In today's digital world, enterprise data centers must support constant service and easy scalability. They must also ensure strong security and resilience. Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) is a trusted platform for these needs. This is true for organizations wanting high availability (HA) with strong redundancy and failover. This blog covers the need for high availability in Cisco UCS. It looks at various redundancy features. It also gives tips on setting up failover strategies.
Why High Availability Matters in Cisco UCS
High availability is vital in data centers. It cuts downtime and ensures business continuity, even with hardware or software failures. For many critical apps, a few minutes of downtime can cause big losses. It can hurt productivity and damage reputations. Cisco UCS’s architecture offers a reliable, scalable foundation. It has various HA features to reduce risks.
Key Redundancy Features in Cisco UCS
Cisco UCS supports high availability. It has several key components that offer redundancy at multiple levels. Let’s take a closer look:
1. Fabric Interconnect Redundancy
- Active-Standby Fabric Interconnects: Cisco UCS uses dual Fabric Interconnects (FIs) in an active-standby setup. If the primary FI experiences a failure, the secondary FI takes over seamlessly. This design allows traffic to continue without disruption. The standby FI automatically assumes control.
- Network and Storage Path Redundancy: Cisco UCS uses multipathing for network and storage connections. It provides redundancy for data and management traffic. By configuring each server to connect to both FIs, Cisco UCS ensures there is no single point of failure.
2. Redundant Power and Cooling
- Power Supply Redundancy: Cisco UCS servers have dual power supplies. Each server can run on either power source. This redundancy helps maintain operations during power failures.
- Cooling Redundancy: Redundant cooling fans ensure reliability. They prevent system instability from a fan failure. This contributes to the extended life of components and minimizes downtime.
3. Cisco UCS Manager Redundancy
- Redundant Management Fabric: Cisco UCS Manager, the centralized management interface for UCS, runs on both FIs. By default, if the primary FI goes down, the standby FI continues managing the UCS environment, including all the policies and profiles.
- Cluster Management: Cisco UCS Manager is often set up in a cluster. This strengthens HA by syncing configs across FIs. This clustering ensures that administrative tasks continue without interruption.
4. Service Profile Mobility and Stateless Computing
Service Profiles: Cisco UCS service profiles abstract the hardware config. They create a software-defined profile. This stateless approach allows quick recovery and failover. It lets service profiles move between hardware seamlessly. If there is a hardware failure, we can quickly reassign the affected profile to another server. This will ensure continued operation.
Stateless computing allows rapid server reassignment. It speeds up disaster recovery and helps teams reduce service disruption.
Implementing Failover in Cisco UCS
Failover plays an essential role in high availability by shifting workloads to a standby system when a failure occurs. Here’s how failover mechanisms work within Cisco UCS:
1. NIC Failover
- Network Interface Card (NIC) failover in Cisco UCS is configured to maintain network continuity. Each server in a UCS domain has multiple network paths (using virtual interface cards or VICs), which automatically reroute network traffic if one path goes down. This ensures that any network failure does not impact application availability.
- Fabric Failover for NICs: Fabric failover is a unique feature in UCS allowing each NIC to be associated with both fabrics (A and B). Should the primary path fail, traffic automatically switches to the secondary path without manual intervention.
2. Storage Failover
- Cisco UCS supports Multipath I/O (MPIO) for storage traffic, ensuring redundancy by connecting each server to multiple storage controllers. In case of a failure, the data path reroutes to a secondary controller, ensuring data availability without impacting applications.
3. Failover Testing and Validation
- Regular testing of failover mechanisms is critical to ensure UCS’s HA features are functioning correctly. Perform scheduled failover tests for components like FIs, power supplies, NICs, and storage paths to validate that failover and redundancy are in place and ready to handle unexpected scenarios.
Best Practices for High Availability in Cisco UCS
High availability is not a one-time configuration but rather a continuous effort requiring adherence to best practices and proactive monitoring. Here are some tips to maximize HA in your Cisco UCS environment:
1. Implement a Clustered Fabric Interconnect Setup: Configure FIs in a clustered setup to ensure smooth failover and simplify management across redundant paths.
2. Use Multiple Fabric Extenders: Deploying multiple fabric extenders can eliminate single points of failure, especially in large data center environments where many UCS servers are connected to FIs.
3. Schedule Regular Health Checks: Monitoring tools, such as Cisco Intersight or third-party solutions, can proactively detect any hardware or software issues, allowing you to address them before they impact availability.
4. Establish a Disaster Recovery Plan. It must include:
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Regular backups of UCS Manager configurations.
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Firmware updates.
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Procedures for switching service profiles to new hardware in case of server failure.
5. Automate Failover Testing: Use scripts to automate, regular failover tests. They should check the network, power, and storage paths. This will ensure all failover mechanisms work optimally.
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Conclusion
High availability in Cisco UCS is vital for modern data centers. It ensures uninterrupted service and meets their demands. Cisco UCS uses redundant power, network, and storage components. Its strong failover strategy helps minimize downtime and supports mission-critical apps. You can protect your organization from unexpected failures. Just follow best practices and watch your UCS. This will help you maintain peak performance.
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