Reality Check: Server Insights : management

HP Delivers Industry-first Management Capabilities for Microsoft System Center

aimeeschoaf — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:29:00 GMT

By Lorre Bumgardner, Product Manager - HP Platforms/Partner management

Monday, April 27th marked a significant milestone in our 20+ year relationship with Microsoft. We are very excited about the news -- we launched the Insight Control suite for Microsoft System Center (ICE-SC) at Microsoft Management Summit. The first product of its kind, ICE-SC delivers a complete hardware infrastructure management solution directly in the System Center consoles.

What do I mean by "complete?" For example, "complete" to HP means things like total remote control (iLO), deep insight into ProLiant platforms, proactive virtual machine management (PRO pack), automated deployment (OSD), and power and performance management of the HP server infrastructure. Priced at $549 per managed server and backed by 24x7 support with free software updates, ICE-SC radically simplifies the management experience for HP customers who have standardized on Microsoft System Center. There's even an upgrade for current iLO Advanced customers priced at just $289.

Why now, and why charge for this functionality, you may ask? HP knows that most other server vendors are providing some of this functionality, such as OSD and PRO packs, for free. But HP's approach is to offer a complete, robust solution rather than just basic functionality that won't do everything our customers need. In addition to staying very close to our customer base, we've done a lot of research to determine what HP can do to make life simpler for the people who use our products. ICE-SC is the result of significant feedback from customers, extensive research and more than a year of working with the folks at Microsoft on development.

The "easy" approach would be to deliver minimal integration value, throw our management packs up on our web site and leave our customers to their own devices when it comes to support. But that's not the HP approach. While we'll continue to deliver basic management packs free of charge for SCOM and SCCM updates, we're confident that our customers who need more advanced functionality like automated deployment and virtual machine management expect more, because we've done our homework. You can learn more about this exciting new product at: www.hp.com/go/ICESystemCenter, or come visit us if you happen to be attending MMS!

Buying an HP ProLiant Server Bundled with the Insight Control Suite Just Got Easier

aimeeschoaf — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 05:33:00 GMT

By John Schmitz

On March 30, we announced our new G6 line of HP ProLiant servers - built for performance and reliability. These servers, which run the HP Insight Control suite, are the industry's best managed x86 servers. HP Insight Control suite, popularly known as "ICE," provides essential infrastructure management capabilities for system administrators who need to save time, reduce complexity, and lower the costs associated with day-to-day server administration.

The HP Insight Control suite (ICE) delivers an essential set of management capabilities including: (1) rapid server deployment, (2) proactive server health management, (3) the ability to optimize server power, and (4) server remote control from anywhere. ICE delivers this robust set of management capabilities with our award-winning HP Systems Insight Manager tool which is available for both Windows and Linux-based environments

And, in an effort to make the HP Insight Control suite easier for our customers to buy, HP now offers ICE bundled with select HP ProLiant DL360 G6 and DL380 G6 models. These offerings include a high-performing ProLiant server AND the HP Insight Control suite - and can NOW be ordered as a single SKU/part number. Additionally, customers who choose to buy these bundles with a ProLiant DL360 G6 or DL380 G6 server will save an additional 20 percent off the price of an individual ICE software license. Learn more at www.hp.com/go/insightcontrol You can see the value and savings is tremendous. Be cool and order your next ProLiant server bundled with ICE and save big!

And to get the most out of your HP Insight Control suite, take advantage of HP Education Services, which are available to help train you and your staff on the fundamentals and advanced capabilities of ICE. Learn more at http://h10076.www1.hp.com/education/hp_ice_curriculum.htm

Meet Insight Dynamics -VSE, Insight Orchestration -- Improving Data Center Administrator Productivity

aimeeschoaf — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:46:00 GMT

By Mark Linesch, HP Enterprise Storage and Servers Software

On January15th HP formally unveiled the Insight software brand, which includes our 3 suites, Insight Control, Insight Dynamics - VSE for ProLiant, and the Virtual Server Environment for Integrity, as well as Systems Insight Manager as an onramp to HP platforms.

