HP Server Automation complements HP Insight Control to manage HP BladeSystem servers

Transcription

1 HP Server Automation complements HP Insight Control to manage HP BladeSystem servers Introduction...3 HP BladeSystem... 3 Virtual Connect...3 HP Insight Control...4 Deploy...4 HP Server Migration Pack Universal Edition...4 HP Rapid Deployment Pack...4 Monitor...5 HP Systems Insight Manager...5 HP BladeSystem Integrated Manager...5 HP Performance Management Pack... 5 System Management Homepage... 5 Control...6 HP Integrated Lights-Out Remote Management...6 Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager...6 Protect...6 Service Essentials Remote Support Pack...6 Vulnerability and Patch Management Pack...6 Optimize...6 HP Insight Power Manager...6 HP Virtual Machine Mangement Pack...7 Integrate...7 Enterprise Management Integration Solutions...7 HP Server Automation...7 Baseline...8 Change and configuration management...8 Compliance management...8 Upgrade and provision...9 Process automation...9 Using Insight Control and Server Automation together...10 Managing with Insight Control and Server Automation: Examples...11 Example 1: Solving a CPU performance problem...12

2 Event and health monitoring...12 Performance Management Pack Software compliance...14 Example 2: Solving a cooling problem...15 BladeSystem visualization...15 Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager...16 Server Automation Compliance Check...17 Example 3: Server consolidation...18 Planning and analysis...19 HP Systems Insight Manager...19 Performance Management Pack Server Automation...20 Hardware setup...21 Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager...21 Migration Consolidation...21 Rapid Deployment Pack...21 Server Automation Software policies...22 Conclusion...23 For more information...24

3 Introduction In the world of racked, stacked, and wired computing, you can spend up to 80% of your IT budget running the systems compared to the 20% you spend to acquire the systems. The HP BladeSystem environment improves this ratio by making it easy to manage many systems through a consolidated infrastructure. A populated BladeSystem enclosure is an adaptive infrastructure in an enclosure. The enclosure packages cables, power supplies and fans, networking, redundancy, and more. You can easily add servers, storage, and interconnect blades to build an infrastructure with a smaller footprint that consumes less power. HP Insight Control and HP Server Automation software extend the manageability of BladeSystem environments. Insight Control management software makes management of BladeSystem servers especially simple, automating steps in every hardware management process from provisioning to recovery. The combination of technology embedded in the BladeSystem infrastructure with Insight Control and HP Systems Insight Manager (HP SIM) software enables you to manage large numbers of BladeSystem servers. After the hardware management process begins, Server Automation software enables you to easily and consistently manage the software and application stack for large-scale enterprise environments. Together, Insight Control and Server Automation simplify the operations of BladeSystem servers and the application infrastructure. The first half of this white paper provides an overview of the features of BladeSystem, Insight Control, and Server Automation. The second half of the paper provides real-world examples to show how you can use these two products to reduce time and effort in data center operations. HP BladeSystem A populated BladeSystem enclosure is an adaptive infrastructure in an enclosure. With a BladeSystem enclosure, you can build vital business solutions that are more affordable, take less time to maintain, use less power, and are ready to grow as needed. The all-in-one design provides the essentials for you to build and maintain a server infrastructure from start to finish. Thousands of applications on Windows, Linux, HP-UX, and more are available to be hosted within the enclosure. BladeSystem infrastructure can support a combination of virtual machines, HP storage and server blades ProLiant, Integrity, and StorageWorks and can connect to a variety of the most popular networking environments and standards including Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and InfiniBand. Server blades range from servers and storage devices to workstations and virtual desktops. Many of the most popular HP products are now available in a blade design, including ProLiant and Integrity server blades. Each server blade is inserted into the HP BladeSystem enclosure, which provides redundancy, network connections, and a more efficient, shared power and cooling design. A variety of tools are built-in to help you set up and maintain the server blades at every step. Virtual Connect A simple solution to multiple challenges, HP Virtual Connect Ethernet and Fibre Channel modules are options for the HP BladeSystem c3000 and c7000 enclosures. They abstract and pool the server-edge connections so connections look like NICs and host bus adapters (HBA) to the local area network (LAN) and storage area network (SAN). This enables server administrators to independently manage server blades and their connectivity. You can maintain high-availability connections throughout the server racks, with secure administration of media access control (MAC), worldwide names (WWN), and Internet protocol (IP) addresses for each server. Together, Virtual Connect modules and HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager (VCEM) enable you to manage input and output connectivity for up to 100 blade enclosures from a central console, establishing pools of servers for flexible deployment, spare allocations, and substantial management simplification. All MAC and WWN addresses are stored in one database, which reduces the risk of

