When using multiple Cisco UCS Management domains, the usage of Cisco UCS Central is recommended for centralized management.
With greenfield implementations this could be a daunting task, because Cisco UCS Central is the starting point (no other datacenter infrastructure components are available yet).
You have to create a temporarily environment where the Cisco UCS Central virtual appliance can be deployed on your soon-to-be-managed-by-UCS-Central UCS Management domain. Also the lack of an existing DNS infrastructure could make the implementation extra daunting.
When there is no DNS infrastructure available you could do a UCS Manager/Central registration on a IP address base, BUT afterwards you can not change the IP address of the UCS Central appliance which makes a future migration impossible. So you have to place the UCS Central appliance directly on it’s final destination when using IP address registration, imo .. your temporary infrastructure becomes you final infrastructure. This requires a very strict planning of your future infrastructure.
To be short: you must create a temporarily environment with a hypervisor and a DNS-infrastructure, to easily overcome those problems.
My best practice is to create a temporary organization within the UCS Manager that is going to be used for the TEMP-environment. Create (UUID/MAC/etc.) pools, policies and profiles that don’t interfere with the new-production environment in the newly created organization.
If the production systems are deployed by the UCS Central appliance, you can migrate the UCS Central appliance onto this production system.
You may shutdown the UCS Central appliance to migrate it, without any worries!
By removing the TEMP-organization afterwards, all pools, policies and profiles are removed with one click. You will end op with a clean UCS Manager configuration that is only managed by Cisco UCS Central.
When registering the UCS Manager into UCS Central use DNS hostnames!
This will create the possibility to successfully change the IP-address of the UCS Central appliance later.
To change the IP address of the UCS Central appliance.
Suspend the registration of UCS Manager:
After the registration has been suspended, change the DNS record and change the IP address of UCS Central.
Log into the UCS Central appliance with SSH and execute the following commands:
ucsc# scope network-interface a ucsc /network-interface # set net ip <a.b.c.d> Warning: When committed, this change may disconnect the current CLI session ucsc /network-interface* # commit
Check whether the UCS Central appliance is available on the new IP address.
On the UCS Manager acknowledge the registration.
After a few seconds the UCS Manager is successfully registered by the UCS Central appliance.
You could double-check the registration by opening the “Providers” tab:
Here you can see the new IP address of the UCS Central appliance.
