We run a couple of FIs and UCS blade chassis, but I am no longer "on-loan" to the group running them and as such one hardware and probably several software revision out of date. Not to be awkward (any more than usual ) but I'd appreciate any expansion on the " If you're not using FI I'd look elsewhere" type comments. Thanks for the comments, some interesting feedback. Ones not on the list will probably work but might show errors in the management software. You can add after market RAM but they have a list of compatible chips (quite a few). Basically if you don't have 10gbit infrastructure you will wish you did because getting the fabric interconnects to talk 1gbit is a real pain.Īs for the servers themselves, they can be a bit finicky on RAM so you are best off getting what you want as part of the original purchase deal. With rack servers, that is a bit different but can still be the network choke point for the servers.
The fabric interconnects are basically kind of the brain for the server/chassis management and potentially for the networking as well. The interface for management is Java, which always pisses me off, but that is about the worst thing I can say about them.
Of course, it depends on using things like IP allocation pools, MAC address pools, network storage, etc. The config is sort of based around templates so if you intend to have a good handful of servers that do the same chores, it is nice to be able to put in a new one and have it up and running really fast.