4 address conflicts. Group-based configuration can streamline enclosure administration across your organization. HP Insight Control HP Insight Control is a set of capabilities that simplifies the management of BladeSystem server blades, covering the entire server lifecycle from deployment to integration. Figure 1: HP Insight Control Deploy HP BladeSystem is designed for easy setup. Virtual Connect technology enables network and storage connections to be configured once for an enclosure, and then easily assigned to each server by the server administrator, without additional work by the network and storage administrators. After ProLiant hardware is set up, you can use two products within Insight Control that to install the operating system and applications: HP Server Migration Pack Universal Edition and HP Rapid Deployment Pack (RDP). HP Server Migration Pack Universal Edition Server Migration Pack - Universal Edition delivers the best physical and virtual migration options for HP ProLiant servers. It can quickly and easily migrate an existing server and all of its applications to a new physical or virtual server. Migrations can run concurrently for faster processing of multiple migrations. HP Rapid Deployment Pack Rapid Deployment Pack is a server deployment solution that facilitates the installation, configuration, and deployment of high volumes of HP servers using either scripting or imaging technology. It can deploy Windows or Linux images to ProLiant or Integrity servers. Server configuration time is reduced dramatically, making it possible to scale server deployments to high volumes in rapid fashion. Rapid Deployment Pack includes the ProLiant Integration Module and Integrity Integration Module. These modules consist of software optimizations for HP servers, including HP scripting toolkits, configuration

5 jobs for leading industry standard operating systems, and HP server support packs containing software drivers, management agents, and important documentation. Monitor Insight Control gives you a complete picture of the BladeSystem infrastructure from performance to power and everything in between. HP SIM sits at the heart of Insight Control to do inventory, health monitoring, and fault management. The HP BladeSystem Integrated Manager gives a photo-realistic view of racks and enclosures, showing all components of the BladeSystem infrastructure contained within, with information from applications such as HP Performance Management Pack (PMP) for CPU, memory, and network utilization or HP Insight Power Manager (IPM) for power utilization. To get more detail on the server information shown in the central management console of HP SIM, use one click to launch the System Management Homepage (SMH) for the individual server. HP Systems Insight Manager HP SIM is a management platform architected as a central management server (CMS) managing the hardware and virtual infrastructure aspects of servers and storage devices. Its automatic discovery, inventory, and health monitoring features provide the information that the other Insight Control applications utilize to manage HP BladeSystem servers. The automatic event management feature of HP SIM enables and pager notifications when an alert is received, as well as scripted responses. All of the other Insight Control components integrate with HP SIM to yield a well-rounded view of the IT infrastructure from a browser-based interface. HP BladeSystem Integrated Manager HP BladeSystem Integrated Manager displays HP BladeSystem racks and enclosures in a photorealistic manner, overlaid with status icons and popup information windows to make it easy to manage your server blades. The rack view shows extensive power and thermal information. Icons and links make more information on health, events, or inventory of the individual blades available with a single mouse click. HP BladeSystem Integrated Manager is built into HP SIM. HP Performance Management Pack PMP is an integrated performance management solution that detects and analyzes hardware bottlenecks on HP ProLiant servers, select HP Integrity servers, and HP Modular Smart Array shared storage devices. PMP operates in conjunction with HP SIM. No additional software installation on the monitored servers is required. Information is made available through the Insight Management Agents, which are used by many of the components of Insight Control, such as HP SIM and Virtual Machine Management Pack (VMM). PMP analyzes performance information to determine if there is a building or existing performance bottleneck issue. This information can be interactively displayed, logged to a database for later analysis or reporting, and configured to send proactive notification using the HP SIM notification mechanism. System Management Homepage HP System Management Homepage is a web-based interface that consolidates and simplifies the management of individual HP ProLiant and HP Integrity servers. By aggregating data from HP Insight Management Agents and other management tools, System Management Homepage provides a secure and intuitive interface to review in-depth hardware configuration and status data, performance metrics, system thresholds, and software version control information. System Management Homepage can also be used to access the HP Integrated Lights-Out Management processor on ProLiant and Integrity servers as well as the HP Onboard Administrator (OA) of the BladeSystem enclosure.

