HP offers a show-and-tell of OneView 2.0 features, release date unannounced

Back in June, HP announced that OneView 2.0 would be coming soon.  There is not an exact ship date for the product, but HP did share the major new features of the new version.  From the list of features, some of the highlights are the introduction of templates to server profiles, enhanced firmware and device driver deployments, deeper storage integration, and an import feature for existing BladeSystem Virtual Connect Manager domains.

The introduction of templates allows you to define a configuration that can be replicated.  While HP OneView 1.x allowed you to clone a server profile, once the profile was cloned, there was no relationship between the original and clone.  With template, however, the server profiles continue to stay linked to the template and this allows you to make changes and push those automatically to all the linked servers.  The use case here, for me, is ESXi hosts and clusters.  I can easily define the configuration and when a change is required, like adding a network uplink or VLAN, I make this on a single template and push out to all the hosts.  That is a huge time saver and it keeps manual error to minimum.

Another big benefit of the templates is the ability to link HP’s Service Pack for Proliant to a template and then automatically apply the firmware and device driver updates to all the hosts built from that template.  This another huge automation step for many environments and a potential time savings for environments small to large.

I had a chance to talk with folks on the show floor and the fibre channel zoning management within OneView is particularly cool.  Once you attach HP OneView to your fibre channel switches and your 3PAR arrays, OneView gains visibility to the storage environment.  You configure a set of provisioning definitions that include how to name zones and how to zone systems to the storage.  OneView makes no changes to existing zones until you make configuration changes to the systems associated and when that occurs, HP OneView rebuilds the zoning per the definition you specified and removes the manually created zones at that time.  This provides a non-disruptive transition from manually created zones to HP OneView managed zoning.

Combining the storage management with the templated server profiles provides an automated method for ensuring that all systems within a cluster are zone properly and there are not manual errors or omissions in the zoning or presentation.

Another storage enhancement promised in OneView 2.0 is the ability to monitor SAN health from within the OneView console.  Instead of needing to correlate between two consoles, you are able to see a more holistic view of the entire system from inside of OneView.

Fibre channel over Ethernet (FCoE) support has also been introduced in the new release.

For a list of all the new details on HP OneView 2.0, check out the frequently asked questions document from HP.