Solved: UCS Central - Global Service Profile Template with Local SAN Boot Policy

probinson · ‎11-22-2013

Hi,

I have created a Global Service Profile Template in UCS Central to create ESX Service Profile for servers in 5 different UCS Domain.

The majority of the addresses will be assigned globally i.e. MAC Addresses, UUID, etc. with the exception of the WWPNs where the local SAN teams want to pre-configure the zoning for a defined block of WWPN addresses.

I'm intending to use the ID Range Qualification Policy to assign a block of WWPN addresses to a specific UCS Domain however my main concern is around the creation of the SAN Boot Policy. As we are intending to use the same Global Service Profile Template for 5 different domains the SAN Boot Targets are going to need to be different.

Is there anyway to localise the SAN Boot Policy so I can have a single Global UCS Template with local SAN Boot Targets?

Many Thanks, Paul

Jeffrey Silberman · ‎11-26-2013

Hi Paul,

What you're looking for is what we're calling a "Boot Target Alias", which should operate much in the same way as VLAN Aliases work with UCS Central 1.1. Higher level policies will refer to the alias "name", but the actual binding (of the VLAN or the Boot Target or ...) is going to be Domain/DomainGroup specific and won't get resolved until the SP is associated on to a given Domain. In the case of Boot Targets, this would allow for the same Global SP Template to be used across multiple DomainGroups, while the actual Boot Target will be variable, depending on the individual DomainGroup.

Unfortunately, this capability does not exist in UCS Central 1.1. We do have it on the "high priority" feature list for 1.2.

The only "workaround" is to use multiple Global SP Templates, whose name and attributes both reflect the underlying SAN-Boot Target --- even though this creates N*M Templates (N = # GSPs; M = # SAN Boot Arrays).

Hope this helps shed some light. Cheers,

-Jeff

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Jeffrey Silberman · ‎11-26-2013

Hi Paul,

What you're looking for is what we're calling a "Boot Target Alias", which should operate much in the same way as VLAN Aliases work with UCS Central 1.1. Higher level policies will refer to the alias "name", but the actual binding (of the VLAN or the Boot Target or ...) is going to be Domain/DomainGroup specific and won't get resolved until the SP is associated on to a given Domain. In the case of Boot Targets, this would allow for the same Global SP Template to be used across multiple DomainGroups, while the actual Boot Target will be variable, depending on the individual DomainGroup.

Unfortunately, this capability does not exist in UCS Central 1.1. We do have it on the "high priority" feature list for 1.2.

The only "workaround" is to use multiple Global SP Templates, whose name and attributes both reflect the underlying SAN-Boot Target --- even though this creates N*M Templates (N = # GSPs; M = # SAN Boot Arrays).

Hope this helps shed some light. Cheers,

-Jeff

probinson · ‎11-27-2013

Thanks Jeff,

Appreciate the update and look forward to the release of the new feature.

Cheer,

Paul