PVE Cluster on UCS C220-M8S Enough?

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tarnerhost

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Aug 12, 2025
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Question folks- I am building a simple PVE cluster with 2 UCSC-C220-M8S machines and dedicated Qdevice. This is to host a handful of backend VM's including one primary and backup ISE boxes on a 2 Nexus access switches attached to a vpc L3 core. ISE aside, no production apps so to speak... It's a very basic simple network. Does UCS c220 out of the box have enough hardware?


The vics would be dedicated to a active passive linux bond and a couple HA sync segments. The handful of vm's would boot off a NetAPP NFS cluster for offload. All vlans would be redundantly attached to 2 TOR switches. The CIMC's would be standalone running Raid 1 for cluster writes. What else would we need, in the config? Thanks in advance. We are a very simple lot!

Cisco UCS Servers - Two C220-M8S with 24X7X4 Hour Smartnet
4 UCS-M2-240G-D 240GB M.2 SATA Micron G2 SSD
2 UCSC-M-V5Q50GV2-D Cisco VIC 15427 4x 10/25/50G mLOM C-Series w/Secure Boot
2 UCS-M2-HWRAID2 Cisco Boot optimized M.2 Raid controller for SATA drives
There is a extra OOB TOR switch
 
We use NFS and NetAPP exclusively, booting off the network. It's a really only a handful of VM's. The CIMC VNIC have 4 ports.
 
If you use it in standalone mode without Cisco Fabricinterconnects(TOR), you can use on board Ethernet(RJ45) port for Corosync. I would suggest to take out corosync network from bonds(if possible), otherwise follow the advice from Proxmox to use LACP fast mode.

As you will have only two nodes, you will not use Ceph, so you should have enough NICs, so separate storage and data on those 4 NICs, so you dont need QoS.

As you would like to have two Corosync rings, you can have one on dedicated RJ45 port and secondary Corosync on your data bond(with fast LACP)
 
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I assumed, I saw a post that the CIMC management RJ45 port can not be used for qdevice, it's dedicated for the UCS CIMC proc, but why not? So..... so were going to use another VNIC PCI card per machine from Cisco$ to connect to a IDRAC switch already resident. We also will need a separate "VMOTION" broadcast segment also...... I think we could get by without extras, but after talking to our "GmbH" friends ONCONUS we will abide. This is really a very simple implementation. Thanks for the input.
 
tarnerhost said:
I assumed, I saw a post that the CIMC management RJ45 port can not be used for qdevice, it's dedicated for the UCS CIMC proc, but why not? So..... so were going to use another VNIC PCI card per machine from Cisco$ to connect to a IDRAC switch already resident. We also will need a separate "VMOTION" broadcast segment also...... I think we could get by without extras, but after talking to our "GmbH" friends ONCONUS we will abide. This is really a very simple implementation. Thanks for the input.
Click to expand...
Sorry my bad, I realized that Cisco has changed the NIC layout, M6 have additional RJ45 NICs, while M7 and M8 not anymore. I am not sure if CIMC port can be used for anything else. Maybe you can use another NIC with 1gbps RJ45 for Corosync. I would recommend you to use another NIC for corosync if possible, so you dont have to care about QoS.
 
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robertlukan said:
Sorry my bad, I realized that Cisco has changed the NIC layout, M6 have additional RJ45 NICs, while M7 and M8 not anymore. I am not sure if CIMC port can be used for anything else. Maybe you can use another NIC with 1gbps RJ45 for Corosync. I would recommend you to use another NIC for corosync if possible, so you dont have to care about QoS.
Click to expand...
we have 4 other UCS units EOL, yes I thought I would get more nics.
 
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