What is a Server Pool ?

In UCS a Server Pool is a container that can be used to group one of more blades together. The purpose of this is to be able to automatically bind service profiles (or to not automatically bind) to blades  depending on the type of hardware that it contain.

On a production system, the easiest way to plan and manage your blade is to build some kind of hardware template that will be used for different purposes.

A simple server pool

One way to create a server pool is to do it manually:

Once you have named the pool, you’ll have the option to had blades manually:

Here I really just selected a bunch of blades and added it to the container:

So of course it can be useful for a small UCS domain where you precisely know where your hardware is located.

Qualifying ?

I’m sure you have already heard that the UCS advantage is the deepness of its hardware abstraction. Here is how the server group helps you in this way.

If I have a huge UCS domain to manage, I may not be aware of the precise location of a precise blade which is supposed to have a precise hardware template.

I can create a Server Pool linked with a Server Pool Policy Qualification. The Pool Policy Qualification will be set to search for specific hardware option and act as a filter for the Server Pool.

As an example, let imagine I know that my VMWare ESXI hypervisors must be installed on my high end blades that have at least 16 cores and 524Go RAM.

I will create a Pool Policy that aimed these blades only:

Here I can name my Pool Policy and select some filter option in the left part of the windows, I will select CPU/Cores qualifications and Memory qualifications to match my hardware goals:

For CPU/Cores, I will just specify the max Cores as 16 and the min Cores as 16. This means that only Blades with 16 Cores will be selected.

For memory qualification I will specify 524Go RAM as the target.

Now that the Policy has been created I need to link it to a Server Pool. So let’s create a Server Pool with no Blades manually assigned, then affect the Pool Policy to it and see the magic happen:

Do not manually add blades here, this will be the job of the Pool Policy !

Right now the Server Pool is empty 🙁 But we can add a policy by using the + button on the right ! Note that you can create the Server Pool Policy from the Policies menu too.

You can choose whatever method you prefer as the option is the same. I prefer using the creation from the Server Pool as the Target Pool is already set and you cannot change it.

Once everything is set, the Server Pool will be updated with the Blade that match the Qualification:

Now you can create the Service Profile template and bind it to your Server Pool and you know this Service Profile will only be assigned to the correct hardware template unless you manually bypass the process.

Have fun !