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HPE OneView

ProLiant Gen8 servers show up disabled after HP OneView upgrade to 1.20.05

by Philip Sellers August 25, 2015

written by Philip Sellers

oneviewheader I recently upgraded our HP OneView deployment to 1.20.05. Following the upgrade, several rack-mount ProLiant systems showed up in the console as disabled. The strange thing is that the dashboard still showed active CPU, Power and Temperature stats on the Overview, so I knew the system was still communicating with OneView.

Having seen this before on a blade enclosure, I thought perhaps a refresh would solve the situation. Under Actions on an enclosure or server, you have a refresh command that goes out and repolls the iLO and tries to update everything. Unfortunately, when I attempted to refresh, OneView the system stayed in the disabled state.

A quick search online turned up a couple others who has experienced similar trouble and the resolution is a simple reboot of the HP OneView appliance. That seems to solve the situation and make everything go back to an OK status. My systems immediately came back in an OK state after reboot, but the user said he had to let it sit overnight, so mileage may vary.

August 25, 2015 0 comments

Upgrading the HP OneView appliance with new releases

by Philip Sellers August 5, 2015

written by Philip Sellers

HP announced the OneView 2.0 will be shipping soon during its HP Discover in June. In the meantime, they’ve released version 1.20.05 which addresses several security vunleratilities, including Poodle over TLS, and a bunch of other bugfixes. The release notes for 1.20.05 provide the full details, along with the previous 1.20 releases and their changes.

In case you haven’t upgraded your HP OneView appliance since it has been deployed, here is a walk-through to show you how simple the appliance is to update. The 1.20.05 release is a good choice to install since it packages up all the previous releases into a single bundle that can be installed to bring up completely up-to-date.

HP OneView Upgrade

Obtain the patch for HP OneView from the HP Software Depot.
(You will need an HP Passport account to ‘order’ them, but there is no charge.)

Login to the OneView web interface as an administrative user.
Navigate to the Settings section in the OneView menu.
Under Settings, select the Actions button and choose the Update Appliance option.

In the Update Appliance section, select Browse and select the .bin file you downloaded in step 1. Choose the Upload and Install button to begin uploading the patch. You may also select Upload to stage, but not install, the patch.
The update will upload to the appliance.
You will be prompted again to Continue before the update installs.

Choose Agree and Update for the EULA when displayed.
The appliance will update and restart once completed.

August 5, 2015 0 comments

Compute Datacenter Software Storage

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

by Philip Sellers July 30, 2015

written by Philip Sellers

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.

July 30, 2015 0 comments

Compute Datacenter Software Storage

HP sees Composable Infrastructure as the foundation of future IT

by Philip Sellers July 23, 2015

written by Philip Sellers

The company that created the converged infrastructure concept with its blades is at it again. HP announced during HP Discover plans around a concept called Composable Infrastructure. Now, let me be the first to say, much of what makes up Composable Infrastructure today isn’t new to HP. But, the name is new for an overarching strategy for individual developments that have been building in the company for a while.

First, what is Composable Infrasturcture? It is the idea of being able to control physical and virtual pools of resources with software through a single, consistent API with full lifecycle support for deployment, management, self-healing and decomissioning.

partners The idea is that through HP OneView and its available API’s, developers can define and call this API to compose, decompose or recompose the infrastructure into its desired specification. Big names within the developer community including OpenStack, Docker, Ansible, Puppet and Chef have all signed on to be a part of HP’s partner program around Composable Infrastructure.

In addition to the API capabilities within OneView, HP also announced a new, multi-year strategy to move beyond software automation to fully automate the lifecycle of bi-modal infrastructure that can bridge companies between traditional IT and new cloud-native IT. HP calls this strategy Project Synergy.

projectsynergy

For Project Synergy, the company plans to develop a full ecosystem which aims to allow for definition and instantiation on infrastructure – both physical and virtual – with integration into management and development platforms. It accelerates application and infrastructure orchestration for both traditional and cloud applications.

