Pre-Sales UCS Questions

[iananstey]

Our organization is "trying" to purchase a UCS as part of the Flexpod configuration.  We are having some difficulties getting some straight answers from our vendor (probably due to lack of product knowledge); so I thought I would throw some quick questions out there.  Here goes:

Does the FI6248 switch come with the extra module, thus providing the full 48 SPF 1/10 GB ports per switch?

Does the internal SD/USB port of the B420 blades support booting an OS?  Specifically, we would like to book VMware vSphere from flash memory.

How does the flexpod connect to the physical network?  E.G. can we connect the FI 6248 (with an SFP 1Gb Copper) connect to (Trunk) a 3750 Switch to link out to the physical network?  Please clarify where that physical connection outward comes from.  As such, we will want to connect some 3rd party rack mount servers to integrate into the stack as well as work stations.

Thanks!

[Walter Dey]

Can you be more specific; there are many Flexpod configurations, e.g. for small/medium and large deployments.       

see eg. the flexpod site: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/data-center-virtualization/flexpod/index.html

[iananstey]

Sure, basically the FlexPod Datacenter, should look a lot like this:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/UCS_CVDs/ucs_xd56_flexpod_files/ucs_xd56_flexpod-001.jpg

[Walter Dey]

my answers inline

Does the FI6248 switch come with the extra module, thus providing the full 48 SPF 1/10 GB ports per switch?

I don't know ! depends on the number of ports that are required !

Does the internal SD/USB port of the B420 blades support booting an OS?  Specifically, we would like to book VMware vSphere from flash memory.

Yes, you could do that, although it's 16G in size, therefore only good for ESXi; also, ususally a UCS configuration is doing boot from network, giving you max. flexibiliy / mobility

How does the flexpod connect to the physical network?  E.G. can we connect the FI 6248 (with an SFP 1Gb Copper) connect to (Trunk) a 3750 Switch to link out to the physical network?  Please clarify where that physical connection outward comes from.  As such, we will want to connect some 3rd party rack mount servers to integrate into the stack as well as work stations.

Flexpod connects the UCS fabric interconnects to North bound Nexus 5K, and from there, you can also do your data center connectiviy, your 3d party servers would also be connected to this N5k (not the Fabric Interconnect). Of course you could also connect the FI to 3750 with 1G, although this limitation is not recommended because of East-West flow limitations.