Cisco UCS 5108 Server Chassis Installation Guide - Overview [Cisco UCS 5100 Series Blade Server Chassis] (2024)

The Cisco UCS 5100 Series Blade Server Chassis is a scalable and flexible blade server chassis for today’s and tomorrow’s data center that helps reduce total cost of ownership. There are two versions available that can be configured for AC (N20-C6508 and UCSB-5108-AC2) and two versions that can be configured for DC (UCSB-5108-DC and UCSB-5108-DC2) power environments. An additional version (UCSB-5108-HVDC) is available that can be configured for 200 - 380V DC environments.

The chassis is six rack units (6 RU) high and can mount in an industry-standard 19-inch rack with square holes (such as the Cisco R Series Racks) or in round hole racks when an adapter is used. The chassis can house up to eight half-width Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers and can accommodate both half- and full-width blade form factors.

Up to four hot-swappable AC, DC, or HVDC power supplies are accessible from the front of the chassis. These power supplies can be configured to support nonredundant, N+1 redundant, and grid-redundant configurations. The rear of the chassis contains eight hot-swappable fans, four power connectors (one per power supply), and two I/O bays for I/O modules. A passive backplane provides support for up to 80 Gbps of I/O bandwidth to each half-width blade and 160 Gbps of I/O bandwidth to each full width-blade.

Scalability is dependent on both hardware and software. For more information, see the appropriate UCS software release notes.

The Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers are based on industry-standard server technologies and provide the following:

• Up to two or four Intel multi-core processors, depending on the server

• Front-accessible, hot-swappable hard drives or solid-state disk (SSD) drives

• Depending on the server, support is available for up to three adapter card connections for up to 160 Gbps of redundant I/O throughput

• Industry-standard double-data-rate 4 (DDR4) memory

• Remote management through an integrated service processor that also executes policy established in Cisco UCS Manager software

• Local keyboard, video, and mouse (KVM) and serial console access through a front console port on each server

• Out-of-band access by remote KVM, Secure Shell (SSH), and virtual media (vMedia) as well as Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI)

The Cisco UCS B-Series offers multiple blade server models. The supported processor family is indicated by M4 or M5 designations on the model.

Depending on the model of server in question, one to three adapter cards will reside in each blade server, providing failover connectivity to each I/O module in the chassis. Cards are released on an ongoing basis.

The Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect (UCS-FI-M-6324) is an integrated fabric interconnect and I/O module. It can be configured only with the UCS Mini versions of the chassis (UCSB-5108-AC2 and UCSB-5108-DC2 ).

The Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect connects directly to external Cisco Nexus switches through 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) ports.

The Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect fits into the back of the Cisco UCS Mini chassis. Each Cisco UCS Mini chassis can support up to two UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnects, which enables increased capacity as well as redundancy.

The Cisco UCS 2408 IOM is an I/O module (fabric extender) with 8 25-Gigabit SFP28 uplink ports to the fabric interconnect and 32 10-Gigabit backplane ports to support up to 8 half-width blade servers in the chassis. It can be hot-plugged into the rear of a Cisco UCS 5108 blade server chassis. A maximum of two UCS 2408 IOMs can be installed in a chassis.

The Cisco UCS 2408 IOM joins the fourth generation of UCS products, including the following hardware:

• Cisco UCS 6400 Series Fabric Interconnects

  Note	The UCS 2408 IOM is supported with the UCS 6400 Series FIs only.

• Multiple Cisco UCS 1300 Series and 1400 Series Virtual Interface Cards (VICs)

• M4 and M5 generations of Cisco UCS B-Series blade servers.

• The UCS 2408 IOM requires Cisco UCS Manager 4.0(4c) or later software.

The Cisco UCS 2408 IOM provides chassis management control and blade management control, including control of the chassis, fan trays, power supply units, and blades. It also multiplexes and forwards all traffic from the blade servers in the chassis to the 25-Gigabit Ethernet uplink network ports that connect to the fabric Interconnect. The IOM can also connect to a peer IOM to form a cluster interconnect (1G Ethernet connection).

The Cisco UCS 2304 IOM (Fabric Extender) is an I/O module with 8 40-Gigabit backplane ports and 4 40-Gigabit uplink ports. It can be hot-plugged into the rear of a Cisco UCS 5108 blade server chassis. A maximum of two UCS 2304 IOMs can be installed in a chassis.

Note	There is an updated, Version 2 of the UCS 2304 IOM (UCS-IOM-2304V2). You cannot mix the original UCS-IOM-2304 and UCS-2304V2 in the same chassis. If you replace UCS-IOM-2304 with UCS-IOM-2304V2, you must replace both IOMs in the chassis.

Note	Version 2 of the UCS 2304 IOM (UCS-IOM-2304V2) requires Cisco UCS Manager 4.0(4) or later.

The Cisco UCS 2304 IOM joins the third generation of UCS products, including the following hardware:

• Cisco UCS 6332 fabric interconnect, an Ethernet or Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) chassis with 32 QSFP+ 40-Gigabit ports

• Cisco UCS 6332-16UP fabric interconnect, a Ethernet and Fibre Channel chassis with 16 1- or 10-Gigabit SFP+ ports or 16 4-, 8-, or 16-Gigabit Fibre Channel ports, and 24 40-Gigabit QSFP+ ports

• Multiple 1300 Series VICs

The Cisco UCS 2304 IOM provides chassis management control and blade management control, including control of the chassis, fan trays, power supply units, and blades. It also multiplexes and forwards all traffic from the blade servers in the chassis to the 10-Gigabit Ethernet uplink network ports that connect to the fabric Interconnect. The IOM can also connect to a peer IOM to form a cluster interconnect.

The AC PDU (N01-UAC1) provides load balancing between the installed power supplies, as well as distributing power to the other chassis components. DC versions of the chassis use a different PDU with appropriate connectors. The PDU is not field-serviceable, and converting an AC chassis to a DC chassis by swapping the PDU is not supported, as the PDU is not separately orderable.

The chassis can accept up to eight fan modules (N20-FAN5). A chassis must have filler plates in place if no fan will be installed in a slot for an extended period.

Different power supplies are available to work with the AC (UCSB-PSU-2500ACPL or N20-PAC5-2500W) or DC (UCSB-PSU-2500DC48) versions of the chassis.

When configured with the Cisco UCS 6324 Fabric Interconnect, only the following power supplies are supported: UCSB-PSU-2500ACDV dual-voltage supply and UCSB-PSU-2500DC48 -48V DC power supply.

To determine the number of power supplies needed for a given configuration, use the Cisco UCS Power Calculator tool.