6 Control HP Integrated Lights-Out Remote Management and VCEM enable you to make changes remotely to the HP BladeSystem infrastructure. HP Integrated Lights-Out Remote Management HP Integrated Lights Out technology (ilo) enables control of remote servers from a central location restart servers, control power settings, connect virtual media, update software, and interact with the operating system remotely reducing IT staff travel budgets while correcting server issues and improving system recovery times. Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager VCEM simplifies the management of BladeSystem environments that use Virtual Connect to control server connectivity to LAN and SAN infrastructures, helping organizations increase productivity, respond more quickly to business demands, and significantly reduce operating costs. Built on HP Virtual Connect technology, VCEM provides a central console to manage and control the connection of multiple BladeSystem enclosures to LANs and SANs, a single database to administer LAN and SAN addresses, and enclosure grouping capabilities that increase configuration consistency, simplify change, and enable the rapid deployment, recovery, and movement of server resources across the data center. Administrators can add, replace, and recover servers in minutes, without the need to involve LAN and SAN administrators after the initial installation. Protect A key IT function is to minimize risk to servers. HP Service Essentials Remote Support Pack (RSP) analyzes hardware faults and initiates support calls as necessary to avoid unplanned downtime. Service Essentials Remote Support Pack If a predictive failure indication is found, customers with support contracts or systems under warranty use the Service Essentials RSP to proactively analyze hardware faults and initiate a service call with HP. RSP also contains reports to show the current state of warranty or contract coverage for each system. Vulnerability and Patch Management Pack Vulnerability and Patch Management Pack (VPM) automates the detection of security vulnerabilities and provides actionable advice for problem resolution. VPM also facilitates automated patch deployment, selecting the appropriate operating system patches based on the results of security scans. VPM is useful in smaller IT environments where HP Server Automation has not been implemented. Optimize Insight Control optimizes the operation of the data center by enabling centralized management of virtual machines, power, and cooling. HP Insight Power Manager IPM is an integrated power monitoring and management application integrated with HP SIM that provides centralized control of server power consumption and thermal output at the data center level. IPM extends the capacity of data centers by allowing flexibility in the amount of power and cooling required for ProLiant servers. Incorporating Power Regulator for ProLiant1 technology, IPM quantifies the power savings achieved from usage of flexible policy management. 1 For more information on Power Regulator Technology:

7 HP Virtual Machine Mangement Pack Virtual Machine Management Pack (VMM) optimizes server utilization by providing centralized performance monitoring and control of VMware and Microsoft virtual machines. VMM shows physical host to virtual machine association and makes it easy to identify virtual machines (VM) or host servers reaching high central processing unit (CPU), memory, or disk utilization levels. VMM has highly flexible move capabilities allowing live moves2 and moves to different host resources. The backup, template, and alternate host capabilities enable restoration of VMs on any available host. VMM is the only out of the box solution available that can initiate VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) to relocate VMs based on hardware predictive failure alerts. Integrate Because it is built on HP SIM, Insight Control provides management of an entire HP storage and server infrastructure through a single console. Several integration solutions connect the information provided by Insight Control with other management tools used for enterprise management. Enterprise Management Integration Solutions Insight Control exchanges inventory information and events directly between HP SIM and a number of HP enterprise management products, such as HP Network Node Manager, HP Operations Center, and HP ServiceDesk. Additionally, integrations are available to allow access from CA Unicenter, Microsoft System Center, and Tivoli Enterprise Console to information and events from the ProLiant Agents and SMH, which are installed on each HP managed server. HP Server Automation Server Automation software provides the depth and breadth of capabilities you need to manage dayto-day IT operations across servers and applications. It is enterprise software that provides automation capabilities for operating system and application provisioning, patching, configuration management, audit and compliance, reporting, and a host of other IT operations. HP Server Automation has helped customers address their security and compliance management, data center consolidation, and virtualization initiatives while simultaneously improving their operational efficiencies and responsiveness to change. Server Automation supports a distributed architecture that enables global scalability. It can manage tens of thousands of servers in different subnets in data centers around the world. Server Automation manages servers running Windows, Linux, VMware, and various UNIX operating systems, including HP-UX 11i, across hardware from a multitude of vendors. Its main features when managing a BladeSystem environment are automatic baselining of the hardware and software configurations, policy-based provisioning, and application-level auditing and remediation. 2 Requires VMWare VMotion

