Introduction
The trend towards Datacenter consolidation has resulted in reduction in application software deployed at branch location. However for business continuity and application performance reasons some applications must still be deployed at branch infrastructure network. UCS E-Series blade servers gives users the flexibility of running these applications on blade servers inside Cisco ISR G2 series routers. This reduces the amount of space and power consumption by the traditional server infrastructure and lowers the cost of deploying and managing applications at branch. E-Series servers are ideal solution for retail stores, bank branches, clinics and small hospitals where space is a constraint and IT help is not readily available. E-Series servers are ideal solutions for hosting AD, DNS, DHCP, and file & print services at branch location. They are also an ideal way for customers to introduce virtulization in their branches.
E-Series servers are supported on Cisco 2911, 2921, 2951, 3925, 3925E, 3945, and 3945E ISR routers running Cisco IOS Software Release 15.2(4)M. These servers operate independent of the ISR G2 router and communicate with the router through two internal network interfaces; one L3 connection to router processor and one L2 connection to router multi-gigabit fabric backplane switch. They can also directly connect to the network, without using the router interface, by using the integrated external Gigabit Ethernet ports. In case the router IOS is reloaded the server does not reloads, however any connection through the router interface will not work; although any direct connection via the integrated external ethernet ports will still work. If the router is hard booted or during a power fluctuation the server will reload.
Server Specifications
Following are the hardware specs of M1 E-Series servers:
UCS E140S-M1: is a single-wide blade server and has Intel Xeon E3 1105 C 1.0GHz 25W quad-core processor with 8GB default RAM. Supports upto two SATA/SAS drives. Supported on Cisco ISR 2911, 2921, 2951, 3925, 3925E, 3945, and 3945E.
UCS E140D-M1 and 140DP-M1: is a double-wide blade server and has Intel Xeon E5-2418L 2.0GHz quad core processor with 8GB default RAM. E140D supports upto three, and E140DP supports upto two, SATA/SAS drives. Supported on Cisco ISR 2921, 2951, 3925, 3925E, 3945, and 3945E.
UCS E160D-M1 and 160DP-M1: is a double-wide blade server and has Intel Xeon E5-2428L 1.8GHz 6-core processor with 8GB default RAM. E160D supports upto three, and E160DP supports upto two, SATA/SAS drives. Supported on Cisco ISR 3925, 3925E, 3945, and 3945E.
Following are the hardware specs for M2 E-series servers:
UCS-EN120S-M2: is a single-wide blade server and has Intel Pentium B925C dual core processor with at least 4 GB RAM (can go unto 16 GB). Supports upto two SAS 10K RPM/SATA 7200 RPM drives.
UCS-E140S M2: is a single-wide blade server and has Intel Xeon E3-1105C quad core processor with at least 8 GB RAM (can go unto 16 GB). Supports upto two SAS 10K RPM/SATA 7200 RPM/SAS SSD drives.
UCS-E160D-M2 and UCS-E180D-M2: are double-wide blade servers and have Intel Xeon 2418L (6 core) and 2428L (8 core) processor respectively with at least 8 GB RAM (can go unto 16 GB). Supports upto three SAS 10K RPM/SATA 7200 RPM/SAS SSD drives.
Operating systems and hypervisors supported on E-Series servers:
– Windows Server 2008 R2
– Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.2
– SUSE Linux 11 SP2
– Oracle Linux Release 6 update 2
– Microsoft Hyper-V
– VMware vSphere 5.0 U1
– Citrix XenServer 6.0
Regardless of the platform being installed, you can install it on your server using one of the following methods:
- KVM console
- PXE installation server
- Host image mapping
PCIe cards supported on E-Series servers:
E100-PCIE-4PGE: 4-port Gigabit Ethernet PCIe card, RJ-45, for double-wide Cisco UCS E-Series
E100-PCIE10GEFCOE: 1-port SFP+ PCIe card, with 10 Gigabit Ethernet FCoE support, for double-wide Cisco UCS E-Series
VMware licenses and SMARTnet Support for E-Series Servers:
There are two types of VMware hypervisor available to Cisco UCS E-Series customers:
• Preinstalled (embedded) versions (FL-SRE-V-HOST and FL-SRE-V-HOST-VC).
• Custom images, for which Cisco sells the license, but the customer downloads the Cisco and VMware certified version from the VMware website.
Cisco UCS E-Series Server Blades hardware support is covered by the Cisco SMARTnet contract for the router in which the module will reside. Non-embedded VMware offerings are not supported by Cisco (they are not covered by Cisco SMARTtnet Service), but instead are supported by VMware.
Features and Limitations
Features:
a) User expandable memory. The Cisco UCS E140S ships with 8 GB of memory standard and can be upgraded to 16 GB of memory. The Cisco E-Series E140D and E160D both also ship with 8 GB of memory standard and can be upgraded to 48 GB of memory.
b) RAID support available. Hardware RAID 0 and 1 is supported on the single-wide blades, and RAID 0, 1, and 5 is supported on the double-wide blades.
c) Multiple boot devices supported. The supported boot devices include hard disk drives (HDDs), Secure Digital (SD) cards (by downloading an ISO using the BMC), SAN devices, USB devices (DVD/CD drives, flash drives, and HDDs), virtual devices through the keyboard, video, and mouse (KVM) device (such as DVD drives, USB devices, and ISO files).
d) FCoE is supported on a double-wide blade with a 10 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe card.
e) A wide range of Operating systems and Hypervisors are supported. There are no specific limits on the number of virtual servers that can be hosted on the Cisco E-Series blade servers. The maximum number of virtual servers is determined by the resources assigned to each virtual server and the total hardware resources available on the specific Cisco E-Series blade server.
f) Cisco UCS C-Series Integrated Management Controller (CIMC) provides web user interface for server management; remote keyboard, video, and mouse (KVM); virtual media; and administration. Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) 2.0 support for out-of-band management through third-party enterprise management systems.
Limitations:
a) Cisco UCS E-Series Servers do not include features such as Cisco Unified Fabric, Cisco Extended Memory Technology, Cisco VN-Link, and other hardware and large deployment management features that are relevant to data centers and not necessary for most lean branch-office environments.
b) Cisco UCS E-Series management is not integrated into Cisco UCS Manager today because of the differences in features and deployment scenarios for the Cisco UCS B-Series, C-Series, and E-Series product lines.
c) The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series is not supported on the Cisco UCS E-Series today. However, the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series may be supported in the future to provide virtual server-aware network services.
Related Information
Cisco UCS E-Series Servers Data Sheet
Cisco UCS E-Series Servers Q&A
