Enhancing the Management of Standalone Cisco UCS C-Series Servers

The latest release of Cisco Integrated Management Controller (IMC) features a HTML5 WebUI and vKVM as well as support for the Redfish standards-based API and XML API transaction support.

Guest Blogger: Jeff Foster, Product Manager, UCS Management

The latest release of Cisco Integrated Management Controller (IMC), version 3.0, makes the management of Cisco UCS C-Series servers simpler in standalone environments, because it eliminates dependencies on flash and provides an updated user interface and experience. The latest release also enhances the programmability of Cisco UCS with improvements to the APIs. IMC 3.0 includes support for the new Redfish RESTful API, and we’ve made improvements to the XML API.

Improving the User Experience

IMC 3.0 includes a HTML5 WebUI as well as a HTML5 virtual keyboard, video and mouse (vKVM) for supported M4 servers. This eliminates many of the hassles of using and supporting Java. In addition to remote console capabilities, the vKVM functionality also includes chat, embedded server power controls, and screen capture capabilities. These enhancements combined with localized language support in the WebUI for Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish allow users worldwide to use IMC more effectively to manage their standalone server environments.

We wanted to allow you to see how easy it is to use the new HTML5 UI, so Greg Wilkinson, a Technical Marketing Engineer, created this new demo video.

Click on the Arrow to Start the Demo Video

This new release also includes some other features designed to enhance ease of use:

• BIOS profiles (One-touch configuration)
• One click hardware inventory collection
• Cisco IMC asset tag configuration
• One-time boot (supports precision boot devices)

Expanding the APIs

All Cisco UCS products were designed to be programmable. This makes them easier to manage and allows you to automate many routine provisioning and support activities. We’ve built on the existing XML API in IMC to provide a new method (configConfMos) for these systems that will allow users to make multiple configuration changes in a single transaction.

The new release also includes support for the new Redfish standards-based API. Redfish is open, industry-standard specification and schema published by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). Our support for this API extends the programmatic capabilities of Cisco UCS C-Series which adheres to v1.01 of the specification.

If you’d like to learn more about Redfish support, read this blog.

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