Cisco’s UCS platform is a key component of our sales team. Almost every single customer of ours is targeted for using UCS.

That being said, without UCS gear, it’s tough to learn! Insert UCS emulator!

http://developer.cisco.com/web/unifiedcomputing/ucsemulatordownload

Now you’ve got yourself a full blow UCS deployment.. now what do you do with it without any storage to attach to? Insert VNX emulator!

http://nickapedia.com/2011/04/08/new-uber-model-uber-vnx-nfs-v1/

Both of which are virtual appliances (UCS is a VMDK/VMX and VNX is a OVA) that will run within VMware Player, VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion (If converted to VMX using OVF tool – http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/1013)

Since I’m using a Mac and VMware Fusion, I had to convert the OVA files from the VNX emulator to VMX before Fusion would open them. To do that, I ran the following commands:

./ovftool /volumes/Internal-750/isos/VNX.ova /volumes/Internal-750/isos/VNX_Emulator/VNX.vmx

Once converted, I double-clicked the VMX file which imported the appliance into Fusion. For the UCS I simply double-clicked the VMX file which imported it into Fusion.

Once imported, I was able to power on the appliances and configure networking so each appliance was pingable. I then pointed a browser to the IP Address of the UCS appliance to open UCS manager, same with the VNX.