So it’s finally here, the product we have been anxiously awaiting for over a year since the vague details and whispers of what was known as “Pasadena” began to circulate.
If like me you do some very large Cisco UCS designs and implementations perhaps spanning multiple Data Centres, Countries or Continents UCS Central is a very welcome addition to the portfolio.
Up until now a single UCS Management domain could scale up to an impressive 160 servers (20 Chassis) whether blade, rack mount or usually a combination of both; now with UCS Central this management domain can scale out to an incredible 10,000 servers from First Customer Ship (FCS)
OK so what’s this really going to mean?
Well we’ve had passive multi UCS Domain visibility for a while now with UCS Dashboard, but now with UCS Central we can turn this “Monitor of Managers” into a full “Manager of Managers”
Main benefits of UCS Central are:
• Global Inventory collection
• Global Centralised Fault and Alert aggregation.
• Global Central Creation of address pools to ensure no overlaps
• Global firmware management
• Global UCS Backup scheduling and collection
• Assign policies either Globally or locally or by a Group of Domains
• Similar Interface and architecture to UCS Manager
• Move Service Profiles between UCS Domains (Great DR possibilities)
Just like UCS Manager UCS Central exposes an XML API for integration with customer and partner management solutions.
UCS Central does not replace UCS Manager, a UCS Domain will still be able to be fully managed just like we know and love. If a policy is a Global policy that option is simply greyed out in the local UCS Manager.
UCS Central is available as an OVF template to run as a virtual appliance and will require UCS Manager 2.1 (Due for release this quarter)
UCS Central will ship in two phases with additional functionality like the global Service Profiles planned for phase 2 early 2013
UCS Central will be free to use for up to 5 UCS Domains with every additional domain requiring a domain license.
UCS Central Resources
Product Page
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps12502/index.html
UCS Central Documentation
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps12502/prod_literature.html
UCS Central Techwise TV Episode
UCSguru.com 
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Hi,
Thanks for the update
Does the current release enable both “Read” and “Write” capability? Does it allow for Service Profiles to be moved between UCS systems?
Hi Nathan
Yes Phase 1 of UCS Central will have R/W “Manager Capabilities”, Global Service Profiles is due for the Phase 2 code drop.
Regards
Colin
Thanks… I guess we can safely assume Phase2 code is 3/6 months out?
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Regarding UCS central software,Is that a free software or licensed software..?
So if it is free then where can i download it…
could you please give me a brief details about UCS central software..
Hi Martin
Yes it’s free for the first 5 UCS Domains managed by Central.
There is a zero cost licence required for these first 5 domains
P/No. L-UCS-CTR-INI=
Even without the above licence you have 120 day Eval period. (after which it still works, it just has a Licence event flagged)
For every UCS Domain above 5 you will need a single Central licence.
L-UCS-CTR-LIC=
Central is downloadable from Cisco.com (CCO account required)
https://software.cisco.com/download/release.html?mdfid=284308174&softwareid=284308194&release=1.2(1e)&relind=AVAILABLE&rellifecycle=&reltype=latest
Regards
Colin