Better Visibility into UCS Integrated Infrastructure with Cisco UCS Performance Manager

Data centers are rapidly adopting integrated infrastructure to run their businesses. However, the monitoring and management tools for these integrated components are not yet converged. Performance monitoring and capacity planning is done with multiple tools leading to sub-optimal resource management. Customers have to spend multiple days or weeks to install and configure typical agent-based solutions. Then they will have to train additional personnel to manage and maintain these multiple tools.

Cisco UCS Performance Manager provides visibility from a single console into Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) components for performance monitoring and capacity planning.  It provides data center administrators assurance for Cisco UCS and other integrated infrastructure implementations (e.g. FlexPod, Vblock, VSPEX) and ties application performance to physical and virtual infrastructure performance allowing IT staff to optimize resources and deliver better service levels to customers.

Cisco UCS Performance Manager was built in partnership with Zenoss. UCS Performance Manager is a virtual appliance designed for easy installation and configuration. UCS Performance Manager install and setup takes less than an hour, a departure from typical customer experience. Main customer requirements have been built into the product to provide key performance indicators out of the box. It provides a customizable dashboard for a quick view of the components of interest.

One of main constructs of UCS Performance Manager is user defined host groups. Customers can put related hosts in a group and UCS Performance Manager will automatically figure out the underlying infrastructure those hosts and applications are dependent on. This dynamic view provides the relationship and health of the hosts and related infrastructure for a quick glance of the status. Each of the devices and components can be clicked for more information about them.

From UCS perspective some of the frequent questions is how to find the bandwidth utilization of the server ports connected to servers, fiber channel uplinks going to SAN, Ethernet uplinks going to LAN and so on. UCS Performance Manager will provide this information in graphical and tabular form for easy consumption. Bandwidth utilization and health information overlay is applied on a UCS topology view for easy consumption.

By utilizing the views and trend graphs available customers can quickly identify any congestion points in the integrated infrastructure to prevent application performance degradation proactively. Administrators can provision additional resource to ease congestion or move load across the integrated infrastructure based on business needs.

With UCS Performance Manager in the data center customers will:

• Have a better understanding of UCS integrated infrastructure at a component level
• Maintain and provide high level of service with optimal resource allocation
• Save time and resources with a single pane of glass for integrated infrastructure monitoring

Here is a short video demo of UCS Performance Manager.

We are presenting an overview of UCS Performance Manager at the Cisco booth at VMworld next week. If you are attending the event stop by for a demo and live Q&A. Get a first look on the show floor at the Cisco booth #1217.

While at VMworld attend the theater presentation and break out sessions for more information.

1.  “Performance and Capacity Management for Cisco Converged Infrastructures”
Tuesday August 26, 2:00pm, Cisco booth #1217

2. “Management and Automation for UCS Integrated Infrastructure”
Tuesday August 26, 3:30pm, Room 3022 Moscone West

For more information, or to schedule a demo reach out to Vishwanath Jakka vijakka@cisco.com or Andrew Blaisdell ablaisde@cisco.com