© 2013 Cisco | Intel Xeon. All rights reserved. Page 1
Cisco UCS E-Series Servers
Product Overview
Cisco UCS® E-Series Servers, part of the Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS), are next-generation
power-optimized general-purpose x86 64-bit blade servers designed to be deployed in Cisco® Integrated Services
Routers Generation 2 (ISR G2; Figure 1).
These price-to-performance optimized single-socket blade servers balance simplicity, performance, reliability, and
power efficiency and are well suited for applications and infrastructure services typically deployed in small offices
and branch offices. By using the Cisco ISR G2 as the blade server chassis, customers can now deploy a single
converged networking and computing platform designed specifically for remote-office and branch-office
infrastructure consolidation.
Cisco UCS E-Series Servers deliver next-generation Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2400 and E3-1100 product family
technology in combination with integrated remote lights-out management in a blade server form factor. These
powerful processors deliver multiple cores and threads in a reduced-power envelope, providing improved
performance and better energy efficiency than preceding models, making them an excellent platform for
introducing virtualization into the branch office. The innovative, zero footprint form factor of the Cisco UCS ESeries Servers in conjunction with the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2400 and E3-1100 product families offer
significantly lower total cost of ownership (TCO), increased business agility, and greater reliability when compared
to standalone rack-mount and tower servers.
Figure 1: Cisco UCS E-Series Servers with Cisco 3945 ISR
© 2013 Cisco | Intel Xeon. All rights reserved. Page 2
Applications
Feature
Benefit
Integrated networking
Two internal Gigabit Ethernet interfaces
Virtualization optimization
Intel®Xeon® processor E3-1100 and E5-2400 product families
using Intel Hyper-Threading Technology as well as Intel
Virtualization Technology (VT-x)
Four-core or six-core Intel Xeon
processors
Energy-efficient, high-performance processors, providing
increased performance in a compact form factor
Hot-swappable SAS drives, SAS selfencrypting drives (SEDs), and SATA
solid-state drives (SSDs)
Up to three front-accessible, hot-swappable, internal 2.5-inch
server-class SAS drives, SAS SEDs, or SATA SSDs
Balanced performance and capacity to best meet application
needs:
SAS single-level cell (SLC) SSDs
10,000-rpm SAS drives for high performance and value with
SED option for security for data at rest
7200-rpm SATA II drives for high capacity and value
Cisco UCS E-Series Servers provide excellent performance and value for workloads including the following:
Core Microsoft Windows services: Microsoft Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), Microsoft
Windows print services, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server services, Domain Name
System (DNS) server services, file services, and others
Mission-critical business applications: Point-of-sale (POS) systems, bank teller in-office control points
(IOCPs), electronic-medical-record (EMR) systems, inventory management systems, and others
Client-management services: Configuration and operations management, monitoring services, update
and patching services, backup and recovery services, terminal server gateways, and others
Other remote-office and branch-office applications
Features and Benefits
The Cisco UCS E-Series Servers extend the Cisco UCS product portfolio to meet the needs of customers who
want to deploy a virtualization-ready computing infrastructure in a branch-office environment while maintaining a
lean branch-office architecture. By combining virtualization with the servers, organizations can deploy new
services incrementally on a schedule that best meets the organization's timing and budget while avoiding servicecall costs for on-site visits to deploy new hardware or software.
The servers are available in two form factors: a single-wide blade and a double-wide blade. The single-wide blade
includes a four-core Intel Xeon E3-1100 processor and occupies a single service module slot in the Cisco ISR G2
device. The double-wide blade occupies two Cisco ISR G2 service-module slots side by side and includes either
a four-core or six-core Intel Xeon E5-2400 processor with more RAM and storage capacity than the single-wide
module. The double-wide blade also has a PCI Express (PCIe) card option for expanding external network and
storage I/O.
Table 1 summarizes the features and benefits of the Cisco UCS E-Series Servers.
Table 1: Features and Benefits
© 2013 Cisco | Intel Xeon. All rights reserved. Page 3
Feature
Benefit
Hardware RAID 0, 1, and 5 support
Hardware RAID 0 and 1 support on single-wide blades and
double-wide blades with the PCIe card option
Hardware RAID 0, 1, and 5 support on double-wide blades
without the PCIe card option
LSI MegaRAID controller
Cisco UCS C-Series Integrated
Management Controller (CIMC)
Web user interface for server management; remote keyboard,
video, and mouse (KVM); virtual media; and administration
Virtual media support for remote CD and DVD drives as if local
Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) 2.0 support
for out-of-band management through third-party enterprise
management systems
Command-line interface (CLI) for server management
Integration with Cisco IOS® Software for optional management
of the servers from within the router CLI and operating
environment
One 10/100BASE-T out-of-band management interface
PCIe card support for additional
network and storage I/O
Additional I/O performance and flexibility with four 1 Gigabit
Ethernet or one 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel over
Ethernet (FCoE) options (available in double-wide blades only)
Integrated external Gigabit Ethernet
ports
Single-wide blades: 1 external Gigabit Ethernet port
Double-wide blades: 2 external Gigabit Ethernet ports
Front-panel connectors
Front-panel VGA, 2 USB, and serial console connectors
Platform Support and Compatibility
Unlike the previous generation of Cisco UCS Express modules, Cisco UCS E-Series Servers are designed to
support multiple bare-metal operating systems and hypervisors, including:
Operating systems
– Microsoft Windows Server
– Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
– SUSE Linux
– Oracle Enterprise Linux
Hypervisors
– Microsoft Hyper-V
– VMware vSphere
– Citrix XenServer
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