Introduction
Cisco UCS B-series blade servers sits inside the UCS chassis and are managed by UCS manager running on Fabric Interconnect. Cisco UCS C-series rack server are independent 1RU or 2RU size servers, which can be independently managed or via UCS FI.
UCS Blade Server vs Rack Server
The following table lists the differences between the Blade Servers and Rack Servers:
Blade Servers | Rack Servers |
Sits into UCS blade chassis | Sits on a rack |
Can’t operate independently. Requires UCS infrastructure | Can operate independently |
Connects only to UCS Fabric Interconnect | Can connect to any Ethernet switch including UCS Fabric Interconnect |
Managed from the UCS Fabric Interconnect by Cisco UCS Manager | Features Cisco Integrated Management Controller (CIMC) and thus can be managed independently or from Cisco UCS Manager if connected to a UCS Fabric Interconnect |
Supports RAID 0 and 1 only | Supports built-in RAID 0 and 1 for SATA drives. RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10 support through a PCIe LSI MegaRAID Controller |
Supports Gigabit Ethernet Mezz cards and Converged Network Adapter Mezz cards | Supports Gigabit Ethernet PCIe cards, Converged Network Adapter PCIe cards and Fibre Channel HBA PCIe cards. |
Supports up to two front-accessible, hot-swappable SAS drives for local storage | Supports up to 4 front-accessible, hot-swappable, internal 3.5-inch SAS or SATA drives |
No support for PCIe slots | Support for up to 2 PCIe 2.0 slots |
No support for optical drive | Optional front panel optical drive for CD and DVD media |
