Since a while we support UC virtualization on Cisco, HP and IBM servers apart from the Cisco validated UCS configurations (Tested Reference Configurations or TRCs). This is referred to as “specs-based” hardware support. For these configurations we will not provide sizing guidelines as we do with the TRCs. The configuration is supported as long as the requirements in term of CPU (vCPU and CPU type), memory and storage capacity and performance are respected. Although this looks very interesting, there are some considerations you should be aware of when going for a specs-based deployment over a Cisco TRC-based installation. In order to be able to support such a deployment that has not been thoroughly tested, TAC will need to be able to use some advanced VMware management tools to debug and analyze the virtual environment. This requires VMware vCenter, which is therefore mandatory for specs-based systems. This has an important influence on the cost of the VMware licenses. In any doubt about the sizing of the WMware hosts and the number of application they can run, or whenever the pricing of the required VMware licenses is a potential issue, we recommend using the Cisco validated UCS TRCs. In terms of VMware you are even allowed to use the free edition of vSphere as the hypervisor for them. For any information on UC on UCS please visit www.cisco.com/go/uc-virtualized.
