Which Class? Cisco UCS Blade vs. ESX Server Class

[munwong]

We have a team that runs ESX on UCS blades. What is the recommended class for these? Cisco UCS Blade or ESX Server? Are there discovery implications to factor in when choosing to class?

[dcwilson · Accepted solution]

To create a true logical representation of your network both should be CIs.  The physical blade should be created as UCS Blade Class and the logical server running on the blade should be classed as ESX Server.  The ESX Server will have a relationship to the physical Blade hosts/hosted on.

[munwong]

Thank you dcwilson. It is going to be a hard sell to convince the group to manage 2 of the same CI. If we were going to only be able to pick one, which one would you go with? or which one would Discovery populates?

[dcwilson]

Well, hopefully the OOB UCS Discovery (only supports certain series of UCS blades and rack mounts) will handle it for you but if you had to choose then I would think the logical server would be the better one from a Change Management perspective.  

If Discovery creates/maintains it will create both devices. 

Here's how to sell it.  What if the Motherboard goes out in the blade?  I'm guessing they would move the logical server to another blade (at least temporarily) for the Motherboard replacement so then what CI would you choose for the Change record for the motherboard change out.  BTW - changing out the Motherboard changes the Serial of the blade.  At my previous employer we utilized the UCS environment heavily and it was a common occurrence that the blade was taken down for maintenance independent of the logical devices running on them.  

Also, UCS it similar to VMware.  I'm guessing they would want to track the ESX Server (VMware Host) as well as all the VM Machine Instances running on the host. 

Agree, if you don't have strong Change Management policies in your organization then it will be a hard sell for maintaining 2 CIs.

Things to keep in mind when making the decision...

what is the intent/goals of the CMDB in your organization?  Do they require 1 or 2 CIs?

the blade is a physical device so Asset Management needs to track (model category can be set to create in Asset and not in CMDB) but the logical server Asset Management doesn't care about (except for Software Asset Management)  

[kerwin63]

Hi everyone.

How would one add the Chassis and reference all the blades back to the host chassis? We mostly use Dell Blades and looking to reference each installed blade to the chassis it is in.

For example: Chassis serialnumber: ABCDEF has 4 blades installed Serialnumber X/Y/Z how would that look like in SN? Also, we are using asset management and linking each asset to the CI. 

Any help pointer or best wishes accepted 🙂 

Thank you in advance.