Cisco UCS B200-M1 Interaction Times 1.3(1c)
So I wrote this up a long time ago and just never posted it. I have a lot more UCS stats saved on text files that I should be able to dig up. I completely forgot about this until an email yesterday.
So when it comes to maintenance, I time almost everything. I really like being able to estimate how long specific actions should take to complete. That is what this post is all about. I will be going over startup times, dissassociation, and association of service profiles on Cisco B200 M1 blades. The test was done using blades having different RAM configurations across multiple chassis.
Also to note, our blades boot from SAN to a fiber connected EMC CX4-240 Clariion. The storage on the CX4 supporting these and 10 other boot from SAN blades LUNs is as follows:
Qty 4 – 600gb 10kRPM disks setup in a RAID 10 group.
The following firmware versions are the same between both blades being tested:
| UCS Manager: | 1.3(1c) |
| Blade CIMC Controller: | 1.3(1c) |
| Blade BIOS: | S5500.1.3.1c.0.052020101544 |
| Blade Interface Card: | 1.3(1c) |
Storage path: Palo interface -> fiber -> Cisco Nexus 6120 -> fiber -> EMC CX4
Test 1 Consists of a B200-M1 blade with the following configuration
| OS: | VMware vSphere 4 |
| CPUs: | Dual quad core Intel Xeon X5570 2.93GHz |
| RAM: | 98 gig |
| Interface Card: | Cisco UCS VIC M81KR Virtual Interface Card (Palo) |
| Boot: | FCoE to EMC CX4-240 SAN |
Bootup and shutdown:
| Shutdown from running: | ~48 seconds |
| Power-off to ESX Grub boot loader: | ~2.27 |
| Power-off to ESX console: | ~4.15 |
Service Profile associations:
| Power-off to completed dissassociation: | ~3.08 |
| Dissassociatd to completed association: | ~3.30 |
Test 2 Consists of a B200-M1 blade with the following configuration
| OS: | Windows 2008 |
| CPUs: | Dual quad core Intel Xeon X5570 2.93GHz |
| RAM: | 24 gig |
| Interface Card: | Cisco UCS VIC M81KR Virtual Interface Card (Palo) |
| Boot: | FCoE to EMC CX4-240 SAN |
Bootup and shutdown:
| Shutdown from running: | ~58 seconds |
| Power-off to Windows loading bar: | ~2.50 |
| Power-off to Windows 2008 login console: | ~3.77 |
Service Profile associations:
| Power-off to completed dissassociation: | ~3.09 |
| Dissassociated to completed association: | ~3.10 |
Note(s): The testing was done with blades that were already at the service profiles required firmware level. More time would have to be added if an firmware change was needed. Also, boot times will be dependent on the IOPs achievable to your storage system.
