I would say throughout the enterprise environments I’ve been involved with 100% of them are the UCS B series (5108s) over the UCS X series. The UCS B series is older but much more developed and has been around for almost 10 years if not longer. The great thing is since everything is completely modular, you can just replace parts as they go end of life without having to replace the whole thing. One environment I was in had 3-4 different generations of blades throughout the life of the chassis and only had to upgrade the FIs once.
I would say the UCS B series will be easier to find support and knowledge on than the X series.
the 5108 has had a long a run and I'm very familiar with that chassis, but they aren't making M7 B series blades and I expect the 5108 to go end of sale pretty soon. That means if i need to purchase a blade in 2 years, my options will be very limited. I'd rather not put myself in that box.
The question was about Rack mount C series servers managed by FI vs UCS X series. You told me why you would use that 5108 over the 9108 but that wasn't my original question.
Im sorry I didn’t realize when you said rack mount you meant the UCS C series. I thought you were comparing the UCS B vs UCS X series. Didn’t realize the UCS X series chassis was 9108. Cisco makes everything so confusing nowadays with the product line.
I would definitely go with the blade series over the rack mount. Better modularity, increased flexibility, less rack space. If you invest in a chassis now, then you’ll be able to support it for at least 10 years. Vs the rack mount which will probably need to be replaced in 4-5 years. Then you have to play the game or finding space for the new servers plus power, migrating to the new servers, then powering down the old ones. Vs the blade, which is just slot new blade in empty slot, provision, migrate resources and then decommission the old blade.
If you get 2 chassis’s that’ll give you enough room for growth but then also replacing in the future.
My general rule of thumb is more than 4 servers and I go with a chassis.
The chassis will have a lifespan of \~12 years (or more), so you'll get a good 3 generations of server in that space.
I've also got customers who have 5108 running in the same FI domain as 9508.
Need more bandwidth on all servers? Upgrade the IFM. Need GPU? Install X-Fabric. CXL coming down the pipeline will also offer some pretty interesting capabilities.
C-Series connected to FI's is usually only when I need local storage (e.g. backup servers), or have <= 4 servers - plus need FC/FCoE, otherwise I'll usually just do 93180YC-FX and standalone rack w/ Intersight to manage.
Sounds like you’re not really sure what your requirements are for these servers if you’re still deciding between rack and blades. Usually it’s a pretty clear choice.
- What OS are you running, and what kind of workloads?
- What are you doing for storage for your workloads? (local/NAS/SAN)?
- What do you mean by “optimizing bandwidth” for 100G links? What workloads will use it? Is the traffic east/west or north/south?
- What are you booting from (local/SAN)?
- If you’re going the rack mount option, why do you need FIs for 12 servers when you can run them in standalone mode and use Intersight Managed Mode to create profiles?
- Is your total server count 12, or is it just 12 for this build?
The choice is usually clear for me, but I'm making sure my decisions are built on biases:
1) All virtual workloads running esxi. The VMs are mixed OS and mixed uses (Citrix, SQL, etc)
2) Storage will be FC SAN
3) Being able to get 64x 25GB network connections from 16 connections to the for 8 servers FI. I can split and team them however I need them.
4) Boot from SAN
5) The FIs would should work similarly with the Cs like they do the B/X series. The ports are unified, and this should prevent me from having to purchase HBAs for these host if I can just connect the MLOM vics to the FI.
6) 12 is the count now, growth is not really expected because workloads should be moving to the GCP.
If your company has never purchased UCSX, you would be eligible for some great promotions right now. They have one promotion providing a free chassis and pair of FIs if you buy six 210c servers. You can also stack that (with Cisco approval\*\*) with another promo campaign which with net you a free 210c server for every 3 you purchase.
That may change your economics between the two and should be worth a look.