8 Figure 2: HP Server Automation End-to-end provisioning workflow Process Automation Promote-toproduction workflow Drag-n-Drop Workflow Builder, OOB integrations Flexible Execution Modes IT change process workflow Audit Trails & Reports IT incident/problem process workflow Server Lifecycle Automation IT Teams Change & Configure Baseline Servers Software Applications (full stack OS to app) Agent Deployment Cross-tier discovery of networks, storage and application dependencies Configuration management Patch Management (OS, software) Virtual machine config. Mgmt Global remote access Script execution Compliance Policy based audits Remediation Actionable search Actionable reports Cross-tier compliance views Subscription service for up-to-date compliance audits Upgrade & Provision IT Systems Software distribution Bare Metal provis ioning Software deployment Virtual machine provis ioning Application configuration Automation Platform Scalable Global Deployment Architecture Secure Extensible Baseline Server Automation enables your IT staff to bring the entire server environment under management quickly and gain unprecedented visibility into servers and operations. After you bring servers under management through an automated process, Server Automation provides a high degree of flexibility for managing and reporting server and application operations. The server explorer facilitates easy browsing of operating systems, patches, and applications across a heterogeneous group of servers. The global shell and Windows PowerShell interfaces let you run automation scripts easily and with enhanced security features across multiple servers at once. All administrator actions are stored and digitally signed in a central data repository for performing compliance and IT reporting. With a record of all changes and real-time server and business application views, Server Automation provides deep visibility and increased control for your application environment. Change and configuration management Without automation, IT activities such as application and patch installation can consume countless hours of your administrator s time. Beginning with initial provisioning, Server Automation supports operating system and application provisioning, as individual tasks or as one sequence. Policies created to manage best practices for operating system and software configurations can be defined by subject matter experts. These policies can be shared and utilized by administrators in any location, ensuring compliance with corporate standards across all servers in all data centers. Server Automation offers powerful capabilities that aid in managing change and configurations. A secure communication channel enables your IT staff to access any server under management and view operating system, patch, running services, and audit trail information. Administrators can compare current application states with previous points in time to quickly identify changes and rollback as necessary. Compliance management Server Automation leverages user-defined best practices and provides out-of-the-box policies to proactively manage software configuration settings and to correct or prevent drift. You can audit your

9 entire IT server infrastructure to validate compliance against audit policies and immediately remediate any areas that are out of compliance. You can write policies to cover software installation, application configuration, system configuration, virtualization, network, and storage. In addition, outof-the-box reports show whether systems comply with regulatory standards. You can use the HP Live Network subscription service to acquire the most up-to-date security and regulatory compliance policies, which you can apply to systems as appropriate. The compliance policies from HP Live Network are drawn from standards such as Center for Internet Security (CIS), Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), Payment Card Industry (PCI), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). New security vulnerability policies are generated daily from the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). Because these policies are configured as HP Server Automation policies, you can add them easily to systems for quick auditing and remediation. Upgrade and provision Server Automation provisions operating system baselines onto bare-metal servers quickly, consistently, and with minimal manual intervention. You can enforce, easily update and patch, and refresh consistent and secure server baselines quickly to meet your corporate standards. For software provisioning, a simple user interface makes it easy for you to create new software policies that contain code, content, scripts, and configurations. All policies, for both software and operating system, are stored in folders with read/write access to foster sharing of policies while maintaining control over who can deploy, edit, and view policies. For virtual server environments, Server Automation supports provisioning and control of VMware ESX server and Sun Solaris 10 containers. All operating system and software policies can be used across physical and virtual servers. Process automation Server Automation, a key component of Data Center Automation Center (Figure 3), provides capabilities to automate operations and processes across disparate IT teams and systems. Integrating with HP Operations Orchestration, Server Automation workflows automatically coordinate and sequence IT processes and its sub-tasks to manage end-to-end operations and to ensure that IT follows best practices. Also, by seamlessly integrating with other products in the Data Center Automation suite, Server Automation offers server administrators deep visibility into network, storage, and business application elements in the data center.

