Cisco Intersight requirement for M7 servers

[jritmanis]

Hi, 
I have a potential case where 20 C220-M7 servers (each air-gapped) should be installed for video surveillance NVR. Each server is planned to be equipped with 8cores 16GB ram and few TB of storage where the OS will be installed directly (no virtualization).

The first M7 servers that came to us require Cisco Intersight as per documentation and also CIMC interface complains about it. 
Can M7 servers at all be used in such Air-gapped environments ?
Or is it meant that I purchase 3-times the required resources (vCPU's and RAM), implement virtualization and run 20 on-prem Intersight VMs ? 

[Riaan van Niekerk · Accepted solution]

Intersight Essentials connectivity is required to use M7 servers, whether it be to Intersight SaaS, Intersight Connected Virutal Appliance (CVA) or Intersight Private Virtual Appliance (PVA). 

If you say the servers are air-gapped, does that mean that they cannot get to the Internet, directly or via HTTPS proxy? If they can get to the Intenet via HTTPs proxy, you can claim them directly in Intersight SaaS.

If your servers can get to an Intersight CVA on your LAN, that will avoid the need for them to be able to connect to the Internet.

If your servers cannot get to a CVA on yourr LAN, you will need a PVA (which is air-gapped) which they can reach.

If these servers cannot connect to a central PVA, you may need compute for virtualisation to host the PVA (it can run on ESXi, Hyper-V or KVM).

[jritmanis]

Tnx, clear, then I need to add to the cost calculation for Cisco server option for this project 3x more HW resources (RAM and CPU) + virtualization + work to set up 20 on-prem PVA instances + the more expensive Intersight licenses that can work with PVA.

[Riaan van Niekerk]

I still don't understand how you go from "20 C220-M7 servers" for the 20 sites to "3x more HW resources (RAM and CPU)"? Are these 3 more servers per site? OR just adding more CPU & RAM to each of the sites?

You don't need the expensive Intersight license (Advantage). Your setup will work with the cheaper Intersight license (Essentials).

From my understanding, you have to license each Intersight-managed server. It does not matter if you deploy 1 or 20 Virtual Appliances, as long as there are licenses for the components they have claimed.

I will strongly recommend talking to your Cisco partner/reseller or Cisco themselves if you have the relationship to confirm the above and ensure that there is no other more cost-effective way to do what you want to. 

[jritmanis]

Simple mathematics. Have 20 air-gapped sites, each with 1 C220 M7 that requires Cisco Intersight access. As there is no connection to anything except local video cameras, I require on-prem Intersight Virtual Appliance on each of the C220 M7 servers. So in total 20 appliances.

As for the NVR OS+App I needed 8vCPUs and 16 GB RAM per each of the C220M7 server. The minimum HW requirements for an on-prem Intersight VM is 16vCPUs and 32 GB RAM + ESXi Hypervisor requrements - 2vCPUs and 12 GB RAM. 
So, instead of 8vCPUs and 16GB RAM, now I need to have 26vCPUs and 60GB of RAM. This makes more than 3x resource increase. Please correct if I'm wrong.

[Riaan van Niekerk]

I have to correct myself. From the Cisco UCS C220 M7 Rack Server Data Sheet

Cisco UCS C220 M7 Rack Servers can be deployed as standalone servers, part of a Cisco UCS‒managed environment or through Cisco Intersight.

E.g. Intersight with a PVA does not look like it is required. If I recall correctly, Cisco will only sell the M7 with an Intersight license (e.g. it is not optional), but you can run the server in regular “CIMC” mode. 

[jritmanis]

This was the reason why I raised the question here, because there is also Intersight docs, that say that it is required:
Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service Data Sheet 
Also the first M7 servers I have received (bought with SaaS license), display warning with text "Please note: Intersight Infrastructure Services license is required with this server". When asking some cisco guys - they told that without assigning the CIMC to some Intersight we are not assigning the license to the CIMC, so we are "breaking the EULA". But no one could me explain what is the correct way how to handle such cases.

[jvanewyk · Accepted solution]

Cisco Intersight licenses are required for all Cisco UCS M7 generation servers. If Cisco IMC software is claimed in Cisco Intersight (SaaS, Connected Virtual Appliance, or Private Virtual Appliance), where the licenses are administered, everything is good. However, if Cisco IMC is not connected/claimed in Intersight , at this time Cisco IMC will display a warning message at log in to remind users that an Intersight license is required. Cisco IMC functionality is not impacted in any way. The warning message is dismissed after several log ins, although it may re-appear after a Cisco IMC upgrade.

I hope that this guidance helps.

[jamesbruce2024]

I have serious issues with some of these statements.   "Cisco Intersight licenses are required for all Cisco UCS M7 generation servers."  WHY?!   It is hardware.   So you're telling me, that after I spend 10s of thousands of dollars on a server, I'm going to be required to pay a monthly/yearly license fee just to use the server?   I'm already paying for support to keep the software components like the UCSM up-to-date, and now I have to pay an additional license?   Tell me exactly why I should continue to use Cisco hardware at this point.