I saw the announcement that Cisco had posted the emulator for UCS version 2.1(2a) a week ago.

@CiscoServerGeek that integrates with UCS Central 1.1, right?

— Frank Jimenez (@franjimecsco) July 26, 2013

This was pretty cool, seeing as the firmware version in general had only been out for a few weeks, and the emulators have traditionally taken a bit longer after their firmware release.

I took this as an opportunity to set up my own UCS Central lab. I was able to set up two instances of UCSPE 2.1(2a) and an instance of UCS Central, all within a hypervisor. This means a lot to me for practicing lab scenarios with the product, in addition to just seeing what all the hubbub was about with UCS Central.

So, naturally I put together a KIC LAB for UCS Central to walk through the installation and a few quick configurations:

(For some reason it’s playing in low-res for me by default - select 720p if it’s too grainy)

P.S. - I’d like to point out to Cisco that I appreciate the move to a web-based interface, but Flash is not REALLY an improvement on Java.