Will my Windows server 2012r2 boot from Boot LUN on Cisco UCS C-Series Hardware in DR site? Will I face any challenges if the hardware configuration gets changed?

[mrprithviraj]

Dear Friends,

I am designing the DR plan on Cisco UCS environment.

Current Configuration: Primary Site –

1. Cisco UCS Blade Chasses – Cisco UCS 5108
2. Blade - UCSB-B200-M3 with
   1. Processor 2 x Inter Xeon E5-2680v2 with 10 Core,
   2. Processor Speed 2.8 Ghz
   3. Processor PID: UCS-CPU-E52680
   4. Memory is 265GB
3. Server 2012r2 Booting from NetApp SAN

Now, I will be using the same NetApp Storage in DR site with SnapMirrer and replicate the primary site storage including Windows Server Boot LUN. I am looking to save some cost in a DR site. Therefore, I am planning to use Cisco UCS C-Series Rack server with low configuration like 8 core processor 16GB Memory and iSCSI as we will not be using these servers in production.

Now my question is, will my Windows server 2012r2 boot from Boot LUN on Cisco UCS C-Series Hardware? Will I face any challenges if the hardware configuration gets changed?

Please help me in this if anyone has experience in this kind of scenarios.

Your help is highly appreciated.

[ssumichrast]

Windows has gotten much better at dealing with hardware changes. However changing cpu quantity and RAM quantity has always been fairly smooth in Windows. The biggest hurdle is when you're changing processor manufacturers (which you don't have that on UCS) or sometimes processor families. 

You will need to change your boot order at the DR site since the PWWN of the netapp at the DR site will obviously be different. Besides that though your profile should boot successfully. Likely Windows will tell you hardware changed and a reboot is required, but you should still be able to run there.  

Obviously test this. :)

[Walter Dey]

First the trivial question:

will my Windows server 2012r2 boot from Boot LUN on Cisco UCS C-Series Hardware

yes

Not clear to me, how your DR setup should be ?

- Best practise is one UCS domain per site (a pair of FI, chassis, and / or rack mount servers,.....).

- I assume you want to do a DR configuration between B200-M3 and a C-serie server in the DR site

- The challenge is the most likely different internal hardware archtiecture

- I hope you are aware of the concept of global pools (mac, UUID, pwwn,....) and global service profiles. This requires UCS Central.

- Global service profiles with global pools will guarantee unique values of mac, uuid,....