10 Figure 3: Data center automation center Business Service Automation BSM ITSM Operations Orchestration Live Network IT Teams Discovery Client Automation Discover servers, software network devices, & storage Network Automation Server, network, storage Server Automation Audit Remediation Provisioning & Scaling Storage IT Systems Automation Servers & network devices Service Automation Visualizer Applications Software Reporting Interdependencies Configurations Configurations Patching All applications & components Software distribution Monitoring events & alerts Process-enabled storage provisioning Service Automation Reporter Help desk/ change requests Universal CMDB Using Insight Control and Server Automation together While Insight Control features are extensive, when you use Insight Control is used in conjunction with Server Automation, you can reduce the time and effort spent managing HP BladeSystem servers and the application stack. Server Automation application and configuration features give you more control over the consistency of software deployment and configuration, resulting in fewer errors. The auditing and compliance features make it easy for you to improve compliance with corporate security guidelines. With Server Automation and HP SIM, your IT staff can better manage end-to-end business service management with complete infrastructure control.

11 Table 1: Key features of Insight Control and Server Automation Insight Control Feature Server Automation Network and storage connection configuration3 Operating system deployment 4 System configuration Application deployment Enclosure visualization Fault management Performance / resource utilization Power utilization Inventory 5 Contract and warranty data Remote control (without operating system) Remote console (using operating system) Migrate virtual connect server profiles Auditing and compliance Operating system security patching6 Policy-based operating system and application patching Virtualization Power management Integrate Enterprise management integration solutions Visibility Application to server to network to storage connections Deploy Monitor Control Protect Optimize Managing with Insight Control and Server Automation: Examples The following examples illustrate how Insight Control and HP Server Automation work together to simplify the management of extensive BladeSystem installations. The examples are not intended to be comprehensive, just illustrative. The first of three examples shows how Insight Control and Server Automation are used together to identify and solve a CPU performance problem. The second example illustrates how features specific to server blades make it easy for you to respond to a cooling issue. In the third example, a company has decided to reduce IT expenses by consolidating its existing server infrastructure onto new BladeSystem servers. Insight Control and Server Automation save time and effort by simplifying many repetitive actions necessary in such a move. If you use Server Automation with HP Network Automation and Storage Automation, then you can configure and manage network and storage connections. 4 Rapid Deployment Pack is pre-enabled out of the box with ProLiant and Integrity hardware setup capabilities and licensed for use only with HP servers. With customized scripting, you can use Server Automation for operating system deployment on heterogeneous servers. 5 HP SIM provides more extensive hardware inventory, such as DIMM serial numbers and information on fans and power supplies. Server Automation provides extensive software inventory information, including file system hierarchy. 6 For comprehensive patch management, Server Automation is the preferred solution because it covers both operating systems and applications. 3

12 Example 1: Solving a CPU performance problem Keeping hundreds or thousands of server blades running on an ongoing basis would be difficult without automation tools. These automation tools can manage large numbers of servers from a single console. Insight Control and Server Automation reduce the effort required to do this. In general, Insight Control monitors, manages, and controls the server hardware, and Server Automation monitors the software configuration compliance, yielding a complete picture. In this example, the system administrator is using HP SIM, the foundation of Insight Control, for health monitoring and fault management. A pager alert is received from HP SIM indicating that one of the servers has gone over its CPU threshold. The system administrator uses the real time graphing capability of PMP to confirm that this system is consistently running at a higher CPU level than it should be for that time of day. A quick look at the Compliance Dashboard in Server Automation shows that Oracle configuration for this server is out of compliance. To reinstate the original configuration values, the system administrator clicks Remediate. PMP confirms that the system is returning to its expected CPU usage levels. Event and health monitoring In this data center, the system administrator routinely monitors the infrastructure using HP SIM. HP SIM polls each managed server periodically to retrieve a consolidated health status value that reflects the status of the server s hardware components. This health status value can be displayed in several places in the HP SIM user interface, and is used to access more detailed information about the health of the system. SNMP and WBEM events can be directed to the HP SIM central management server, where actions such as notifications, paging, script execution, and event assignment can be automated, and event details can be viewed. In this example, the system administrator had configured HP SIM to send a pager alert when certain production servers exceed a CPU threshold. After HP SIM sends the pager alert, the administrator consults HP SIM to start diagnosing the problem. Figure 4 shows an HP SIM table view of a collection of ProLiant servers. The HS (Health Status) column represents health status for an individual system, and the ES (Event Status) column represents the most critical, uncleared event that the system has received for that system. The SW column reflects recommended updates to ProLiant drivers, firmware, and management agents. Other status columns reflect additional information in areas such as management processor status and performance. The Events tab gives quick access to an event viewer and displays a filtered view of the events for this collection of systems, showing additional event details that might not have been included in the page notification.

