HPE Storage Operations Manager

HP has released Storage Operations Manager, a new heterogeneous storage resource management package.  The software is customer installable and designed to be simple to get up and running so that you can discover and visualize your storage environment and gain new levels of control over it.  The installation takes about 40 minutes to complete, start to finish, most of which is after user input is complete.  The install does require a bit of pre-planning but if you have all the requirements in order, it is smooth sailing.

Requirements

Processor

• Intel 64-bit (x86-64)
  • Recommended families:
    • Penryn, Nehalem, Westmere, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell or later for up to Medium tier
    • Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell or later for Large tier
• AMD 64-bit (AMD64)
• Minimum of 8 cores

RAM & Disk Space

• Minimum of 12GB of RAM for entry level installation
• Minimum 10GB of available disk space for data and 3 GB of disk space for the application for entry level installation
• Requirements increase depending on the number of hosts monitored, number of switch port and number of storage systems
• See the SOM Support Matrix for more details

Operating System

• Windows Server® 2008 R2 x64 with SP1
• Windows Server 2012 R2 with Update 1
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.4 or 6.5
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3

Installation

The following is a gallery of the installation process as run in Microsoft Windows 2012 R2.

HP is showing off its shiny new storage resource management (SRM) software this week at HP Discover and its called HP Storage Operations Manager or SOM.  SOM is intended to replace Storage Essentials and it is a ground-up rewrite for heterogeneous storage management from HP.  It is based on the HP Network Node Manager (NNMi) framework so its a modern user interface and system.  SOM supports 13 families of storage arrays from HP and competitive vendors like EMC, NetApp and Hitachi Data Systems and fibre channel switches from Brocade and Cisco.

One of the more awesome aspects of this new software is its support for device bundles that allow customers to install new device support into the existing software version with a simple command restart.  The device bundle feature fixes a common gripe about Storage Essentials, which was new devices support was only introduced with a point or major release of the whole software package.

Installing a Device Bundle for SOM

1. The first step is to open a command prompt as an Administrator.  It must be Run as Administrator or it will not have the correct rights later in the process.
2. Navigate to the bin directory for the Storage Operations Manager product.  This is normally located in C:\Program Files\HP\HP BTO Software\bin for Windows systems and __ for Linux installations, unless you specified a custom path.

   [code] cd "C:\Program Files\HP\HP BTO Software\bin"[/code]

3. Run the somreleaseprovider.ovpl command with a -f <filename> parameter to import the device bundle file provided from HP.

   [code] somreleaseprovider.ovpl -f som-device-xxxx.bundle[/code]

4. The import will complete and you will be prompted to restart Storage Operations Manager.  You may import multiple device bundles at a time and then restart only after the last one is imported.  Respond yes to the onscreen prompt to restart or no to skip this.  The bundle is not active until you have restarted.
5. During the restart, if you are prompted to allow ovstop.exe and ovstart.exe to run, then you did not start the cmd prompt as an Administrator.  You may get a failure during startup.

Disclaimer:  HP provided me with early access to this product during the development cycle and HP paid for my trip to HP Discover where I spoke along side of the HP team about this product.  My views and opinions shared are my own from my hands-on experience with the product.