Cisco UCS Platform Emulator, Release 3.2(3ePE1)
CONFIGURATION IMPORT NOTE: Importing configuration backups (All, System, or Logical) taken from the UCS Platform Emulator (UCSPE) to physical UCS Manager domains is not recommended or supported by Cisco TAC. UCSPE backups should only be imported to UCSPE domains.
New Features and Significant Changes in Cisco UCS PE, Release 3.2(3ePE1)
- Full scale emulation of UCS Manager 3.2(3e) which supports M5 Hardware. Note that there are limited functional changes from the previous release and not all features present in UCS Manager 3.2(3e) are supported (see Known Limitations).
- New default HW config with M5 servers added.
- Additional example Hardware configurations have been attached below. The attached UCSPE configs can be imported from the UCSPE Equipment page.
- UCSPE is featured in a Cisco dCloud programmability demo. The demo includes a comprehensive lab guide including the following content for the Cisco UCS PowerTool and Python SDK:
- Overviews of PowerShell and Python programming environments with step-by-step usage instructions
- Code generation examples including code generation with UCS Manager's HTML5 interface
- Sample script creation and use with UCSPE
Hardware Feature Summary
Please see the Release Notes for a complete list of supported Hardware. Below is a summary:
- M5 and M4 B-Series and C-Series servers including HX220C and HX240C
- Cisco UCS S3260 chassis, servers, and storage controllers
- NVMe-based PCIe storage options
Known Limitations
- The Platform Emulator does not support connections to Cisco Intersight to avoid the use of Intersight resources by emulated devices. The Intersight Device Connector has been disabled and the device connector menu in the UI is non-functional. You can use Intersight demo environments in the Cisco demo Cloud (https://dcloud.cisco.com/ ) and Cisco DevNet (https://developer.cisco.com/site/intersight/ ) to explore the Intersight management of UCS.
- Imported configurations should be manually checked to ensure there are no missing or unsupported components. If issues are experienced following an import, any unsupported components can be manually deleted and missing components manually added through the Equipment menu on the Navigation pane.
- Firmware Management and Firmware Auto Install have not been fully validated in this release.
- If issues are experienced during FW download, please try alternate methods such as API based download (e.g., using PowerTool or Python SDK).
- If issues are experienced with FW policies, please try excluding all components from the policy.
- AAA-based authentication (LDAP, RADIUS, TACACs)— The Platform Emulator accepts security configuration changes, but does not enforce local or remote password authentication. Any username and password combination can successfully log into the Cisco UCS Manger UI with administrator privileges.
- See the Release Notes for the complete list of Known Limitations.
IMPORTANT CONFIGURATION NOTE: Backup/Import of UCSM Configuration
- The Platform Emulator does not save UCSM configuration state across Emulator resets (to avoid consistency issues in UCSM configuration and the emulator HW configuration). To preserve UCSM state, UCSM backup and import operations can be performed. See an example backup/import flow here: PythonSDK for backup/restore (import) of UCSM config
Firmware Management: UCS PE supports uploading B-Series and C-Series server firmware bundles. Because of the large file sizes of the firmware bundles, UCS PE only supports uploading of stripped-down versions (link below). Stripped-down versions include only the firmware metadata (not the actual firmware binaries).
Download Instructions
- Direct downloads from this site are not supported. The following links should be used for downloads:
- Note that download and use of the Platform Emulator is subject to the UCS Platform Emulator License Agreement
MD5 hashes for downloads:
- ZIP: 4B409EB4046354BA333A3AD4BFC4F15F
- OVA: 587B64E769546E6069E9318D66968FFE