade and rack servers with fabric interconnects and management software to support virtualization, cloud, and enterprise workloads. The system is used by service providers, enterprises, and research institutions to consolidate operations, reduce latency, and accelerate application deployment.
Cisco Unified Computing System was launched in 2009 and positioned against competing platforms from Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Oracle Corporation, and Amazon Web Services. The platform targets environments running VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and other enterprise operating systems, and it integrates with management tools from VMware, Microsoft, Red Hat, and Canonical (company). Early adopters included large enterprises and research organizations such as Walmart, Facebook, NASA, and Goldman Sachs. Industry analysts from firms like Gartner, Forrester Research, and IDC have tracked its market positioning in converged and hyperconverged infrastructure.
The system architecture centers on a unified fabric that converges Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), influenced by standards from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the International Telecommunication Union. It employs a two-tier topology with blade and rack servers connecting to fabric interconnects that present network and storage I/O to servers, echoing design principles found in OpenFlow-based software-defined networking research and deployments by Google and Microsoft Azure. Hardware designs draw on silicon trends set by Intel and AMD and reflect cooling and power considerations discussed in projects by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory for high-performance computing.
Key components include blade servers such as the UCS B-Series and rack servers such as the UCS C-Series, fabric interconnects derived from switches similar to those produced by Cisco Systems and other networking vendors like Juniper Networks and Arista Networks. Storage and I/O are provided through integration with arrays from NetApp, EMC Corporation, Hitachi Vantara, and software-defined storage projects like Ceph and OpenStack. Management relies on Cisco UCS Manager and can integrate with orchestration from VMware vCenter, Red Hat OpenShift, Kubernetes, and automation tools from Ansible and HashiCorp. Ecosystem partners include server makers and software vendors such as Intel Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Red Hat, Inc., and SAP SE.
Management is centralized via Cisco UCS Manager and is commonly integrated with cloud management platforms including VMware vRealize, OpenStack, and orchestration frameworks used by Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform customers. Software feature sets incorporate service profiles, BIOS policies, firmware management, and automation via REST APIs that enable workflows with Jenkins, Puppet, Chef, and SaltStack. The platform supports visibility and telemetry features that map to monitoring solutions from Splunk, Nagios, and Prometheus (software), and aligns with configuration and compliance tooling from Puppet and Chef.
Typical deployments span enterprise private clouds at Bank of America, hosted offerings by Equinix, high-performance computing clusters for research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and virtualization consolidation projects at Siemens AG. Use cases include virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) projects similar to deployments by Citrix Systems, database consolidation for vendors such as Oracle Corporation and SAP SE, and cloud-native platform hosting comparable to environments run by Red Hat and VMware, Inc.. Service providers use UCS for telco cloud initiatives paralleling standards development in the European Telecommunications Standards Institute and for edge computing scenarios akin to deployments by Verizon and AT&T.
Performance characteristics depend on server configuration, networking fabric, and storage backends; benchmarks have been published in comparisons involving systems from Dell EMC, HPE, and Lenovo. Scalability is achieved through chassis aggregation, fabric interconnect clustering, and stateless computing via service profiles, supporting environments scaled by companies like Amazon and Facebook. High-performance computing and database workloads reference tuning practices popularized in projects at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and CERN for optimized MPI, storage I/O, and NUMA-aware scheduling.
Security features include role-based access control, firmware authentication, remote management auditing, and integration with identity providers such as Microsoft Active Directory and Okta, Inc.. Compliance considerations often map to standards and frameworks from National Institute of Standards and Technology, PCI DSS, HL7-related healthcare controls, and regulations enforced by agencies like the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and European Commission. Partners and customers implement hardened images and logging strategies with vendors including Splunk and Tenable, Inc. to meet enterprise and government audit requirements.
Category:Data center computing