HP Insight Control for Linux 7.1 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 10.7.1 (page 63).
3.2 Special considerations for running the CMS in a Xen or KVM virtual
machine guest
This section describes things to consider if you want to run the CMS in a Xen or KVM virtual machine
guest.
Dom0 is a special Xen or KVM 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 or KVM Dom0 guest is not supported.
An Insight Control for Linux CMS can run successfully on a Xen or KVM 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 or KVM 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.
12 Preparing for the Insight Control for Linux installation