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.