Here’s one for all you Cisco Unified Compute System (UCS) administrators out there. Imagine being able to perform basic management functions on your Cisco UCS from your iPhone when out of the office or away from your desk! Well look no further as Tige Phillips from Cisco has produced the Simple iPhone Management of UCS (SiMU) application for the the iPhone which can be downloaded for free from the Apple App Store here. The interface has been designed with the iPhone in mind though you could also run it from an iPad just as easily. It is important to point out that this ‘lab’ version of SiMU does not use an encrypted connection, with all traffic travelling between the UCSM and SiMU application being in clear text, though encrypting this data stream using SSL s something that the author,Tige, is working for an upcoming version.

From SiMU Lab (Simple iPhone Management of UCS) you can perform simple management functions on a Cisco UCS such as login, reboot servers, check errors and assign service profiles to blades along with other basic administrative functions. The following is a brief description of the application from the SiMU application’s site:

“SiMU uses the open XML API built into the UCSM software. All of the security and access permissions are granted by UCSM and therefore are carried through to this application. SiMU Lab does NOT use secure communications. All traffic is passed between the UCSM and SiMU in clear text. For this reason SiMU should only be used in test environments and labs. A future version of SiMU will include SSL communications. Your password is stored in clear text in the memory of the iOS device, but is never saved to nonvolatile storage.

This application has been tested with version 1.2 and 1.3 of UCSM. If you do not have a Cisco UCS but want to learn more you can get a UCS simulator from the Cisco developers portal.”

So if you are a Cisco UCS Administrator this useful looking application could definitely be worth a look. Unfortunately I don’t have access to a UCS to try it out though if any of you do try it out I’d be interested in getting your feedback on it.