UCS Manager & Vmware

[David Rodriguez]

Hi guys,

Before we put our Cisco UCS solution in we already had Vmware up and running with Nexus 1000v switching. After installing the Cisco UCS solution we migrated alot off the old system onto the new. Reading through the manual about setting up vCenter, Port Profiles and Virtual Machines in the UCS manager it seems as though it creates a new vsm on the nexus 1000v. Is there anyway to import what we already have so that we see this within the UCS manager ?

[Jeremy Waldrop · Accepted solution]

David, the UCS feature you are referring to is known as VN-Link in hardware whereas the Nexus 1000v is known as VN-Link in software. The setup and configuration is very similar to the Nexus 1000v but they are separate distributed virtual switches.

Unfortunately you can't use both as they both require the VEM loaded on the ESX hosts and the UCS VN-Link requires a UCS dynamic vNIC connection policy. If you are using the 1000v you will not be able to use the VM tab in UCSM and you will not every see anything on the Virtual Machines tab on a Service Profile.

In my opinion the Nexus 1000v is better because is offers more features, is more scalable and is managed/configured from the NX-OS. The UCS VN-Link option also limits the number of VMs you can run on a host because the dynamic vNICs support a max of 56 depending on how many uplinks from your chassis to your FIs. If you only have 2 uplinks from your chassis then the max VMs per host when using the UCS VN-Link is 20-24, depending on the number of ESX host vNICs you create as part of your Service Profile.

[David Rodriguez]

Awesome thanks for answering Jeremy