Not all new territory

When I say this isn’t a net new thing within HP, the first thing to look at is HP OneView. OneView 2.0 was announced during HP Discover and is the second major release of their infrastructure management product. During the life of version 1, OneView has consistently added new functionality in each point release. OneView has extended beyond blade servers and networking to include rack mount hardware and extended beyond servers to manage 3PAR storage, also, all during the version 1 release.

OneView brings the concept of a single management console to control and create servers, storage and networking. It is the cornerstone of the HP ConvergedSystems solutions – enabling a centralized management for these purpose built solutions. It has also become a monitoring and management platform for other HP infrastructure. HP realizes that all the goodness brought to ConvergedSystems by OneView can also be applied to larger pools of resources and this is where Composable Infrastructure comes in.

Another point in saying this isn’t new territory for HP is that RESTful API’s it has been working hard to develop in the HP ProLiant systems. HP is been working to create a RESTful API on the iLO4 management chips. Its another step in being able to take programatic definitions and instantiate those definitions on hardware. HP 3PAR has similiar capabilities through SSMC, which shares a similar DNA to OneView. And as a customer looking into HP, I fully expect (but have no confirmation) we will see similar interfaces develop in networking and for other storage platforms.

Bright Possibilities

Front and center in the Composable Infrastructure announcement is letting software call the shots. In the future, this allows orchestration tools to reach into a pool of raw compute, storage and network in hardware form and create the infrastructure it requires based on its definition. It would be very similar to the vision VMware has painted for cloud automation around the vSphere platform, only with physical hardware and lacking the VMware layers of software. For solutions like OpenStack and container technologies, this allows you to bypass the VMware vTax and work directly on hardware.

But the vision extends beyond providing a programatic way to provision and deprovision hardware. The vision is to integrate in a way that the full lifecycle is taken into account with automation, management and analytics to assist with the operation of the hardware for the entire life of the product it is supporting. HP wants to take its analytics and be able to make decisions and create self-healing infrastructure that is able to react to changes in the environment and continue to operate without manual intervention. Since all the definitions and all of the steps to create the hardware infrastructure are stored in software, the ability to recompose, as HP calls it, the infrastructure is viable in the future.

Again, the message sounds very similar to one the VMware has been talking about with vRealize products, but it is a vision that neither company has fully realized. Both, I’d argue, have significant assets in the areas needed, but neither one has an fully integrated, end-to-end solution at this time. The challenge is going to be how well these products integrate and how easily they can be deployed and configured for customers to realize the benefits of the vision. I think simplicity of management and configuration will be the key factor.

Bimodal infrastructure was another big buzzword with the HP folks during HP Discover and its the concept of having a single set of infrastructure serve your needs for both the traditional applications your enterprise needs along with the cloud applications that your enterprise should be investing in for the future, according to HP. The cloud native applications will allow the enterprise to be more agile, delivering innovation continually instead of in large, monolithic phases. Continual delivery will allow the organization to adjust incrementally as the environment changes in a way that is impossible with monolithic applications.

Vision always paints a picture of the perfect world and those practitioners who work in IT know that vision and reality often have a gap in between. The problem with orchestration and cloud automation packages to date have been the complexity required to configure and get these systems working. As this develops, my hope is that its done in a way that keeps things clean and simple so that customers can gain the most benefit. If HP OneView is a benchmark, there is hope that this can happen in HP.

July 23, 2015 0 comments

Datacenter Software Storage

Deploying HP OneView 1.20 for monitoring & replacing HP SIM

by Philip Sellers July 23, 2015

written by Philip Sellers

oneviewheader With the 1.20 release of HP OneView, HP has opened up the ability to monitor hardware without controlling all configuration and deployments using the tool. Along with the 1.20 release, HP introduced the OneView Standard license, which is a free license that allows HP customers to run OneView for monitoring only of hardware. This license level lets users use the dashboard and alerting features to view all of their ProLiant G6 and G7 hardware along with Gen8 and Gen9, including blade enclosures. These changes allow OneView to be a drop-in replacement for system management and replace HP System Insight Manager in many deployments.

