There are several points of integration between Cisco UCS and VMware vCenter. I’ll list a few of them in this blog.
Virtual links in vCenter are represented as phsyical links in the UCS Manager. Once a virtual link is created, its profile moves along with virtual machines, with security and QoS settings moving along with vMotion. By doing this we get more visibility into our virtual networking.
Cisco UCS Manager is standards-based, so it integrates with VMware features such as Dynamic Power Management. When workloads are light, DPM consolidates running VMs onto a smaller number of servers and powers off servers to save on energy costs.
It also integrates with what we called vCenter Operations Manager, or what is now called vRealize Operations. There is a UCS plugin that may be installed which will give you health scores for your UCS environment right in the vCenter Web client.
As for automation, there are several ways to integrate UCS with vSphere by using products such as vCenter Orchestrator, vCloud Automation Center (now vRealize Automation Suite), and UCS Director.