We also announced several key product enhancements as part of our Adaptive Infrastructure momentum announcement on January 15^th:

new extensions to Insight Dynamics - VSE, HP Insight Orchestration for automated provisioning, and Insight Recovery for cost-effective disaster recovery
enhancements to the capacity planning/consolidation capabilities of ID-VSE with support for non-HP x86 servers such as Dell and IBM, providing more on-ramps to industry-leading HP platforms
expanded hypervisor support for Insight Dynamics - VSE to include Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESXi, in addition to ESX
new flexibility options for the HP Virtual Server Environment for HP Integrity servers include online migration for HP Integrity Virtual Machines and the ability to move workloads on physical HP Integrity blade servers with drag-and-drop ease with the logical server capability
TCE and functionality enhancements for the Insight Control Environment for an improved purchasing experience and extended remote management capabilities

Of particular note is the new extension to Insight Dynamics -VSE, Insight Orchestration. The Insight Orchestration option is designed to improve data center administrator productivity. With the push of a button, applications can be assigned to physical and virtual servers, as well as to specific storage and network resources - and then returned to the pool when no longer needed. Want to see how Insight Dynamics -VSE, Insight Orchestration can help you? Check out www.hp.com/go/insight for more details.

I received a new HPC Multi-core server today – How to measure the power usage

d-field — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:38:00 GMT

Given that it is important to measure power usage and correlate it to application performance, how do you measure the power?

We use 2 different methods - one for rack-mounted servers and another for blade servers. The rack-mounted servers do not provide power meters, so we bought a power meter. We plug the server into the power meter, so we are measuring the total power used. Then, with a simple PC interface, we allow the application user on the server to obtain continuous power data which is easy to correlate with the applications.

This is easy for the users, but it requires planning and logistics and some work by our system managers, to connect the meter to the right server at the right time.

We often want to measure the power of a cluster running one HPC application in parallel, and it is usually sufficient to measure the power of any one server in the cluster running the application.

It is easier to measure power on an HP blade enclosure, since the enclosure contains power measurement capability and provides this data in a usable way. The available data includes the total enclosure power and also the power used by each blade server and each fan in the enclosure. We integrated this information with the Platform Computing LSF job scheduler. Now, users of our blade servers submit their jobs via LSF and automatically receive their power usage data as part of the job.

Next week, I expect to post a message from the SC08 conference.

From VMworld....

dstrain — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:48:00 GMT

As I attend this year’s VMworld, it’s amazing to think how much has changed since the first VMworld only four years ago. At that time, only a relatively small group of loyal techies even knew what virtualization was. The techies are still here supporting VMware and virtualization, but now many more people are more focused on the business implications of virtualization in their organizations. At the solutions area four years ago, there were maybe a couple of dozen booths, some big companies – HP, IBM, others – and a handful of software vendors who were taking a big chance by supporting virtualization. Now, just about every vendor of server, storage, client, networking, and other hardware is here. Add to that the scads of software partners, reseller partners, consultants, and even VMware competitors, and you have huge exposition.VMware has also changed substantially in those four short years, too. At that time, it seemed almost like a family business with Diane Green and Mendel Rosenblum knowing all the VMware employees and even most of the customers. Today, Paul Maritz seems to have the support of the VMware employees, and with today’s general session, he has also won over the VMworld audience. One other major thing that has visibly changed about VMware – they have gone from having the x86 virtualization market almost to themselves to a company that has to both compete with their products and sustain the loyalty of their customers. With Paul Maritz leading that charge, VMware recognizes their new competitive mission, and they are ready for battle.

HP’s Virtual Math: 1+1+1=#1.

aimeeschoaf — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:15:00 GMT

By Doug Strain

What makes a leader in virtualization? Is it performance? Is it experience and marketshare? Is it being named as #1 in manageability for the leading virtualization platform? Or, in the new math that really measures the strength of a virtualization leader, maybe it is much more than the sum of its parts. This week, VMware released new VMmark results.This benchmark calculates top performance of x86 servers. With this, the HP ProLiant DL585 G5 ranks at the top of 16-core servers, beating out similarly configured Dell and IBM machines. The DL585 result is 4 percent higher than the Dell PowerEdge 905 and 12 percent higher than the IBM System x3850 M2.

HP servers are now #1 in:

VMware performance
VMware market share
VMware integration with systems management tools

What does this mean for customers looking to leverage virtualization technologies? HP has the broadest range of servers and storage certified for VMware.

HP has the only pre-integrated solution that integrates with core server management tools that gets customers up and running quickly, and simplifies management dramatically
HP has the most solid managed infrastructure for unified physical and virtual machines
HP was first to market with innovative technologies like ProLiant Virtual Console
HP is the only vendor to have blanket integrated hypervisor story spanning VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft
HP uniquely offers the broadest range of desktop virtualization offerings spanning VDI, Blade PCs and Workstations, and thin clients
HP is a leading partner for VMware, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft

Interested in more? Contact me, Doug Strain, at doug.strain@hp.com.