13 Figure 4: HP SIM health monitoring Performance Management Pack Seeing that the PF (performance) column for this server is showing a warning state, the system administrator clicks the icon to view PMP. PMP shows real-time performance graphs of a number of measures and generates reports that summarize performance over time. PMP integrates with HP SIM to give a complete picture of server operation. In this case, the system administrator notes that the CPU utilization problem is not just a spike, but an ongoing issue (Figure 5). To continue gathering information to troubleshoot this problem, the administrator looks at Server Automation to verify if the system configuration has not changed.

14 Figure 5: Performance Management Pack Online analysis Software compliance Server Automation has a powerful automation engine that supports the creation of policies to define the software installation and configuration standards for a data center, a view showing which systems are out of compliance, and remediation to restore the correct configuration. The Compliance Dashboard, illustrated in Figure 6, shows at a glance if the servers are in compliance with configured policies. Icons represent the following categories of policies: Application configuration: These policies manage configuration files associated with applications. Patching: You can create policies from patch databases downloaded from an operating system vendor such as Microsoft. Audit: These policies let you specify the ideal state of a server in areas such as file system permissions or registry values. You can run audits on an ad-hoc basis if desired. If audits are scheduled, their results are shown in the dashboard. For audit policies, while you can see the results of hardware inventory comparisons, you can remediate only value-based results. Software: These policies model the desired state of an application installation, which might include patch and application configuration policies, in addition to software package specification. In addition to the policy compliance icons, the Compliance Dashboard also shows a change in the icon to the right of the server name to indicate if the Server Automation core server is unable to communicate with its agent, the managed server. Server Automation Compliance Dashboard shows that the system is not compliant with one of its application configuration policies. Viewing Details shows that the database configuration is out of compliance with the policy settings. After verifying the policies are correct and discussing them with the database administrator, the system administrator learns that, to help troubleshoot another

15 problem, a higher level of database logging was manually turned on overnight and accidentally left on. The system administrator clicks Remediate to change the settings back to those established in the Software Policy for the application. Figure 6: HP Server Automation Compliance Dashboard As a final step, the system administrator looks at the PMP performance graph to verify that the CPU is returning to expected levels. Example 2: Solving a cooling problem In this example, a system administrator receives a page generated by HP SIM that is used for routine monitoring in the data center and discovers that several server blades in a particular enclosure have exceeded a predefined temperature threshold. One server blade is running a performance sensitive, mission-critical Oracle RAC database. The administrator uses VCEM to rapidly assign a predefined profile, containing one of the additional database instances, to an available server blade in another enclosure. Before putting the server into production, the administrator uses the Server Automation Compliance Dashboard to quickly verify that the configuration is in compliance with current operating system, application, and security policies. Now that the performance and redundancy of the database cluster is assured, the administrator proceeds to investigate the underlying problem. BladeSystem visualization When HP SIM sends a pager alert, the administrator uses HP SIM to investigate an alert on several server blades within a particular enclosure. The administrator discovers an ambient temperature threshold is being exceeded. The BladeSystem Integrated Manager view (Figure 7) within HP SIM gives additional information about server blades within the enclosure. Not only is there a photorealistic view of the front and back of the enclosure, showing each component overlaid by health status icons, but additional information on the same page about power and cooling is provided. To display a popup window with additional information about the component, mouse-over a component within the picture. The Events tab shows the set of events that have not been cleared for the components of this enclosure.

16 Figure 7: HP BladeSystem Integrated Manager Enclosure View One server blade in the enclosure is part of a performance sensitive, mission-critical Oracle RAC database. Not finding an obvious cause for the excessive temperature, the administrator decides to use an available server blade in another enclosure to add a server to the database cluster to ensure adequate performance and redundancy while the administrator investigates the problem. This RAC cluster is part of a horizontally scalable application and was configured with additional database instances, which are turned off during normal operations. The additional database instances were created, configured, and tested in advance on servers configured using Virtual Connect server blade profiles, specifying LAN and SAN connectivity for each server blade. Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager The use of VCEM server connection profiles makes it easy for you to move or repurpose servers to meet changing workloads, to recover failed server hardware to a spare server, or perform more efficient systems maintenance. The VCEM application (Figure 8) builds on underlying HP SIM services, Virtual Connect hardware, and the Onboard Administrator (OA) in each enclosure to discover and centrally manage multiple BladeSystem enclosures that use Virtual Connect. These enclosures are referred to as Virtual Connect Domains. VCEM also provides a central database to control MAC and WWN assignments for LANs and SANs, which eliminates potential address conflicts.

