HP Insight Control for Linux 6.0 Installation Guide

3 Preparing for the Insight Control for Linux installation
This chapter describes Insight Control for Linux preinstallation tasks. It is especially important
that you prepare the server you have chosen to be the CMS to meet all requirements for Systems
Insight Manager and Insight Control for Linux according to the instructions in this chapter.
3.1 Reviewing the release notes before you begin
HP recommends that you read the HP Insight Control for Linux Release Notes before you begin the
Insight Control for Linux installation process.
The HP Insight Control for Linux Release Notes describe known issues and their solutions and
late-breaking information about Insight Control for Linux that are not documented elsewhere.
The information contained in the release notes might affect the successful installation and
configuration of Systems Insight Manager or Insight Control for Linux.
To view or download the HP Insight Control for Linux Release Notes, see the instructions in
Section 10.3.1 (page 68).
3.2 Special considerations for running the CMS in a Xen virtual machine
guest
This section describes things to consider if you want to run the CMS in a Xen virtual machine
guest.
Dom0 is a special Xen guest that has privileged access to the hypervisor. The Dom0 manages
allocation of memory and I/O, providing the I/O drivers to hardware. All other guests channel
their I/O through Dom0.
Because of the special access to the hypervisor and the uniqueness in the networking, installing
Insight Control for Linux on a Xen Dom0 guest is not supported.
An Insight Control for Linux CMS can run successfully on a Xen virtual machine guest; it provides
the same functionality as a CMS on a physical machine. This includes installation, bare metal
discovery, capturing and deploying OS images, and other supported functions.
The Xen VM guest, acting as the CMS, must be running a supported OS listed in the HP Insight
Control for Linux Support Matrix.
In addition to the other CMS preparation tasks described in this chapter, HP recommends that
you consider the following if you are running the HP Insight Control for Linux CMS in a virtual
machine guest:
• Work load
The work load depends on the capabilities of the underlying hardware, the distribution of
I/O, and the workloads of other virtual machine guests that will be sharing resources. In
general the workload from the CMS should be fairly light, other than the large I/O loads if
it is also hosting the repository.
• Scalability
Scalability concerns relate to the configuration of the virtual machine guest. HP recommends
that you see the virtualization implementation details available from the providers of the
virtualization technology.
In general, performance should be the same as a physical system with the expectation of
90% performance for high I/O operations. Another factor is whether the guest is a fully
virtualized or paravirtualized guest; for I/O intensive workloads, a paravirtualized guest
performs better than a fully virtualized guest.
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