UCS Overview

Getting Started With UCS Manager

Documentation and Product Information
 

To begin, download the UCS XML API Programmer's Guide. This guide provides an overview of the UCS, the UCS management information model, the XML API, and contains numerous API examples.

Review the UCS XML API training video directly below for a high level understanding of the API structure, methods and functionality.

 

 

You can use the developer forums to ask and answer questions. You can also search the forums to see if your question was already raised. The UCS blog also contains much useful information provided by expert technical users.

UCS is certified as a platform for leading enterprise applications, virtualization, and operating systems. Cisco UCS Manager is fully interoperable with the major systems management tools commonly found in heterogeneous data centers.

 
UCS Platform Emulator

Cisco UCS Platform Emulator version 2.1(1a)PE3 is now available for download (updated March 7, 2013). 
NOTE:  Starting with UCSPE version 2.1, UCSPE is provided in both an OVA and VMX / VMDK virtual machine format.  The VMX / VMDK format has been tested and can be converted to use with Microsoft Hyper-V. 

The UCS Platform Emulator (UCSPE) was developed to enable the use of Cisco UCS Manager and the UCS XML API without requiring physical hardware. UCSPE significantly shortens the development cycle for applications that are based on the UCS XML API. You can create and test programs using only UCSPE installed on a laptop. UCSPE presents a controlled environment for the following:

  • Emulation of large-scale environments
  • Changes in the hardware inventory (device discovery)
  • Firmware upgrade testing
  • Troubleshooting real UCS problems

UCSPE also assists developers to do the following:

  • Test UCS XML API requests in lieu of a real server
  • Invoke the UCS GUI to become familiar with its usage and features
  • Invoke the model object browser and internal documentation
  • Provide a convenient way to demonstrate UCS operations for training and other activities

The UCS Platform v2.1 emulator is now available for download (download the v2.1 GA here).  For more information on the operation and capabilities UCSPE, see the UCS Platform Emulator Guide.

 
goUCS Automation Tool
 
goUCS is a toolkit that was created as a proof of concept to show how a UCS systems administrator could easily automate tasks across multiple UCS domains.  Since the advent of UCS's singular API, it has been clear to UCS admins the inherent power of being able to utilize and take advantage of this single API for use cases like auto-populating data in a central CMDB with the physical inventory of an entire UCS domain with one query; creating or modifying objects across multiple UCS domains like VLANs, policies, pools, etc.; and gathering data about a specific set of objects across UCS domains.  goUCS was designed for a UCS sysadmin as an example of a flexible and extensible command line style interface that provides the basic framework for managing multiple UCS sessions and the communication to and from UCS via the XMLAPI; and parsing and displaying any returned XML data into multiple output formats like CSV, tables, indented hierarchical lists, and raw XML.
 
Download the goUCS documentation and code!
 
Third Party Tools For UCS XML Application Development
 
  • Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer that enables a developer to inspect network traffic.  For UCS API devleopment, inspecting the traffic going from and returning to the UCS Manager GUI greatly enhances a developers understanding of the UCS API XML messages.
  • Firefox Poster is a developer tool for interacting with web services and other web resources that lets you make HTTP requests, set the entity body, and content type. Poster aids developers using UCS API by alleviating the need to create a language dependent HTTP/HTTPS client.
  • Third party tools documentation provides explanations and examples of how to use Wireshark and Poster with the UCS API.
Sample XML
Sample XML calls from UCS Manager.