17 Figure 8: Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager Server connection profiles specify the specific network and storage connections, including boot settings that a server blade will use. Unlike traditional network connections, Virtual Connect server connection profiles are assigned to an enclosure bay and not tied to individual server hardware, which means that servers can be replaced or upgraded and the network connections for the enclosure remain constant. When you insert a server blade into an enclosure bay, it powers up and follows the profile boot settings to connect to its communication networks and storage. Based on the boot settings, it could obtain its operating system through several methods including Pre-boot Execution Environment (PXE) boot or a pre-existing image on its primary local or SAN-based boot partition. In this example, inactive server profiles in VCEM have been configured, set up, and tested as part of the Oracle RAC cluster. During normal operations, inactive profiles are disassociated from the server hardware, freeing the server for other uses, but the profiles remain available for immediate use. The administrator identifies an available server blade in another enclosure and uses VCEM to assign one of the inactive server blade profiles for the Oracle RAC cluster and then boots the server blade. Server Automation Compliance Check The server blade profile is configured to boot the server from a pre-existing SAN-based boot partition that contains an image of the desired operating system and application, so the additional server blade can be added to the cluster quickly. Because this instance has been inactive, you must verify that the configuration is in compliance with current operating system, application, and security policies. The system administrator consults the Server Automation server compliance view (Figure 9). If there have been changes to the production application configuration policies since the last time this image was used, which is the case in this example, the system administrator can click Remediate to immediately bring the instance into compliance. This server can now be safely added into the production Oracle RAC cluster.

18 Figure 9: HP Server Automation: Per Server Compliance View Now that the performance and availability of the database cluster is assured, the administrator can further investigate the underlying problem. After verifying various server hardware logs and verifying the temperature in the data center, the administrator goes into the data center to investigate the issue. The administrator finds that boxes are covering the cooling vents that supply cool air to the server blades. The administrator moves the boxes to an appropriate location along the outer wall. By the time the administrator gets back to the HP SIM console, the server blades have returned to a normal operating temperature. Example 3: Server consolidation In an effort to reduce IT expenses, a company has decided to move the majority of its existing rackbased servers to HP BladeSystem server blades. Some server blades are running commercial applications like Microsoft Exchange and Citrix, while others run applications that were developed inhouse. First, the system administrator uses HP SIM and PMP to understand the current hardware inventory, software inventory, and performance of the existing systems. Based on this information, the administrator develops a plan that specifies which server workloads can be consolidated onto a single server blade and which workloads should be migrated directly to a new server blade as is. HP BladeSystem c-class enclosure hardware, which includes Virtual Connect Ethernet and Fibre Channel modules, is installed. The LAN and SAN administrators preprovision the network segments and uplink connections and required LUNs (boot and data LUNs) for each BladeSystem enclosure. Using VCEM, the server administrator creates server blade connection profiles that contain LAN and SAN connections and operating system boot locations for each new server. Then, the server administrator assigns them to enclosure bays. The administrator must configure a unique server connection profile for each bay, but the administrator can quickly create a profile by copying an existing profile and giving the profile a new name. As each server blade is installed in an enclosure bay, Virtual Connect uses the information in the connection profile to automatically connect the server to the defined communication and storage networks without additional help from the network and storage administrators. Then, the administrator uses Rapid Deployment Pack to deploy the operating

19 system to both local and SAN-based boot drives. Applications are installed consistently through Server Automation software policies. Planning and analysis During the Planning and Analysis phase, the system administrator must understand the hardware, software, and performance characteristics of the current systems. The inventory reports in HP SIM show detailed information about the hardware in use; PMP indicates the historical performance of CPU, memory; and input and output and HP Server Automation shows what software is installed on the systems. Based on this data, the system administrator can develop a consolidation plan. HP Systems Insight Manager HP SIM capabilities include: Health Monitoring, Event Notification, Distributed Task Execution, and Inventory. In this example, the company uses HP SIM to gather hardware inventory information. Standard and custom inventory reports show data such as server model, operating system, processor type and speed, amount and type of memory, network interfaces, logical drive space usage, and physical drive information (Figure 10). These reports help the system administrator understand the current characteristics of the systems. Figure 10: HP SIM Sample Inventory Report

