The Cisco UCS Series is a modular, high-density, high-availability, dual-node storage- optimized server suited for service providers, enterprises, and industry-specific environments. It provides dense, cost-effective storage to address your ever-growing data needs. Designed for a new class of data-intensive workloads, it is simple to deploy and excellent for applications for big data, data protection, software-defined storage environments, scale-out unstructured data repositories, media…
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Huawei OceanStor
Score 8.9 out of 10
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Huawei offers OceanStor Dorado, an all-flash storage system boasting a wide range of applications and versatility to meet the needs SMBs, larger enterprises, or vertical industry applications.
We have used these servers as edge servers as well as core servers. They always perform extremely well and have very few hardware issues. If they do experience a hardware issue it is easy to find the replacement part and fix it without any issues. They are great performers and overall a great buy.
We connect the Huawei OceanStor SAN device directly to the Huawei Fushion Servers, without using the SAN Switch, with 16 HBA cards in MESH topology. Each of the two controllers has four 16 HBA inputs under the name of SMART IO. In addition, there are two 8 GB extension ports. VMware virtual machines are running on hosts. Our ERP applications, critical DBs, and business applications are running in these. Again, we use another SAN under a different cluster in the disaster recovery section.
It's very customizable. It's customizable as in you have a chassis, but you could pick and choose the size of your blades puff with full width depending on what your workloads are. So in a way, you're not locked in. It's not like you buy a chassis and you're stuck into one thing could go and put, you need something that's storage intensive or maybe you've got more graphics intensive workload. You could choose and mix and match in the same.
Continue on development of platform management. Cisco has been notorious for terrible web applications but the functionality of this product is getting to where it is expected to be.
Recognition of this being a product in a competitive market. When I think of servers I do not think of Cisco. Cisco = Networking Dell,HP=Servers
3rd party interoperability. I love Cisco but being tied to proprietary hardware/software is not a functionality that the end user or customer benefits from.
Cisco UCS has been a highly reliable compute platform for our workloads, handling MSSQL, SSIS, virtualization (VMware vSphere), and analytics workloads with low latency and high efficiency. UCS Service Profiles and centralized management (UCS Manager, Intersight) make it easy to provision, scale, and manage compute resources efficiently across production and non-production environments. Our UCS setup integrates well with Pure Storage and Nimble HF40, delivering high IOPS, low latency, and fast throughput for data-intensive workloads. Cisco UCS hardware and licensing can be expensive compared to some alternative compute platforms, especially when considering cloud-based or hyperconverged options. While UCS can work in a hybrid cloud setup, it doesn’t natively integrate as seamlessly with public cloud providers like Azure or AWS compared to some newer solutions. We may need to evaluate Azure Stack HCI or AWS Outposts for future flexibility.
While Cisco's hardware is solid and long running, their software is usually the weak point. I will say that they are getting better with each release but if I had to find a problem with usability that would be it. Overall usability is good when you can work around software issues.
While the system generally provides high availability, we did experience a few hardware-related issues with the B200 M6 blades, especially compared to the older B420 M3 blades. These issues, while not frequent, did require attention and some downtime for troubleshooting and replacements. However, the overall uptime of the UCS platform has been solid, and the availability during most periods has been reliable. The hardware-related issues were isolated and manageable, but they impacted the overall availability score slightly.
The system performs exceptionally well in terms of speed and efficiency, with pages loading quickly, and reports completing in a reasonable time frame, even with complex configurations. The integration of UCS with other systems, such as VMware vSphere and storage solutions, has generally not caused noticeable performance degradation. The scalability of UCS allows it to handle growing workloads without significant slowdowns. However, the performance could be slightly impacted during hardware or firmware upgrades, but these instances have been rare and well-managed. Overall, the performance has met our expectations and continues to provide reliable results.
Cisco TAC is simply unbeatable and that goes for Cisco UCS server support just as well as it does for Cisco CUCM software. TAC has a well-deserved, excellent reputation and I do not hesitate to call them or open a ticket online, because I always know that I will get the help that I need and get it quickly
When purchasing support for your Huawei OceanStor system, there are two support options offered by Huawei (i.e. Hi-Care and Co-Care). Huawei Hi-Care service is when Huawei responds to your technical requests for remote troubleshooting and advance hardware replacement in the shortest possible time. Hi-Care provides onsite technical support to help you maintain a more efficient and stable network environment and improve network productivity. Whereas, Huawei Co-Care service is a collaborative solution delivered by Huawei certified partners. Depending on the capability of your Huawei support partners, I would recommend Hi-Care for mission-critical environments since this ensures Huawei takes responsibility for meeting the support SLAs. If you have very capable Huawei support partners, then Co-care could be a more cost-effective support option.
The training materials provided were generally informative and covered the essential aspects of the UCS platform, such as UCS Manager, Service Profiles, and integration with other systems. However, some of the training modules could benefit from being more hands-on and interactive. Additionally, certain advanced topics, like complex network configurations or troubleshooting hardware issues, were not covered in as much depth. Overall, while the training was useful, there’s room for improvement in terms of depth and practical application for more advanced users.
While there were some challenges, particularly with driver compatibility, network configuration, and hardware integration, the overall process was well-managed. The implementation team worked effectively to resolve issues, and we received great support from Cisco throughout the process. The training and knowledge gaps were addressed, and once the system was up and running, the UCS Series has significantly improved our infrastructure. The experience was generally positive, and any difficulties encountered were ultimately overcome with careful planning and support.
The scalability with the use of adding more server chassis and profiling them to be quickly deployable and manageable on one website. The communication that are linked to each servers and with the Cisco UCS Series. In chassis particularly, it's more convenient because we have less wires and less port to connect. So it's ease of use. Again, the Cisco UCS Series service profile and the chassis profile. That's awesome to use for scalability and to deploy new servers.
All Flash NVMe SSD technology is currently at the top of this business. Its disk structure is hundreds of times faster than traditional mechanical SAS systems, but also compared to today's SSD systems! It has a much more affordable price than the devices of the same class. In addition to these, we had a lot of hesitation when we decided to give up the competitor brand and buy a product that works reliably and smoothly, but we researched and learned very well. We made the right choice.
The system is highly scalable, allowing us to easily expand resources as needed, whether by adding compute blades, storage, or networking components. The centralized management provided by UCS Manager and Intersight makes scaling seamless, enabling us to manage growing workloads across multiple sites and departments without significant overhead. The cloud integration capabilities also help in extending UCS resources into hybrid environments, offering even more flexibility. However, scaling in very large environments might require careful planning to optimize performance and manage resources effectively
