Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS)

The Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) is an (x86) architecture data center server platform composed of computing hardware, virtualization support, switching fabric, and management software which was introduced in the year 2009. The idea behind the system is to reduce total cost of ownership and improve scalability by integrating the different components into a cohesive platform that can be managed as a single unit. Just-In-Time deployment of resources and 1:N redundancy can be configured with UCS systems.

The computing component of the UCS is available in two versions: the B-Series (a powered chassis and full and/or half slot blade servers), and the C-series for 19-inch racks (that can be used with fabric interconnects). The compute hardware managed by the UCS Manager software on the Fabric Interconnects can be B-Series (blades), C-Series (rack mount) or a combination of the two. Both form factors use standard components, including Intel processors and DIMM memory. The servers are marketed with converged network adapter and port virtualization.

Virtualization:

Cisco UCS supports several hypervisors including VMware ESX, ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer and others. VMware Virtualization is provided through a partnership with VMware and uses a version of that company's ESXi. Unlike the VMware Workstation software, ESX and ESXi run directly on the system hardware without the need for any other software (called Bare Metal), and provide the necessary hypervisor functions to host several guest operating systems (such as Windows or Linux) on the physical server. Guest operating systems are limited to 255 GB of vRAM and 8 virtual processors in vSphere 4.x, upgraded to 1 TB of vRAM and 32 vCPUs in vSphere 5.0. Additionally, the Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Cards incorporate VM-FEX technology that gives virtual machines direct access to the hardware for improved performance and network visibility.

Networking:

The Cisco 6100 or 6200 Series switch (called a "Fabric Interconnect") provides network connectivity for the chassis; blade servers and rack servers connected to it through 10 Gigabit and Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). The Fabric Interconnects is derived from the Nexus 5000 and run NX-OS as well as the UCS Manager software. The FCoE component is necessary for connection to SAN storage, since the UCS system blade servers have very little local storage capacity. Cisco currently produces the following series

•             6200 Fabric Interconnects

The Fabric Interconnect can further connect to multiple Fabric Extenders, Port Extenders using VNTag to the Fabric Interconnects, allowing up to 160 servers to be managed by one Fabric Interconnect (or two in Active-Active fail-over).

Clearing the Page File for Every Restart

•Click Start
•Click Control Panel
•Click Administrative Tools
•Click Local Security Policy
•Click the "+" next to Local Policies which will expand it.
•Click on Security Options
•Now in the right side of the window you can find lot of policies and their security settings find the policy "Shutdown: Clear Virtual Memory Page file" and double click on it to open the Security setting properties dialog box.
• You can go through the explanation of it in the last tab.
• Select the "Enabled" radio button and
•Click OK.

Explanation:

Shutdown: Clear virtual memory pagefile

This security setting determines whether the virtual memory pagefile is cleared when the system is shut down.

Virtual memory support uses a system pagefile to swap pages of memory to disk when they are not used. On a running system, this pagefile is opened exclusively by the operating system, and it is well protected. However, systems that are configured to allow booting to other operating systems might have to make sure that the system pagefile is wiped clean when this system shuts down. This ensures that sensitive information from process memory that might go into the pagefile is not available to an unauthorized user who manages to directly access the pagefile.

When this policy is enabled, it causes the system pagefile to be cleared upon clean shutdown. If you enable this security option, the hibernation file (hiberfil.sys) is also zeroed out when hibernation is disabled.

Default: Disabled.

Phonetic and Morse Chart