20 Performance Management Pack When planning a migration, you must understand the performance characteristics of the current systems. In addition to the real-time graphs, the administrator uses PMP to generate reports that summarize performance over time (Figure 11). PMP integrates with HP SIM to give a complete picture of server operation. Figure 11: Performance Management Pack Reports Server Automation In this example, this company uses Server Automation to deploy software applications through software policies (Figure 12). Software policies can consist of code, content, scripts, and configuration files. When these policies are associated with the right servers, you can provision them. You can change any element of the software policy, and the differences will be applied. You can view a report from Server Automation that shows which software policies are associated with each server blade, yielding the inventory of applications installed on the system. This software inventory report, combined with the hardware and performance information gathered by HP SIM and PMP, enables the system administrator to determine the appropriate set of server blades to replace the current server blades. After the BladeSystem server blades have been ordered and delivered, the hardware setup phase can start.

21 Figure 12: Sample software policy in Server Automation Hardware setup Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager The movement of large numbers of servers would normally be done in phases. With Virtual Connect technology, you can prewire all enclosures to designated LAN and SAN addresses at the same time with minimal physical cabling, resulting in lower costs and more efficient use of the network and storage administrators time. Later, during each migration phase, the server administrator will install each new blade quickly using VCEM to centrally assign server connection profiles to all enclosures. At this point, RDP will be used to deploy operating system images to the new server blades. Migration Consolidation Rapid Deployment Pack Rapid Deployment Pack quickly and easily deploys operating systems to server blades and clients using either image or script-based methods. The system administrator creates jobs, such as Deploy ProLiant ML/DL/BL + Windows 2003 Enterprise, containing a series of tasks that configure the hardware in the preboot environment, install the operating system, and perform any customization steps. Sample jobs are included in Rapid Deployment Pack to simplify this creation. You can either launch jobs manually or configure the jobs to run automatically when a system is first added to the RDP database (Figure 13). Simply inserting a server blade into an enclosure and turning the enclosure on triggers the correct job to run. In this example, the system administrator has configured Rapid Deployment Pack to automatically deploy an operating system based on the location of the server blade within a rack, enclosure, and bay.

22 Figure 13: Rapid Deployment Pack Server Automation Software policies The system administrator is almost finished with platform setup. All that remains is to install the applications. Server Automation provisioning automates the time-consuming process of installing software on managed servers. A software policy encapsulates all steps necessary to install, configure, and run an application. The policy might include other policies, such as those for patch and application configuration, in addition to the information necessary to install an application package. Wizards in Server Automation make it easy for you to create software policies for each application in an IT environment. Before applying the software policies, Server Automation discovers the newly created server blades, and the HP Server Automation agent is deployed to each one. After the server blades appear as managed systems, attach one or more software policies, as shown in Figure 14. You can assign policies directly to individual servers or to groups of servers. Remediation is the step during which Server Automation compares what is specified in the software policy with what is installed on the associated system, and Server Automation brings the system into compliance with the policy by installing software or setting configuration values as necessary. The system is brought into compliance when the policy is first attached or scheduled for a later time. To remove software, detach the policy from the server blades and remediate again. If rules are configured to automatically assign server blades to device groups, such as by IP address, then the policies associated with those groups are automatically attached to the new server blades. Installing the applications is as easy as viewing the systems in the Compliance Dashboard and clicking Remediate.

23 Figure 14: Server Automation software remediation With the new server blades installed and provisioned by a joint use of Insight Control and Server Automation, the server blades are ready to be moved into production, where they are monitored by HP SIM and Server Automation. Conclusion HP leads the industry in providing solutions for managing IT infrastructure at all levels, from applications and services to infrastructure components such as clients, networks, servers, and storage. Server Automation and Insight Control are complementary tools for managing your BladeSystem server blade infrastructure. Insight Control focuses on server hardware management with its monitoring, fault management, performance, and power management capabilities. Server Automation enables you to easily manage the configuration of large numbers of heterogeneous server blades and applications through its policy-based configuration and auditing capabilities. Today, Insight Control and Server Automation complement each other to make data center management more efficient. HP continues to investigate ways to improve the integration of these two offerings to make them work even better together.

24 For more information For more information, including white papers and downloads, see the following websites: HP BladeSystem: HP Insight Control: HP Server Automation: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein , February 2008