UCS in traditional switch mode.... Nexus?

[ColKurtz]

We have a customer who wants to plug some non-Cisco blade servers into a UCS 6248 switch. The customer said they "uninstalled" UCS Manager, and it will work like a traditional switch. The blade vendor in question certainly hasn't tested this, but we don't want to derail the project, so I'm wondering if anyone can clarify:

1) Can you uninstall UCS manager, as the customer implied? If so, does this become a Nexus switch and configured via NXOS?

2) Someone also implied that a UCS switch can be reporposed as a general Nexus 5k by changing firmware. I can't find any documentation/posts to support this.

We have a meeting scheduled to go over some of this with the customer, but I'd like to be prepared and understand what the options are to plug non-Cisco into UCS "switches". FYI, we plan to put our embedded switches into end-host/transparent mode, so an upstream switch will see each nic as a line card... no spanning tree.. no network integration.

TIA.

 

[Railgun]

While I've not done anything that, knowing Cisco as I do, that's a whole lotta warranty and support issues waiting to be denied. I'd not do that.

 

[m1ldslide1]

I wish I knew the exact answer, but I pretty confident you won't be successful trying to convert the fabric interconnect to a N5k (even though the hardware is very similar). If simply "uninstalling UCS manager" is a supported option, you will easily find it in a google search. I don't believe it is however - the cisco logic will be that if you want a switch, then buy a N5k, not a 6248 FI.

Why not plug the 3rd party blade chassis into the next switch up in the stack - N7k or Cat6k or whatever?

 

[brshoemak]

While I've not done anything that, knowing Cisco as I do, that's a whole lotta warranty and support issues waiting to be denied. I'd not do that.

Agreed. Cisco TAC will laugh in your face (if that's possible over the phone) when you call for assistance.

 

[Lithium381]

you MIGHT be able to get away with setting the uplink to those as an "appliance port" and trunking all vlans to it, assuming the blade server has its own integrated switch of some sort?.. . i'm pretty new to UCS so don't take that as a solution, but something to maybe look into?