Connecting Non UCS Server to Fabric Interconnect 6248

[jygoman95]

We are migrating our VMs from Dell PowerEdge 620\710 Servers to Cisco UCS environment. The question has been ask if we can connect our Dell Servers straight to the FI's ports via SFP+ and\or TP connection going 10Gb. Is this possible? How does the FIs treat the non-UCS servers?
 

[Marcin Latosiewicz]

Check out capability (and limitations!) of appliance ports. 

They might have not been introduced for this particular reason, but they just might work for you. 

Our of curiosity, why not attach the servers to upstream switch?

[Walter Dey · Accepted solution]

This is not supported ! I assume you would like to do vmotion and transfer your VM's from Dell Server to UCS. Just Setup the proper Network connectivity (vlan from UCS to Northbound Dell Server) and it should work.

[Marcin Latosiewicz]

Walter, 

For sake of argument, if I was to plug in a server and run NFS server on it over appliance port to migrate the data I don't see why it would not be supported. 

I might be missing something, I don't work with appliance ports. 

M.

[Walter Dey]

Hi Marcin

Appliance port to connect a IP storage Server (iSCSI, CIFS, NFS,...) is ok and supported. The original question was to connect Dell Server, running ESXi, which might technically work, but has for sure no TAC Support.

Walter.

[Marcin Latosiewicz]

Walter, right. Actually I glanced over the initial post.

To move the VMs they'd need to set this up properly as you mentioned. 

For some reason I was stuck thinking about data migration. 

[jygoman95]

We're not in a inclusive Cisco shop. Primary Brocade with some Cisco stuff.