For comparison, with the full-featured OneView Advanced license, customers can manage deployments on ProLiant Gen8 and Gen9 hardware. Customers can create server profiles and provision these onto blade and rackmount ProLiant hardware. In addition to ProLiant, OneView is also able to control network configuration for blade hardware and storage configurations connected to blade and rackmount hardware.

Hands-On Impressions

For anyone reading who may be accustomed to HP System Insight Manager (SIM), HP OneView is a huge leap forward. The UI is intuitive and easy to learn. The Standard license level allows most people to replace HP SIM if they have current generations of ProLiant hardware.

Once I deployed HP OneView in my environment, all that was needed was connecting it to my blade enclosures and ProLiant rackmount servers. The connection point is the iLO, so you fill in the iLO’s information, a username and password and then HP OneView configures its own user account on each server to connect and poll from the system.

After connecting the systems, you have a Dashboard view that shows you system health and problems. Its a pie chart that will show you color coded sections for systems either incompatible (in grey), healthy (green) or with warning and problems (yellow and red). You are able to click and drill down into each one of the slices to get filtered information about warnings or errors. The inventory is great and has good controls for filtering by state. In addition, you can look at servers by hardware type and see how many of each model you have plus, how many different configurations you have within a particular model – based on expansion cards and stats.

Admittedly, there is a lot of additional functionality that remains empty in a monitoring only configuration. Server profiles and interconnects areas will be blank.

In comparison with HP SIM, I’ve had OneView running for monitoring for months and have had to do zero babysitting. The alerts that come from OneView are superior to SIM. The alerts correlate the system name and alert state correctly, where SIM often has difficulty identifying the system name and usually reports things under the system serial number instead. We have them running in parallel currently and I get alerts from both systems, but I get more useful information from the HP OneView alerts.

I’m not sure I know anyone who would willingly choose HP SIM over HP OneView after giving a test drive. SIM still has a place if you have a lot of legacy hardware, ProLiant G5 and below. But, so far, this is a great step forward for system management as an HP customer.

FAQ for HP OneView 1.20 Release

July 23, 2015 0 comments

Compute Datacenter Software Storage Virtualization

HP announces Hyper-Converged Systems based on StoreVirtual VSA

by Philip Sellers October 14, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

HP unveiled the HP Converged System 200-HC StoreVirtual based on HP ProLiant SL2500 series of scalable computing servers and the HP StoreVirtual VSA today at VMworld in Barcelona. The CS 200-HC StoreVirtual features VMware vSphere 5, the HP StoreVirtual VSA, and HP OneView for management. The CS 200-HC StoreVirtual line comes in two different models – one with all SAS for higher capacity and one with a mix of SSD and SAS drives for better performance.

Four nodes of compute fit into just 2U of rack space, with shared redundant power for the unit. From a physical size standpoint, these nodes fit somewhere between a Moonshot card and a BladeSystem blade in terms of sizing. While they more closely resemble a blade, there is no shared interconnect back-plane. Each node comes with dedicated 10Gb Ethernet and 1Gb Ethernet network ports and has 6 dedicated disks.

A new addition to the software mix for the Converged System 200-HC line is HP OneView InstantOn – a streamlined deployment utility that lets customers spin up vSphere with StoreVirtual VSA in a matter of minutes. According to HP, all that a customer needs to provide is IP addresses and basic license information in order to have a fully working system delivered directly from the factory.

CS 200-HC

A comparison of the hardware configuration shows just a few differences between the two initial StoreVirtual models:

CS 240-HC StoreVirtual System

4 nodes, each with
2 sockets, 8 cores each socket at 2.0Ghz
128GB of RAM each node
2 x 10GbE and 2 x 1GbE NICs per node
6 x 1.2TB SAS SFF drives per node

CS 242-HC StoreVirtual System

4 nodes, each with
2 sockets, 10 cores each socket at 2.8GHz
256GB of RAM each node
2 x 10GbE and 2 x 1GbE NICs per node
4 x 1.2TB SAS SFF drives per node
2 x 400GB SSDs per node

In terms of scale, up to 8 of the CS 240-HC line units can be coupled together to form up to 32-node clusters and not all of those nodes need to be in a single site because of StoreVirtual’s native replication and multi-site capabilities.

