Cisco UCS and Nimble

[traby71]

Anyone else have a Cisco UCS setup and using Nimble? I have been involved with VDI for a while but never at the UCS and SAN levels. Just curious how many others have a similar setup and any issues they have had.

[ggawrych84]

Good morning Terry,

Configuring Nimble Storage with UCS is relatively straight-forward. I have performed two installations using the Knowledge Base articles attached and both went off without incident.

Additionally here are two links to postings on this site by Wen Yu and Michael McLaughlin - both Sr. Product Managers for Nimble Storage - Wen's posting: Deploying Cisco UCS with Nimble (another deep look at what needs to be done). This preceded the KB articles but is also quite helpful from a step-by-step perspective on deploying our storage with UCS; Michael's posting specifically with VDI / UCS / Citrix: Nimble Storage SmartStack for VDI with Cisco and Citrix

Good luck!

- Guy

[agitzen54]

We are using Cisco UCS B230 M2 blades with Fabric interconnects.  Two chassis, 14 blade configuration connected to a CS440G-X4 with three expansion shelves and a CS460G-X2 with one expansion shelf.

VMware 5.5 VMFS volumes published to those UCS hosts, using the NCM (Nimble Connection Manager) and things work smoothly.  We just upgraded from 2.1.4.0 to 2.2.5.0 on the arrays with no issues.

We also publish LUNs direct to Windows VMs (Exchange and SQL) to leverage the Nimble Snaps.  I am glad someone made the decision to go Nimble even before I started working here.

UCS servers have been a learning curve, just because there are so man things you can configure.

[galkun27]

Terry

I have several customers running Nimble and UCS utilizing both direct connections to the Fabric Interconnects as well as Nexus 5K's upstream facilitating the storage and UCS connectivity.  Both work flawlessly and none of them have had issues with upgrades, peformance, etc.  If you would like, I can set you up with a couple references so that you can discuss this with them. 

[leggatm120 · Accepted solution]

Have to agree with Andrew (same setup):

    "VMware 5.5 VMFS volumes published to those UCS hosts, using the NCM (Nimble Connection Manager) and things work smoothly"

As a VMware storage array the performance and management is pretty good and hard to beat.  The simplicity of the Nimble management is a bit of a contrast to UCS's management complexity though.

The real bonus is the quality and motivation of Nimbles techies and support staff.