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7028
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117
Helpful
15
Replies

Intersight APIC server support planned?

YanL
Level 1
Level 1

Hello we have Cisco APIC (ACI) servers that are rebranded UCS C220 M5 servers. We use the same HUU ISO file from a UCSC-C220-M5 to manually upgrade the APICs CIMC firmware and other modules since it's the same platform. I would really appreciate if these server PIDs would be included in the Intersight support matrix for central firmware management. 

APIC server PID = APIC-SERVER-M2 or APIC-SERVER-L2 or APIC-SERVER-M3 or APIC-SERVER-L3

 

We are mostly looking for firmware management but would appreciate configuration and compliancy management.

 

Is it in the plans to included APIC server PIDs and if so could we get an ETA?

thank you

15 Replies 15

Gilles Girard
Level 1
Level 1

Yes this would be a great feature.

this is a feature that help a lot

 

dayaa.alzoubi
Level 1
Level 1

Please Cisco ,  This will be very helpful !!!

Yes!  Very helpful!  Please add the PIDs!!

This would be really useful.

jvanewyk
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

At this time, there are no concrete plans for Cisco Intersight to support Cisco appliances, including the APIC controller. Having said that, I am looking to add this to the server management backlog. Thank you for sharing the use cases you are looking for, starting with firmware management. If you can add more color around the configuration and compliance management of the servers, I would appreciate it.

 

For all who have added comments, I will echo that providing use cases and details around what you would like to see would help us ensure that if we support Cisco appliances such as the APIC controller in the future, we meet your needs.

 

Best regards,

 

Jacob Van Ewyk

UCS Management Product Manager

Hello Jacob I'm happy to see our request is getting traction from someone at Cisco. I've been trying for more than 3 years with different BUs to get central CIMC management for APICs either through CIMC Supervisor or Intersight since most ACI (APIC) upgrades recommends a CIMC firmware upgrade.

 

Regarding compliance; we are looking for a single pane of glass (dashboard) that would show all of our APICs and their respective firmware version, default authentication domain, NTP settings, AAA (TACACS) settings, SNMP settings, HTTP settings, DNS settings and Redfish settings. Perhaps in the form of a report if the dashboard can only show enable/disabled status of different settings.

 

For configuration we would like to configure the above settings for groups of CIMC plus CIMC Banner and IP Filtering.

 

For Firmware; we would like to upgrade all modules like BMC, BIOS, FlexFlash, RAID and VIC modules.

 

We also would like local password management; ability to change local admin password for groups of CIMCs.

 

thank you

 

p.s. we are considering Cisco Nexus Dashboard Appliances, are those also considered Cisco Appliances and not currently supported by Cisco Intersight?

jvanewyk
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Thank you for the feedback. It is helpful to understand which functionalities are important to you as a customer.

 

As I noted earlier, while this is now in the Intersight backlog, there are no plans to develop support for adopter BU appliances at this time. Intersight, first and foremost, will manage general purpose UCS servers, and that will continue to be the primary focus throughout this calendar year and moving forward. The volumes of appliances are orders of magnitude less, and therefore they are lower priority. If Intersight isn't successful in managing UCS servers first, then there won't be an Intersight platform to manage Cisco appliances either.

 

I am adding adopter BU appliances to our Intersight backlog, and I have had some discussions with the Intersight engineering team on what support could look like. There are a large number of additional challenges in managing appliances. For instance, many appliances do not leverage the standard UCS Cisco IMC bundles (either signed differently, or bundled differently), or they only support a sub-set of the Cisco IMC bundles (access to general Cisco IMC bundles would allow customers to upgrade to an unsupported configuration, something we want to avoid). It is obviously possible to overcome these challenges with sufficient time, resources, and continuous, ongoing testing for the life of the products. If you look at this activity across the 30+ appliances offered by Cisco, it is a non-trivial investment. It is and investment that we are considering for the long-term, but it isn't a high enough priority to bump other investments off the priority list in the short-term.

I can also confirm that the Nexus Dashboard Appliances are also considered Cisco appliances, as you mentioned.

 

Once again, thank you for your wonderful feedback on which use cases are the most relevant to you.

 

Best regards,

 

Jacob Van Ewyk

UCS Management Product Manager

 

Hello Jacob,

                   for ACI APICs we are using the Cisco recommended standard UCS Cisco IMC bundle (generic C220 M5 ISO file) so perhaps for ACI appliances it would be much simpler to integrate with Cisco Intersight since it's neither signed differently, or bundled differently. We are not asking to integrate all appliances at once, we are only concerned with ACI APICs currently.

 

thank you

Hello Jacob, do you have any updates to share about this request? we need Cisco APICs in Cisco Intersight supported hardware. Cisco Intersight Help Center

thank you

jvanewyk
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

At this time, there is no development for Cisco APIC controller support in Cisco Intersight. That means that it won't happen for at least the next 6 months, and likely longer.

Hello Jacob any new plans to support Cisco appliances in Intersight, specifically APICs ?

Salman_Naqvi
Level 1
Level 1

Yes, this is required badly. Please develop this feature.

YanL
Level 1
Level 1

This would still be very appreciated, APIC CIMC upgrades a a major thorn...

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