HP Insight Control for Linux 7.1 Installation Guide

1 Product overview
This chapter provides an overview of HP Insight Control for Linux , its features, and its licensing
requirements.
1.1 Product description
Insight Control for Linux is a Linux-hosted management product for HP ProLiant servers in enterprise
environments and high performance workgroups. Insight Control for Linux is designed as a plug-in
to Systems Insight Manager (Systems Insight Manager).
In addition to advanced monitoring features, Insight Control for Linux provides a rich set of remote
software deployment features that enable you to deploy supported versions of Red Hat Enterprise
Linux (RHEL), Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), or other community-supported variants
of Linux operating systems or generic ISOs (such as Microsoft Windows on iLO-based servers) over
a network connection to managed systems.
The Insight Control for Linux software is installed on the server you have chosen to be the Central
Management Server (CMS). You connect to Systems Insight Manager on the CMS and all Systems
Insight Manager and Insight Control for Linux tasks and operations are initiated from the CMS.
The CMS and the servers that are monitored and managed by Systems Insight Manager and Insight
Control for Linux are called the Systems Insight Manager management domain. Each management
domain has a single CMS. The CMS maintains a database of all objects managed and monitored
by Insight Control for Linux:
• HP ProLiant servers and blade servers
• Switches
• HP BladeSystem enclosures
You can seamlessly integrate Insight Control for Linux into your current Linux system management
environment in any of the following circumstances:
• The servers to be managed do not have a Linux OS installed on them and are not known to
Systems Insight Manager (these servers are also known as bare metal systems).
• The servers to be managed are installed with an unsupported Linux OS installed on them.
• The servers to be managed have a supported Linux OS installed on them but are not known
to Systems Insight Manager.
• The servers to be managed have a supported Linux OS installed on them and are already
being managed by Systems Insight Manager.
1.2 Insight Control for Linux tools and features
The following Insight Control for Linux features are integrated into the Systems Insight Manager
GUI:
• In depth system monitoring capabilities
Insight Control for Linux automatically configures essential system monitoring services, which
gives you the ability to monitor a collection of managed systems, including monitoring of ESX
hosts
Insight Control for Linux provides the associated management agents and required files for
all managed systems to enable the monitoring tools to collect and report system health.
The Insight Control for Linux Performance Dashboard tool reports real time metric data for all
or a subset of managed systems.
System monitoring features are documented in the HP Insight Control for Linux User Guide.
6 Product overview