Cisco UCS S-Series Storage Server
The Cisco UCS S3260 storage server, shown in Figure 16-15, is a modular, high-density, high-availability, dual-node storage-optimized server that is well-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 streaming, and content distribution.
Figure 16-15 Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Server
The Cisco UCS S3260 server is based on a chassis, which supports two compute nodes, each based on the second-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor. The compute nodes provide the computing power. The supported local storage is up to 1080TB in a compact four-rack-unit (4RU) form factor. The drives can be configured with enterprise-class RAID (redundant array of independent disks) redundancy or with a pass-through host bus adapter (HBA) controller. Network connectivity is provided with dual-port up-to-40Gbps nodes in each server, with expanded unified I/O capabilities for data migration between network-attached storage (NAS) and SAN environments. This storage-optimized server comfortably fits in a standard 32-inch-depth rack, such as the Cisco R 42610 rack.
The following are the product highlights:
- Dual two-socket server nodes based on Intel Xeon Scalable processors. The M5 server node supports the following processors: 4214, 5218, 5220, 6238, 6240, 6262V, 4210R, 4214R, 5218R, 5220R, 6226R, and 6230R.
- Up to 48 cores per server node.
- Up to 1.5TB of DDR4 memory per M5 server node.
- Support for high-performance NVMe and flash memory.
- Up to 12.8TB NVMe for an M5 server node.
- Massive 1080TB data storage capacity that easily scales to petabytes with Cisco UCS Manager software.
- Supported drives:
- Up to 56 top-accessible, hot-swappable 3.5-inch, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, or 18TB 7200-RPM NL-SAS hard-disk drives (HDDs).
- Up to 28 top-accessible, hot-swappable 800GB, 1.6TB, or 3.2TB SAS solid-state drives (SSDs).
- Up to two rear-accessible, hot-swappable, 2.5-inch, 240GB or 480GB SATA or 1.6TB SSDs per server node.
- Policy-based storage management framework for zero-touch capacity on demand.
- Dual-port 40Gbps system I/O controllers.
- PCIe Slot based with choice of Cisco UCS VIC 1455 Quad Port 10/25G, Cisco UCS VIC 1495 Dual Port 40/100G, or third-party Ethernet and FC adapters.
- Unified I/O for Ethernet or Fibre Channel to existing NAS or SAN storage environments.
- Support for Cisco bidirectional transceivers, with 40Gbps connectivity over existing 10Gbps cabling infrastructure.
- I/O expansion module:
- Dual x8 Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) half-height, half-width slots for third-party add-in cards. (Note: This is available with M5 and M4 server node and uses server bay 1.)
- Choice of I/O Ethernet and Fibre Channel options: 1-, 10- or 40-Gigabit Ethernet or 16-Gbps Fibre Channel
- NVMe SSD options of 1.6, 3.2, or 6.4TB
- Application acceleration with support for NVIDIA T4 16GB GPU
Cisco UCS management provides enhanced storage management functions for the Cisco UCS S3260 and all Cisco UCS servers. Storage profiles give you flexibility in defining the number of storage disks and the roles and uses of those disks and other storage parameters. You can select and configure the disks to be used for storage by a virtual drive.
A logical collection of physical disks is called a disk group, and a disk group configuration policy defines the way in which a disk group is created and configured. A disk group can be partitioned into virtual drives. Each virtual drive appears as an individual physical device to the operating system. The policy specifies the RAID level for each disk group. It also specifies either manual or automatic selection of disks for the disk group and the roles for the disks. This feature allows optimization of the storage resources without additional overhead and licensing costs. The RAID storage controller characteristics are as follows:
- M5 server node:
- Dual-chip RAID controller based on LSI 3316 ROC with 4GB RAID cache per chip and Supercap
- Controller support for RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, 50, and 60 and JBOD mode, providing enterprise-class data protection for all drives installed in the system
- Pass-through controller:
- Dual-chip pass-through controller with LSI IOC 3316 using LSI IT firmware