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Cisco Intersight is a management platform that is delivered as a service for your data center environment. Cisco IMM enables you to administer and monitor multiple domains through one interface. Cisco UCS X-Series and 4th-generation components provide compute power in the 3-Tier Platform.
The following table shows the Cisco Nexus and Cisco UCS components that are used in Intersight-managed domains:
Component | Description |
Cisco UCS X9508 chassis Cisco UCS 5108 blade server chassis | Cisco Intersight manages the 6U Cisco UCS 5108 chassis, the 7U Cisco UCS X9508 chassis, and the 4th-generation FIs and servers. |
Cisco UCS B-Series blade servers
| The Cisco UCS 5108 blade server chassis can house:
|
Cisco UCS-X compute nodes
| The Cisco UCS X9508 chassis supports:
|
Cisco UCS C-Series rack servers
|
|
4th-generation Cisco UCS 6454 FIs | Contains two, four, or six 100 Gbps uplinks Configured with 4, 8 or 16 FC connections per FI |
4th-generation Cisco UCS 64108 FIs
| Contains four, six, or eight 100 Gbps uplinks Configured with eight or 16 FC connections per FI |
5th-generation Cisco UCS 6536 FIs
| Contains two, four, six or eight 100Gbps uplinks Configured with two breakout ports (8 x 32 G) or four breakout ports (16 x 32 G) FC-uplinks |
4th-generation Cisco UCS 2408, 2204XP, or 2208XP FEX | The FEX connect the I/O fabric between the Cisco UCS 6454 FI and the Cisco UCS 5108 blade server chassis. The Cisco UCS 64108 FI supports only the Cisco UCS 2408 25 Gbps FEX. |
Cisco UCS X9108 25 Gbps Intelligent Fabric Module (IFM) | The IFM connects the I/O fabric between the Cisco UCS 6454 or 64108 FI and the Cisco UCS X9508 chassis. |
Cisco UCS X9108 100 Gbps IFM | The IFM connects the I/O fabric between the Cisco UCS 6536 FI to the Cisco UCS X9508 chassis. |
Each FI reserves several ports to connect Cisco SAN switches and carry FC traffic between the compute layer and the storage layer. SAN port channels carry FC traffic between the FIs and upstream Cisco MDS switches. The FEX within the blade server chassis connect to FIs over converged networking. By default, servers in the 3-Tier Platform boot VMware vSphere ESXi from local mirrored SD cards or M.2 cards, with booting from SAN is optional.Regardless of the number of blade servers in the chassis, the FEX establishes northbound connections to the FIs using four or eight of the following IOMs:
The Cisco UCS 2408 FEX has eight external 25 Gbps ports and 32 internal 10 Gbps ports. Each FEX connects northbound to the FIs, regardless of the number of blade servers in the blade server chassis. The Cisco UCS 2408 FEX works with the Cisco UCS 6454 or 64108 FI at 25 Gbps.
The Cisco UCS X9108 25 Gbps IFM is equipped with eight SFP28 external connectors on an IFM to interface with FI 6400 series FIs. Internally, the IFM provides eight 25 Gbps connections to each UCS X210c compute node in the Cisco UCS X9508 chassis.
Cisco UCS M6 C-Series rack servers connect directly to the following FIs:
The Cisco UCS X9108-100G IFM is equipped with eight QSFP28 external connectors on an IFM, enabling itto interface with FI 6 series FIs. Internall, the IFM provides either 1 x 100G or 4 x 25 G connections to each UCS X210c compute node in the Cisco X9508 chassis.
Cisco UCS M6 C-Series rack servers connect directly to the following FIs:
Use a pair of Cisco Nexus 2000 Series FEX to increase the scale for Cisco UCS C-Series rack servers on Cisco UCS 6332-16UP FIs. The Cisco UCS 6454 FIs can use a pair of Cisco Nexus 2232PP FEX to increase the scale of Cisco UCS C-Series rack servers. These connections carry IP and FC traffic. The Cisco UCS 64108 and 6536 FIs do not have a supported FEX for rack mounting.
You can deploy Cisco Intersight as SaaS on Intersight.com, or running on your premises as a Cisco Intersight virtual appliance. The virtual appliance provides the benefits of Cisco Intersight with more flexibility for deployments that require additional data locality and security requirements. The virtual appliance software, known as Centera Virtual Archive, is deployable on-premises, allowing users to take advantage of the SaaS functionality. The Private Virtual Appliance (PVA) can be deployed on-premises with further security restrictions.
You can use the following Cisco Intersight deployment types on the 3-Tier Platform:
The following table compares the different Cisco Intersight deployment types:
Feature | Intersight.com (SaaS) | Connected Virtual Appliance | Private Virtual Appliance |
Cisco Intersight deployment host | Cisco-hosted at Intersight.com | Software appliance (VM) hosted on 3-Tier Management | Software appliance (VM) hosted on 3-Tier Management |
Minimum license tier | Base | Essentials | Essentials |
Deployment or scale | No limit | Small deployment:
| Small deployment:
|
Connectivity to Cisco | Required for all endpoints | Required for the appliance only | None |
User authentication | SSO (SAML 2.0) Cisco ID (CCO) | SSO (SAML 2.0) LDAP/AD | SSO (SAML 2.0) LDAP/AD |
Intersight upgrades | Automatic
| Automatic, scheduled Manual | Automatic |
Data collection | Full only | Full or minimal
| None |
Licensing | Smart | Smart | Smart Specific License Reservation (SLR) |
Other differences from SaaS | N/A | Mobile application is not supported.
| Mobile application is not supported. Automatic software downloads are not supported. Intersight is not connected to the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC). |
Cisco Intersight virtual appliance deployments support the following 3-Tier Management solutions: