There are two types of service profiles in a UCS system:
a) Service profiles that inherit server identity : These service profiles are similar in concept to a rack mounted server. These service profiles use the burned-in values (like MAC addresses, WWN addresses, BIOS version and settings, etc.) of the hardware. Due to the nature of using these burned-in values these profiles are not easily portable and can’t be used from moving one server to the other. In other words these profiles exhibit the nature of 1:1 mapping and thus require changes to be made to them when moving from one server to another.
b) Service profiles that override server identity : These service policies exhibit the nature of stateless computing in UCS system. These service profiles take the resources (like MAC addresses, WWN addresses, BIOS version, etc.) from a resource pool already created in the UCS manager. The settings or values from these resource pools override the burned-in values of the hardware. Hence these profiles are very flexible and can be moved from one server to the other easily and this movement is transparent to the network. In other words these profiles provide a 1: many mapping and require no change to be made to them when moving from one server to another.
