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Back on 16 April, Cisco began its marketing push on its Unified Computing System (UCS) hyping the fundamental cost savings it provides – as much as 31% over traditional approaches for a large scale-out implementation. But after close scrutiny, Cisco either needs to check their math or adjust their pricing. Their claims about TCO, bandwidth etc. are overstated, creating  erroneous conclusions on bottom-line savings. Unfortunately, the media probably accepted this analysis without taking a close look. BTW, we’re referring to slides they used during a webinar, available at http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=16477. Setup: Analysis of Cisco’s Slide “Sample Configuration - 8 blades” Management is shown as $7,000 for 8 Blades. This is either $7,000 per chassis or $875 per blade. An interesting coincidence that HP’s Virtual Center Enterprise Management software has a list price of $7,000 per HP c7000 Bladesystem chassis. Another coincidence – for the 8 Blade configuration, Cisco lists “adaptors” for the blades costing $5,992 – that’s $749 each. The 4Gb/s Fiber Channel SAN mezzanine adaptors for the HP Bladesystem cost $749 each on the HP website. And there’s more – the 10Gb Ethernet switches are listed at $24,398 by Cisco – that’s $12,199 each. The HP FLEX10 Virtual Connect Ethernet switch costs $12,199. OK, last coincidence – Cisco lists Fiber Channel switches at $18,998 = $9,499 each. Yes, HP’s website lists 4Gb/s Virtual Connect Fiber Channel switches for $9,499. So, I think we can conclude the “Legacy System” Cisco is comparing to is an HP cClass Bladesystem. Knowing all of this, we can now analyze the 320 blade configuration to reconcile the costs. Analysis of Cisco’s Slide “Sample Configuration - 320 blades” On this slide, management Software is listed at $554,400. Since we know this is an HP c7000 Blade System which holds 16 Blades, there are 20 chassis – each with 16 Blades. The calculations work out correctly - $8,713 from the 8 Blade configuration times 20 = $174,260.  If Management software is a chassis-based price ( $7,000 from above) - with 20 chassis this total should be $140,000 – however Cisco shows $554,400 – a $414,000 mistake. Cisco’s $554,000 comes out to $27,700 per Blade chassis, or $1,732 per Blade. No that’s a pretty big mistake. Bottom-Line: So, if we adjust for this mistake, the difference between Cisco’s UCS total and the “Legacy” total (for 320 blades) is really only 14% - not 31%. Cisco’s error comparing “apples-to-apples”: Also, the Cisco configuration for 320 blades includes 40 Extenders. We know this because if you divide the 8 Blade “Extender” cost into the 320 Blade configuration extender cost – it equals 40. We also know that each Cisco Blade chassis holds 8 blades, so 40 chassis’ are needed to support 320 blades. SO, there is ONE Extender in each Cisco Blade chassis in this cost comparison. That’s ONE extender for each of the 40 blade chassis. That means that the extender is a single point of failure for each blade chassis in this configuration. In contrast, the (HP) "legacy system" is priced with full redundancy. Bottom-Line: Cisco is not providing a fair comparison. Advantage HP. A bit of hype regarding network bandwidth: The 40 Fabric Extenders mentioned above means there is a maximum throughput of 40Gb/s for each chassis with 8 Blades.  The Extenders have only four 10Gb/s FCoE ports for attachment to the fabric switch. So, that amortizes to 5Gb/s for each Blade – “IF” the ports on the Cisco Blades can be teamed or configured as Active/Active – if not, then this is a fabric throughput of 2.5Gb/s per Cisco Blade. So, this Cisco UCS configuration is not a 10Gb/s fabric – it is either 2.5Gb/s or 5Gb/s fabric best case. We can answer this question too. There is another factor at play. EACH Fabric Interconnect (aka Nuovo Switch) supports 40 Fabric connections to the Cisco Blade chassis. In order to support 320 Blades, each Cisco Blade chassis can only have ONE 10Gb/s connection to EACH of the redundant Cisco 61000 Fabric Interconnect switches. So, this results in EACH Cisco Blade chassis having a maximum of TWO(redundant) 10Gb/s fabric connections shared by 8 Blades. So this calculates to 20Gb/s for 8 Blades – or 2.5Gb/s per Blade. This, this tells us that the Cisco 320 Blade solution has a 2.5Gb/s fabric capacity. Now, for the “Legacy” (HP), recall the blades have redundant (2x) 10Gb/s Ethernet ports and redundant (2) 4Gb/s Fiber Channel Ports. The redundant (2) 10Gb/s Ethernet Switches in the “Legacy” system have a total of 16x10Gb/s uplink ports – so there is enough fabric and switch bandwidth for a true 10Gb/s Ethernet throughput for each Blade. The redundant (2) Fiberchannel Switches have 8x 4Gb/s fiber channel ports. Which is an additional 0.5Gb/s of Fiber channel through put per Blade in the Legacy system. Bottom line: This is an unfair cost comparison of a 10Gb/s “Legacy” (HP) system to a 2.5Gb/s Cisco UCS system. High bandwidth limited to low blade count Cisco’s 320-Blade configuration shows us that the “Fabric Interconnect” to support it actually costs $138,182. Cisco recommends two Fabric Interconnect units for the Cisco 5020 products, assuming this is the same case here. So, each of these Cisco 6100 Fabric Interconnect units costs $69,091.  These are the 40-Port switches which are needed to support the 320-Blade configuration. If a customer wants a full 10Gb/s fabric, each Blade Chassis will need two Fabric Extenders ($3,998 each) AND must use all 8x10Gb/s uplinks on the Fabric extenders. This also means the 40 Port Fabric Interconnect switch will only support –Five– blade chassis’ – not 40. So achieving a 10Gb/s fabric version of the Cisco UCS is limited to 40 Blades maximum. Bottom line: If a customer is interested in full bandwidth 10Gb/s connections to each of the Blades, the entry cost is $138,182 for the networking only, and only for 40 slots. That’s $3,304 per Blade slot for infrastructure. And then the blades themselves are additional costs!