Cisco UCS

volfkhat

In plain English,
what the heck is Cisco UCS? How does it tie into ESX, Hyper-V? (is it a competitor to these products?)

If i wanted to study for it; which cert would i start with? (the Data Center track?)
Is the only way to get real experience through a job that uses the hardware?

Any insight is appreciated!

OctalDump

Ahem.

So, it's basically server hardware designed for virtualisation, and Cisco has a partnership with Vmware, so ESXi is the go to hypervisor. But you can run whatever hypervisor you like: it's generic x64 hardware.

There is a specialist certification available, but it does mix also with the Data Center track. I think it is covered substantially in the CCNP Data Center track.

You might be able to pick up some older hardware on eBay etc if you have the money.

volfkhat

Thanks Octal.

The wiki was no help.

But your Explanation has helped greatly :]