How to manage UCS from a different VLAN?

kenny.ng123 · ‎01-09-2017

Does anyone know how I can configure my UCS environment to be managed from a second VLAN?

Here are the background information:

- in our network, we made the management network as Isolated and this network is dedicated for management only. So the hosts within this network cannot communicate with each other. We use this network to login and manage our UCS environment.

- within the UCS environment, we created VLANs for our application network. Our monitoring server resides within one of these VLANs.

- my main goal is to be able to use my monitoring server to monitor the UCS equipment, e.g. fabric interconnect units, and the C-Series servers

Any help or advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Ken

Kirk J · ‎01-10-2017

Greetings.

It sounds like you need to define your mgmt vlan in the UCSM as well and configure some VNICs that allow this vlan. Depending on whether you are using a GuestVM based OS for your monitoring app, you will have some additional vswitch setup to do to allow that mgmt vlan on into the NIC for the guestVm.

At least one of your UCSM uplinks will need to be able to trunk your mgmt vlan. If it is a different switch, than what your other uplinks connect to (or connects to different ports on same switch that allows different vlans), than you will need to setup what is called a disjoint layer 2 configuration, so that only your mgmt vlan is allowed up that specific uplink (while pruning all other vlans), and the mgmt vlan is pruned off of your regular up-links.

This would be similar to a DMZ setup, where you are providing a separate up-link to handle DMZ type traffic only.

Thanks,

Kirk

kenny.ng123 · ‎01-10-2017

Thanks for the reply Kirk.

My uplinks is a trunk connection and it has access to both the mgmt VLAN and application VLAN. However as I have mentioned, the mgmt VLAN is Isolated and it's out of my control. So that's why I want to know whether it's possible to add a 2nd mgmt connection for the UCSM to connect to the application VLAN, which is where my monitoring server resides.

You had mentioned vNIC. Is it possible to add a vNIC in UCSM for a 2nd mgmt connection? If that works, then monitor all the UCS hardware snmp traps or other Cisco client software. BTW, this application VLAN is already a private VLAN, so it is safe to use.

Thanks../Ken