StoreVirtual VSA features Autonomic Optimization, a fancy name for storage sub-lun tiering that the CS 242-HC StoreVirtual is using. This allows for more often accessed blocks of data to be moved from SAS onto SSD and less used to be moved from SSD down to SAS yeilding greater performance from the storage subsystem. StoreVirtual also provides a wide range of interoperability options for customers who have already invested in dedicated StoreVirtual 4000 hardware solutions or who have existing StoreVirtual VSA deployments. In addition, native replication is available to any other StoreVirtual, regardless of form factor, and StoreVirtual offers support for vSphere Metro Storage Clusters, offering the ability to create multi-datacenter replication solutions around the technology. Beyond native replication, HP StoreVirtual also includes Peer Motion capabilities to allow movement of data from one StoreVirtual environment to another for easy migration.

The advantage to moving to a Converged System solution, according to HP, is easier management and a better support experience for the solution. The solution is tested and supported together as a package, offering customers a single point of contact for their support. The firmware, drivers and software are all tested together and the will receive recipe updates so that known good combinations of the software can be run on the platform.

Choice is always at the forefront of HP’s strategy for customers and the hyper-converged system announcement is no different. The HP Converged System 200-HC models are available in both a StoreVirtual VSA and EVO:RAIL configuration. The primary difference between the two configuration is the virtual storage appliance, with the EVO:RAIL configuration coming with VMware’s vSAN, though I cannot find any specifics of the EVO:RAIL hardware configuration at this time.

When I was in Houston, TX, for a Converged Systems Tech Day last month, HP staff talked with me about the overall Converged System strategy and there were several key points to the overall strategy. With all Converged Systems, there is an accelerated deployment timeline with the solution. Since it has been tested and integrated, the product should deploy quickly so that customers realize faster time to value. The second point is easy procurement, with a single SKU for the entire solution. The single SKU also provides single solution support, with a specialized team that supports the entire solution rather than the individual components. Customers who have built their own solutions from ProLiant and HP Storage have probably experienced the piece-meal support experience, even while in a single vendor. HP’s Converged Systems eliminates that problem by sending all support to a dedicated support team to team to troubleshoot problems and that team understands the entire solution, not just an individual component.

The new Converged System 200-HC StoreVirtual models will be available for purchase in December. The Converged System 200-HC EVO:RAIL configuration will be available first quarter of 2015.

For more information, check out Around the Storage Block post and video on the CS 200-HC StoreVirtual solution and go to www.hp.com/go/hyper-converge.

October 14, 2014 1 comment

Compute Datacenter Software Storage Virtualization

HP announces OneView integration with vCenter Server

by Philip Sellers February 10, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

oneviewheader

Today at VMware Partner Exchange (PEX), HP announced vCenter Server integration for its HP OneView systems management package. Using REST API calls to HP OneView, the vCenter plugin is now able to initiate actions in HP OneView directly from the vSphere Web Client. HP OneView, introduced last September, is a central platform of the Converged Systems group and it is the glue that takes disparate components and makes them into a cohesive solution. The current version has support for HP BladeSystem, Virtual Connect and Gen8 ProLiant blades and rack-mount systems. Proliant G7 blades are also supported. It has a roadmap for adding support with HP networking and HP storage in the future. HP OneView provides both deployment, management and monitoring capabilities so that administrators can build out solutions and maintain solutions.

HP Grow Cluster - vCenter with OneView

As part of a demo of the integration, HP is showing off the ability to completely automate the build and deployment of ESXi nodes in a new cluster and into existing clusters. By utilizing OneView’s engine, a VMware administrator can kick off the orchestration of a new hardware build directly from vSphere Web Client using a simple “HP Grow Cluster” menu item (pictured above). The menu item kicks off a wizard drive workflow (at right) that calls the tasks in OneView via its REST API. The vCenter plugin allows the administrator to pick a reference server profile, create multiple server profiles from the template and then uses HP Server Provisioning to deploy an ESXi host build plan.

