It’s all about analytics! 4th Generation of Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure for Big Data

It’s all about analytics! From data, to insight, and then action. Analytics, along with Internet of Things, represent the foundation of Digital Transformation that is changing businesses, industries, and lives globally.

Fundamental to this transformation is ‘integrated’, ‘software defined’ many things including compute, storage, network and management. Through innovations, Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) integrates these elements in to a cohesive programmable infrastructure that can scale as workloads demand. Cisco’s UCS Integrated Infrastructure portfolio further optimizes the application architecture solutions based on your use cases, your applications, and technology needs.

Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure for Big Data introduced few years ago has become a popular choice in the enterprises across major industry segments including agriculture, education, entertainment, finance, healthcare, manufaturing, insurance, public sector, retail, and service provider environments.

These reference architectures are supported with leading software partners including Actan, Cloudera, DataStax, Elastic, Hortonworks, IBM (BigInsights), MapR, Oracle (No SQL Database), Pivotal (HD and GPDB), Platfora, SAS, SAP (HANA Vora), Splunk, and others.

Recently, the business value of our Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure for Big Data solutions were quantified by IDC through independent research, which showed the following benefits for an organization:

The new reference configurations and single SKU bundles are listed in Tables 1,2,3 and 4 below. These configurations can be deployed as-is, or referenced as templates for building custom configurations, and used to scale to thousands of servers on demand through the use of Cisco Nexus® 7000 and 9000 Series Switches.

Table 1: Performance Optimized: High performance Hadoop, Scale-out databases and analytics solutions

Base Solution SKU | UCS-SL-CPA4-P1 | UCS-SL-CPA4-P2 | UCS-SL-CPA4-P3
Connectivity | 2 Cisco UCS 6296UP | 2 Cisco UCS 6296UP | 2 Cisco UCS 6332
Servers in Base Solution SKU | 16 | 16 | 16
Server SKU (C240 M4) | UCS-SPBD-C240M4-P1 | UCS-SPBD-C240M4-P2 | UCS-SPBD-C240M4-P3
Processor | 2 Intel Xeon processor E5-2680 v4 | 2 Intel Xeon processor E5-2680 v4 | 2 Intel Xeon processor E5-2680 v4
Memory | 256GB DDR4 2400MHz | 256GB DDR4 2400MHz | 256GB DDR4 2400MHz
Boot | 2 240GB EV SSD | 2 240GB EV SSD | 2 240GB EV SSD
Data | 24 1.2TB 12G 10K SAS HDD | 24 1.8TB 12G 10K SAS HDD | 24 1.8TB 12G 10K SAS HDD
Capacity | 29TB | 29TB | 43TB
IO Bandwidth | 4.1GBytes/sec | 5.5GBytes/sec | 5.5GBytes/sec
Scalability (no additional switches) | 80 (20Gbps per server) | 80 (20Gbps per server) | 26 (80Gbps per server)
Scalability with ACI | 1000s | 1000s | 1000s

Table 2: Capacity Optimized: Hadoop, Scale-out databases and analytics solutions

Base Solution SKU | UCS-SL-CPA4-C1 | UCS-SL-CPA4-C2
Connectivity | 2 Cisco UCS 6296UP | 2 Cisco UCS 6296UP
Servers in Base Solution SKU | 16 | 16
Server SKU (C240 M4) | UCS-SPBD-C240M4-P-C1 | UCS-SPBD-C240M4-P-C2
Processor | 2 Intel Xeon processor E5-2620 v4 | 2 Intel Xeon processor E5-2620 v4
Memory | 128GB DDR4 2400MHz | 256GB DDR4 2400MHz
Boot | 2 240GB EV SSD | 2 240GB EV SSD
Data | 12 6TB 12G 10K SAS HDD | 12 8TB 12G 10K SAS HDD
Capacity | 72TB | 96TB
IO Bandwidth | 2.5GBytes/sec | 2.3GBytes/sec
Scalability (no additional switches) | 80 (20Gbps per server) | 80 (20Gbps per server)
Scalability with ACI | 1000s | 1000s

Table 3: Starter Configuration for test and development, and smaller deployments

Base Solution SKU | UCS-SL-CPA4-S
Connectivity | 2 Cisco UCS 6248
Servers in Base Solution SKU | 8
Server SKU (C220 M4) | UCS-SPBD-C220M4-S1
Processor | 2 Intel Xeon processor E5-2620 v4
Memory | 128GB DDR4 2400MHz
Disks | 8 1.2TB 12G 10K SAS HDD
Capacity | 10TB
IO Bandwidth | 1.4GBytes/sec
Scalability (no additional switches) | 40 (20Gbps per server)

Table 4: High Performance Configuration with SSDs

Base Solution SKU | UCS-SL-CPA4-H
Connectivity | 2 Cisco UCS 6332
Servers in Base Solution SKU | 8
Server SKU (C220 M4) | UCS-SPBD-C220M4-H1
Processor | 2 Intel Xeon processor E5-2680 v4
Memory | 256GB DDR4 2400MHz
Disks | 8 960GB EV SSD
Capacity | 7.5TB
IO Bandwidth | 4GBytes/sec
Scalability (no additional switches) | 26 (80Gbps per server)

Additional Information

Solution Brief (SKUs)
Cisco Big Data Portal
Cisco UCS Big Data Design Zone
The Business Value of Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure for Big Data