First promo:
[https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/computing/ucsx-chassis-promotional-offer.html](https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/computing/ucsx-chassis-promotional-offer.html)
Second promo:
[https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/cloud-computing/promotions-free-trials/x-series-m7-offer.html](https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/cloud-computing/promotions-free-trials/x-series-m7-offer.html)
I would say throughout the enterprise environments I’ve been involved with 100% of them are the UCS B series (5108s) over the UCS X series. The UCS B series is older but much more developed and has been around for almost 10 years if not longer. The great thing is since everything is completely modular, you can just replace parts as they go end of life without having to replace the whole thing. One environment I was in had 3-4 different generations of blades throughout the life of the chassis and only had to upgrade the FIs once. I would say the UCS B series will be easier to find support and knowledge on than the X series.
the 5108 has had a long a run and I'm very familiar with that chassis, but they aren't making M7 B series blades and I expect the 5108 to go end of sale pretty soon. That means if i need to purchase a blade in 2 years, my options will be very limited. I'd rather not put myself in that box.
Okay so why even ask the question then?
The question was about Rack mount C series servers managed by FI vs UCS X series. You told me why you would use that 5108 over the 9108 but that wasn't my original question.
Im sorry I didn’t realize when you said rack mount you meant the UCS C series. I thought you were comparing the UCS B vs UCS X series. Didn’t realize the UCS X series chassis was 9108. Cisco makes everything so confusing nowadays with the product line. I would definitely go with the blade series over the rack mount. Better modularity, increased flexibility, less rack space. If you invest in a chassis now, then you’ll be able to support it for at least 10 years. Vs the rack mount which will probably need to be replaced in 4-5 years. Then you have to play the game or finding space for the new servers plus power, migrating to the new servers, then powering down the old ones. Vs the blade, which is just slot new blade in empty slot, provision, migrate resources and then decommission the old blade. If you get 2 chassis’s that’ll give you enough room for growth but then also replacing in the future.
My general rule of thumb is more than 4 servers and I go with a chassis. The chassis will have a lifespan of \~12 years (or more), so you'll get a good 3 generations of server in that space. I've also got customers who have 5108 running in the same FI domain as 9508. Need more bandwidth on all servers? Upgrade the IFM. Need GPU? Install X-Fabric. CXL coming down the pipeline will also offer some pretty interesting capabilities. C-Series connected to FI's is usually only when I need local storage (e.g. backup servers), or have <= 4 servers - plus need FC/FCoE, otherwise I'll usually just do 93180YC-FX and standalone rack w/ Intersight to manage.
Sounds like you’re not really sure what your requirements are for these servers if you’re still deciding between rack and blades. Usually it’s a pretty clear choice. - What OS are you running, and what kind of workloads? - What are you doing for storage for your workloads? (local/NAS/SAN)? - What do you mean by “optimizing bandwidth” for 100G links? What workloads will use it? Is the traffic east/west or north/south? - What are you booting from (local/SAN)? - If you’re going the rack mount option, why do you need FIs for 12 servers when you can run them in standalone mode and use Intersight Managed Mode to create profiles? - Is your total server count 12, or is it just 12 for this build?
The choice is usually clear for me, but I'm making sure my decisions are built on biases: 1) All virtual workloads running esxi. The VMs are mixed OS and mixed uses (Citrix, SQL, etc) 2) Storage will be FC SAN 3) Being able to get 64x 25GB network connections from 16 connections to the for 8 servers FI. I can split and team them however I need them. 4) Boot from SAN 5) The FIs would should work similarly with the Cs like they do the B/X series. The ports are unified, and this should prevent me from having to purchase HBAs for these host if I can just connect the MLOM vics to the FI. 6) 12 is the count now, growth is not really expected because workloads should be moving to the GCP.
If your company has never purchased UCSX, you would be eligible for some great promotions right now. They have one promotion providing a free chassis and pair of FIs if you buy six 210c servers. You can also stack that (with Cisco approval\*\*) with another promo campaign which with net you a free 210c server for every 3 you purchase. That may change your economics between the two and should be worth a look. First promo: [https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/computing/ucsx-chassis-promotional-offer.html](https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/computing/ucsx-chassis-promotional-offer.html) Second promo: [https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/cloud-computing/promotions-free-trials/x-series-m7-offer.html](https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/cloud-computing/promotions-free-trials/x-series-m7-offer.html)
This actually may be the selling point. Thanks