DevOps and Cisco UCS Management
At a Glance
Cisco Public
DevOps and Cisco UCS
Management
Benefits
Infrastructure as Code
• Improve staff productivity by aligning
your infrastructure with applications
and the way that teams work together.
• Transition to DevOps and
additional automation through
integration with a wide range of
existing management tools.
A growing number of organizations are
adopting a DevOps methodology, in which
development, testing, and IT operations
teams collaborate more closely, and
processes are automated and orchestrated
to achieve greater efficiency. The Cisco
Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®)
management framework can help your
organization transition from your current
environment to a more efficient, DevOpsfriendly architecture. We offer proven
management software, open APIs, and a
mature partner ecosystem that provides
a consistent and holistic infrastructure
management framework.
• Roll out new applications and
business services at cloud-like
speed and enhance the competitive
strength of your enterprise.
Our open management architecture supports
a variety of infrastructure solutions from
Cisco and third-party vendors. Everything is
programmable, so you have truly softwaredefined infrastructure.
• Reduce total cost of ownership (TCO)
by automating and orchestrating
many routine tasks, improving
resource utilization, and proactively
preventing manual errors.
© 2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Cisco UCS management includes four
main technology innovations that treat
the infrastructure as code, so you can
more easily define the desired state of the
infrastructure and what you want to do with it.
These four innovations provide the foundation
for automated infrastructure management by
making the infrastructure programmable:
• Software object model: Hardware is not
configured manually in Cisco UCS. Instead,
every identity and configuration setting
for every device in the system is defined
in software through policies and service
profiles. This data model helps ensure that
configurations are consistent and enables
simple implementation of changes at scale.
• API centricity: The unified system
control plane is accessible through a fully
documented and open XML API.
DevOps and Cisco UCS Management
At a Glance
Cisco Public
• Virtual interface card (VIC): All network and SAN adapters are
software defined, but they present themselves to the bare-metal OS or
hypervisor as physical devices.
• Storage profiles: Profiles give you flexibility in defining the number
and use of storage disks, solid-state disk (SSD) drives, external
storage connections, roles and usage of volumes, and other
storage parameters.
Unified Control Plane
The software object model and XML API in the Cisco UCS management
framework work in conjunction with the Cisco® fabric interconnects and
the VICs to treat the infrastructure as code (Figure 1). The Cisco UCS
management API provides a unified control plane. It is a programmatic
interface for all the components in the system, including Cisco UCS blade
and rack servers, Cisco UCS Mini, Cisco HyperFlex™ hyperconverged
infrastructure, and Cisco Composable Infrastructure. Developers can
automatically provision and tailor their infrastructure to meet their
application requirements. An API call can initiate changes to attributes of
one or more objects, including chassis, servers, adapters, drives, policies,
and other configurable components.
Figure 1. Cisco UCS Management and the API Treat Cisco UCS and Cisco
HyperFlex Infrastructure as Code
Application Types
Integrations
IBM
Application
Application
Application
Operating System
Operating System
Operating System
Virtualization
Container
Bare Metal
CA Technologies
OpenStack
Customization
Splunk
Symantec
BMC
Windows PowerShell
SolarWinds
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
VMware
Microsoft System Center
Zenoss
Python
Unified Control Plane
XML API
Cisco UCS Management
Policy- and Model-Based Infrastructure
Cisco UCS
Mini
Cisco UCS
B-Series
Servers
Cisco UCS
C-Series
Cisco HyperFlex
Systems™
Hyperconverged
Cisco UCS
M-Series
Cisco UCS
C3260
Composable
The software-defined infrastructure—both Cisco UCS and Cisco
HyperFlex platforms—are policy and model based. The policies enable
you to define connectivity, computing, and firmware settings once and
then roll them out the same way every time.
Storage profiles enable you to manage storage resources at the virtualdrive level. In combination with the Cisco UCS API, the policies provide
a common language for provisioning and configuring the infrastructure
across the various types of devices. This policy- and model-based
approach also helps ensure that the environment does not drift from the
intended configuration. It increases speed and flexibility, helps ensure
consistency, and reduces the risk of manual errors.
Facilitate Change While Preserving Investments
To address the broader requirements for DevOps and continuous
delivery, you need a holistic approach. Cisco UCS management tools
are integrated with a broad range of operations management tools from
VMware, Microsoft, OpenStack, Zenoss and several other independent
software vendors (ISVs). This partner ecosystem includes vendors of
configuration, deployment, orchestration, monitoring, and analysis tools.
Cisco UCS management also integrates with Cisco UCS Director and
Cisco UCS Performance Manager, and it is an essential component of
the Cisco ONE™ for Data Center software bundles.
The open API also facilitates custom development through the Cisco
UCS PowerTool for Microsoft Windows PowerShell and a Python
software development kit (SDK). The Cisco UCS Platform Emulator
enables the use of Cisco UCS Manager and the Cisco UCS XML API
without requiring physical hardware. The emulator significantly shortens
the development cycle for applications that are based on the Cisco UCS
API. You can create and test programs using only the emulator installed
on a PC or laptop computer.
By integrating the tools that support the development and test phases
of the software development lifecycle with Cisco UCS management
and third-party tools, you can automate the entire application lifecycle.
This approach helps provide the continuous improvement and better
communication that is essential to the DevOps methodology.
For More Information
For more information, please visit:
• Cisco UCS Manager
• Cisco UCS Central Software
• Cisco DevNet Data Center Dev Center
© 2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks,
go to this URL: www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco
and any other company. (1110R)
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