Automate bring up of 50 UCS-C and installing Software on top of them

[haksson81]

Hi,

I'm a network guy and i am assigned a task to bring up 50 UCS-C 240M servers, some of them will have VMWare vCenter and some will just have an operating system (a linux variant, still an .iso image).

What are the known/common ways to automate the above.

Thanks

[Kirk J]

Are these UCSM integrated?

It really depends on the OS's ability for scripted install.

Both Vsphere and Linux can be scripted/automated install.

General points of interest:

• What will OS destination be (local disk, boot from san, etc)?
• What are you using for install media source (i.e. NFS, HTTP, FTP, etc)
• Are you going to trying to provision local raid as part of install, or do that prior to os install?
• I've seen some customer's build in storcli/megacli into install image so the underlying raid would get provisioned as part of install.

General setup for linux auto install will involve,DHCP, PXE/TFTP, HTTP server to store install media, kickstart scripts.

Kirk...

[haksson81]

hi Kirk,

Are these UCSM integrated?

HK> not sure what that means, i thought ucsm is a software that is on the ucs-b series.

is there any Cisco tool for the job ?

thx

[Kirk J]

UCSM support C series integration, and we frequently see customers that will have nothing but C series integration and no B series deployed for large Hadoop and Openstack type deployments.

There is a product called UCS Director that is an orchestration type product.

See http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/ucs-director/compatibility-matrix/6-0/b_UCS_Director_Compatibility_Matrix-60.html

I'm not sure if a one time shot of 50 servers is worth the effort to set up an orchestration product though.

Something else you might want to consider from the management & maintaining perspective, is IMC supervisor. http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/servers-unified-computing/integrated-management-controller-imc-supervisor/index.html

IMC Supervisor can automate firmware upgrades, help automate configurations, storage configurations, etc.

Kirk...