i-am.ws

UCSand - You See Sand

UCSand is an Android application I recently developed to monitor a Cisco UCS blade system. The UCS Manager running on the Fabric Interconnects is based on an API using XML over HTTP. It is relatively easy to write shell or Perl scripts to collect data from the UCS system. Or to control it, like booting blades or turning the blue locator LED on or off.

A while back someone else developed a client GUI for the iPhone/iPad. With the Cius being released, a similar app for the Android platform is needed. Being a proud owner of an original "Google Developer Phone", it was time to get to work. Android code has to be developed in Java, so "talking XML over HTTP" isn't that difficult. It all comes down to old style socket programming.

I opted for keeping the app relatively simple. It's mainly a monitoring tool that allows you to check on the status of your system when you're remote. It shows the configuration of your blades and you can go through the alarms and warnings for the various components in your system. On purpose I didn't include more complex actions like (dis)associating a service profile. Those things are better done from the fully featured UCS Manager.

You can get the UCSand app from the Android Market, or just search the market for Cisco UCS. The current version will show more or less information about the blades depending on the size of the screen. On a phone, you've to click on a blade to see details, on a tablet you see some details and the status of the blade next to the image.

Finally, if you want to see the app in full action, check out the Mobility in the Datacenter blog of one of our customers at the City of Melrose.

 

@ 2011 Jul 24 10:37 AM, entry [ ucsand_you_see_sand ] was posted in [ datacenter ]

Oracle Sun Better Together

In some bottom drawer I found this old marketing credit card CD from Oracle and Sun. It's probably from the same era as the VOS (Veritas, Oracle, Sun) initiative. The five minute flash demo is in hindsight really funny. It certainly doesn't describe what happened in the last five years, when Oracle was only pushing RAC and Linux. And we'll have to wait and see if this describes "Sunacle" when the merger between the two comes through. Personally I've some doubts about that "Cost Effective" on the third image. click to enlarge (in new tab / window)

 

@ 2009 Oct 11 12:26 PM, entry [ better_together_cd ] was posted in [ datacenter ]