"So you are using the whole Cisco UCS system ...and how?"
I have gotten the above question in some different flavors quite a few times lately. And the answer is: no we do not, we use them as normal, single, rackservers just as you would with a rackserver from any other vendor.
The Cisco C200 M2 comes with a decent CPU (has 2 CPU sockets) and a few slots for RAM (up to 192GB), 3 PCI Express slots (one is low-profile) and you can install up to 4 standard 3,5" SATA disks of your choice (no more having to stick with what other vendors can supply) plus a very decent out-of-band management card as standard (compare DRAC or iLo) and all that at quite a lower price than a comparable system from say Dell. Sure, the standard included warranty and support is far from what Dell or HP offers but I'm sure that Cisco will happily supply that for an additional fee if you want. We recently saw a increase in baseprice of this system but it is still 25-50% off from the prices that Dell keeps flooding our mailboxes with (which I know is not the prices we would pay after phoning our Dell representative).
The Cisco C210 M2 is much the same basic system but still quite a bit different as it has 16 2,5" diskslots in a 2U chassis where you have to get the disks from Cisco (which can take quite some time if unlucky) and 5 PCI Express slots. Apart from those two things it seems that the C200 and C210 shares all other properties.
I have earlier reported about a newer system, the C260 monster (64 DIMM slots and 16 drives in a 2U chassis with the new Intel Xeon family processors!), but I have yet to see it in real life (and more importantly in a pricelist).
But yes, these are usable as normal rackservers without any modifications and provides good value in the low-end range of rackservers. I would recommend them to anyone just looking for a decent rackserver any day.
