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safonten
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UCS Director Multi-Node Deployment on VMware

The purpose of this document is to illustrate the steps to install UCS Director 5.4 in a Multi-Node deployment.  Instead of a single standalone UCS Director Appliance, we will build a Primary Node, Inventory Database Node, Monitoring Database Node and one or more Service Nodes. A multi-node setup is used to increase scalability by offloading some of the system tasks such as inventory data collection tasks from the primary node to one or more service nodes.

Besides the basic Multi-Node installation, this document also provides steps for configuring other, optional but recommended, management options such as License Installation, Mail Setup, Self Service Policy, NTP, enable root access, change root password, change shelladmin password, change hostname, update hosts file, and changing the time zone.   This document should take you to the point where you are ready to start configuring workflows.

Recommendations/Requirements

Best practices recommends to place the service nodes close to the physical and virtual infrastructure and associate the relevant system tasks to those service nodes to offload the work locally to the remote site.  However, through testing on a real Nationwide deployment with real latencies, we discovered the performance was horrible in this architecture/design.  At a minimum, it took twice the time to run system tasks such as Inventory data collection, than running the system task locally on the primary node or a service node that is local to the primary node.  I suggest placing all of your service nodes in the same physical location as the Primary Node, Inventory Database Node, and Monitoring Database Nodes.

The Inventory and Monitoring Database Nodes require 50MB/s writes at 4k block size to the datastore in which these VMs will be installed on.  The Primary and Service Nodes require 25MB/s writes at 4k block size to the datastore in which these VMs will reside on.   The command to test these performance requirements are documented in the troubleshooting section of this document.  At a minimum, you will need some high performance local SSDs to achieve these requirement.

Useful Documents

Cisco UCS Director Multi-Node Installation and Configuration Guide, Release 5.4

Cisco UCS Director Installation on VMware vSphere, Release 5.4

Cisco UCS Director Administration Guide, Release 5.4

Cisco UCS Director Compatibility Matrix, Release 5.4

Cisco UCS Director Release Notes, Release 5.4

Table of Contents

1.           Download UCS Director 5.4 software from Cisco.com

2.           Create the Inventory Database Node

2.1.        Create Inventory Database VM

2.2.        Install/Update VMWare tools & VM Version

2.3.        Configure Inventory Database

3.           Create the Monitoring Database Node

3.1.        Create Monitoring Database VM

3.2.        Install/Update VMWare tools & VM Version

3.3.        Configure Monitoring Database

4.           Create the Primary Node

4.1.        Create Primary Node VM

4.2.        Install/Update VMWare tools & VM Version

4.3.        Configure Primary Node

5.           Create the Service Node

5.1.        Create Service Node VM

5.2.        Install/Update VMWare tools & VM Version

5.3.        Configure Service Node

6.           Add Physical, Virtual Accounts and Prerequisites

6.1.        Configure Prerequisites

6.1.1.     Add a Site

6.1.2.     Hide the Default POD

6.1.3.     Add a POD

6.2.        Add Physical Accounts

6.2.1.     Optional – Create UCSM Credential Policy

6.2.2.     Add UCSM Account

6.2.3.     Optional - Create NetApp Credential Policy

6.2.4.     Add NetApp Account for Controller A

6.2.5.     Add NetApp Account for Controller B

6.2.6.     Optional - Create MDS Credential Policy

6.2.7.     Add Fabric A MDS

6.2.8.     Add Fabric B MDS

6.3.        Add a Virtual Account for vCenter

6.3.1.     Optional - Create vCenter Credential Policy

6.3.2.     Add vCenter Virtual Account

7.           System Tasks

7.1.        Create a Node Pool

7.2.        Create System Task Policy

7.3.        Create Service Node                                                                     

7.4.        Assign System Policy to UCSM System Task                                

7.5.        Assign System Policy to NetApp Controller A System Task            

7.6.        Assign System Policy to NetApp Controller B System Task            

7.7.        Assign System Policy to vCenter System Task                                 

8.           Add Licenses to UCS Director                                                         

9.           Mail Setup (Required)                                                                       

10.         Create Self Service Policy                                                               

11.         Optional - Troubleshooting Service Node Connectivity                  

11.1.      IP Connectivity Troubleshooting                                                         

11.2.      Storage Performance Troubleshooting                                               

11.3.      Determine if Service Node is UP and how long it took to come UP  

11.4.      Verify if Task are taking longer than the Frequency configured         

11.5.      Obtaining Logs from UCS Director                                                     

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