At the core of OneView is the software-defined model of IT – where the underlying hardware is abstracted from the software-based configuration and settings. The reference server profiles define a base level of hardware and combined with settings, including firmware levels, BIOS settings and the ProLiant server model and generation preferences. Once the reference profile is deployed, it becomes a server profile assigned to physical hardware. Like Virtual Connect server profiles, these are portable and can be migrated between physical hardware.

Customers who are familiar with HP’s Insight Control for vCenter will notice many similarities between the OneView integration and the Insight Control integration. The OneView plugin for vCenter shows network diagrams of port mappings and configuration as well as end-to-end storage mapping from the VM to the LUN and storage array. The current iteration of OneView relies on the same Insight Control for vCenter storage plugin. OneView has yet to adopt storage control and management directly into its platform, though it seems safe to expect its coming given HP’s direction.

The majority of this announcement is that VMware administrators can now kick off OneView tasks directly from the vSphere Web Client, monitor and view the progress and completion of the tasks it spawns. OneView is still in early in its life, but the interface is simple and intuitive. Its not overly complex at this time and its build with modern concepts, like search, deeply integrated into the core product. Extensions like the vCenter plugin are great enhancements for administrators who are accustomed to working in a native platform and gain access to the capabilities of OneView directly from a familiar console. This release continues on HP’s track record of delivering usable functionality directly to VMware administrators from vCenter.

The HP team has a video demonstration of the HP Grow Cluster feature in the vCenter Web Client posted at hp.com. It is definitely worth a watch to see the entire process orchestrated with just a few clicks and settings.

February 10, 2014 0 comments

Compute Datacenter Software Storage

HP shows off OneView, a consolidated platform for converged management

by Philip Sellers December 10, 2013

written by Philip Sellers

In September, HP introduced its OneView platform for converged management. When first introduced, many of my fellow bloggers and I saw it as an appropriate replacement for HP System Insight Manager (SIM), but what we found is that OneView aims to go further than SIM was ever capable and with a cleaner and easier to understand UI. With OneView, HP is looking to bring together disparate management into a centralized console which can handle computer, storage and networking in a unified approach.

This week at HP Discover, Tom Joyce, Senior Vice President and GM of Converged Systems talked with our group of bloggers and it was clear that within the HP Converged Systems space, OneView is going to be the common management plane for all of the infrastructure – both servers, storage and networking. It is a major component of the Converged Systems strategy and a component that HP is investing heavily in developing.

Interface & Support

In terms of UI, HP took a ‘radically simple’ approach to the interface. It is a massive contrast to the busy and complex interfaces HP has designed in the past and at first pass more closely resembles a solution like Dell/Quest’s Foglight dashboards. All of this is welcome change. By heavily summarizing data and getting critical alerts and problems in front of an administrator, the systems potential usefulness increases exponentially.

Not neglecting the need for detail, OneView has an integrated search feature throughout the UI meaning that the details needed are a quick search or drilldown away.

With the initial release, HP OneView supports HP BladeSystem deployments with G7 and Gen8 blades and Gen8 rack-mount ProLiants. Like Virtual Connect, OneView creates server profiles which can be applied to individual blades but takes the concept a step further by also offering the ability to set lower-level BIOS settings on a blade that Virtual Connect does not address. While the initial compatibility list is very limited, more components will be added over time, though no one should expect older generations of server since much of the capabilities relies on iLO4 and other recent HP innovations.

Offering Context

Building upon the ‘Sea of Sensors’ concept that it introduced three or four generations of ProLiants ago, HP is driving towards a unified view of the physical environment surrounding its servers in the datacenter. HP’s Gen8 ProLiants introduced new smart power adapters which assist with mapping and locating hardware within smart racks in a datacenter. OneView is capable of building maps of these smart racks and smart power in order to identify where equipment is located, to identify hot spots and heat issues, and beings to aggregate the data obtained by the sea of sensors and offer context to it.

OneView also offers context for the interconnections of infrastructure as well as the physical environment. OneView offers great overviews of connection points between the server, its enclosure, the network sets and interconnects. It is a logical next step to extend this to connected storage and networks in future iterations.

December 10, 2013 0 comments