HP Insight Control 7.3 Update 1 Getting Started Guide Abstract This document provides an introduction to the capabilities of HP Insight Control software, including how to access or launch the various capabilities and where to find more information about them.
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Contents 1 Getting started with HP Insight Control..........................................................5 How to use this guide................................................................................................................5 Insight Control integration with HP SIM........................................................................................5 Ensure success by running the Insight Management Advisor first.................................................5 Alternative consoles.....
Obtaining power management documentation...........................................................................22 9 Managing and monitoring server performance.............................................23 Launching performance management features............................................................................23 Obtaining performance management documentation..................................................................
1 Getting started with HP Insight Control Insight Control is a product in the HP Insight Management family of products that can be downloaded from the Internet. Insight Control is installed through the HP Insight Management Installer wizard, which integrates the installation and upgrade of all Insight Management products. For more information about installing Insight Control, see the Insight Management installation documentation at the following web site: http://www.hp.
the tests to those for a specific software product. See also “Verifying your software and hardware environment with the Insight Management Advisor” (page 11). Alternative consoles As an alternative management console to the CMS, you can install HP Insight Control for Microsoft System Center software onto the System Center Operations Manager and System Center Configuration Manager consoles rather than on an HP SIM CMS console.
Insight Control includes a set of performance management tools that enable you to set performance thresholds, run various performance reports, and analyze real time performance of one or more servers. Insight Control performance monitoring detects performance bottlenecks and provides performance improvement recommendations. See “Managing and monitoring server performance” (page 23) for more information.
method to verify the integrity and authenticity of the code you have received before you deploy it. This digital signature is used in a signature verification process as follows: ◦ To verify and validate the authenticity of the code; that is, that HP created the code in question. ◦ To verify and validate the integrity of the code; that is, that the code in question was not altered since it was originally signed by HP. See the HP Insight Management Getting Started Guide at http://www.hp.
2 Accessing HP Systems Insight Manager Insight Control delivers its features as plug-ins to the HP SIM user interface, which runs in a web browser. To access these plug-ins, you must sign in and connect to the HP SIM management console: 1. Open a browser window. NOTE: 2. Supported browsers are listed in the HP Insight Management Support Matrix.
Regardless of whether you run a task immediately or schedule it to run at a later date, task results are available as follows: • When you run a task by clicking the Run Now, button, the Task Results page for that task appears automatically, which enables you to follow the progression of the task from start to finish. • When you schedule a task or click a Run Now button to run a task immediately, you can access the task results screen from the Tasks & Logs→View Task Results… menu item.
3 Verifying your software and hardware environment with the Insight Management Advisor During the Insight Management installation process, you run the Insight Management Advisor before beginning the installation and then again just after you select the software you want to install or upgrade. The Insight Management Advisor analyzes and tests your current software and hardware environment to ensure that it meets all installation criteria before you begin an installation or upgrade process.
NOTE: To sort Insight Management Advisor results: • Click the Test column header to reorder the results by the test name. • Click the Result column header to reorder the results by severity. HP requires that you investigate and take corrective action to fix all items that caused a test to have major errors or failed execution.
4 Using the HP Insight managed system setup wizard The Insight managed system setup wizard is an HP SIM plug-in tool that simplifies configuring Insight Management components for use on managed systems. Configuration tasks include assignment of licenses, agent deployment, and other configuration checks and actions.
5 Adding and applying licenses When you install Insight Management, the HP Insight Management Getting Started Guide instructs you to use the HP Insight managed system setup wizard to add and apply licenses to your managed systems.
2. 3. Click Add Licenses.... Do one of the following to add the license: a. Select the option to Specify a file name and path: and enter the path to the license key file. b. Manually enter the Insight Control license key (the license key consists of five sets of five characters). NOTE: HP recommends that you add license(s) directly from a license key file to avoid chances of error from manual transcription. 4. 5. 6. 7.
To continue using Insight Control server provisioning after the first 60-days, only licensed users must register by selecting Register to receive the Activation Key, and then follow the instructions. Trial users must purchase an Insight Control license before they can activate. If your Insight Control server provisioning appliance is not connected to an external network, register at http://www.hp.com/go/register-ic-provisioning. For additional information on Insight Control server provisioning, see www.hp.
6 Provisioning operating systems and virtualization software to managed systems During the Insight Management installation process, you have the option to specify installation and configuration settings for a remote or local deployment server, as well as to identify and copy the supported operating systems (OSes) and virtualization software distribution files you want to deploy to your managed servers.
Launching server deployment The Deployment Console icon on your Windows desktop provides a drag-and-drop method to automatically construct standard server configurations and software builds from a remote console. Table 4 Launching server deployment From Windows From the CMS management console GUI Click the Deployment Console icon on your desktop Not available When you click on the desktop icon, the Deployment Server Console is displayed.
7 Managing a virtual machine environment The virtualization features of Insight Control provide central management and control for virtual environments with VMware ESX and ESXi servers, Xen on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) servers, and Microsoft Windows 2012 and Microsoft Hyper-V servers.
Obtaining virtual machine management documentation See the HP Insight Control Virtual Machine Management User Guide for more information about configuring and managing a virtual environment.
8 Optimizing server power consumption and cooling Insight Control power management is an integrated application that provides centralized monitoring and control of server power consumption and thermal output, allows you to set power regulation policies for groups of servers, and optimizes and controls usage of data center power and cooling facilities.
Accessing power management actions from a system page: For systems with power management features, click a system name or IP address listed in the System and Event Collections area in the far left navigation bar. When the system page opens, click the Power/Thermal tab, and locate and expand the Power Management Actions section. By default, administrator authorizations are required to use this tool.
9 Managing and monitoring server performance Insight Control performance management detects, analyzes, and explains hardware bottlenecks on HP servers (Insight Control does not require Integrity servers to be licensed in order to provide the performance management functionality for Integrity servers). Performance management provides the tools you need to receive proactive notification of bottleneck conditions and debug existing performance issues.
10 Migrating existing physical or virtual servers to another server Insight Control server migration makes it easy for you to upgrade or replace your existing server or to implement virtualization. Server migration features enable you to replicate servers that are running correctly, but that might be under-performing or that are over-provisioned, to a new physical or virtual server.
5. Boot the destination server with the appropriate HP Insight Control server migration ProLiant or virtual machine boot CD ISO. NOTE: 6. 7. • The destination can be booted automatically from Step 3 of the migration wizard or manually booted with the appropriate HP Insight Control server migration ProLiant or virtual machine boot CD ISO. • The manual boot option is only supported for servers up to G7 servers. For Gen8 severs, only "Auto Boot" is supported.
11 Obtaining automatic software updates from HP To update managed servers with the most current software, HP SIM provides software update capabilities that use the HP Version Control Repository Manager (VCRM) and the HP Version Control Agent (VCA). By using these applications, HP SIM provides a single view of the software status for managed ProLiant or Integrity servers, and it can update software and firmware on those servers through its powerful query and task features.
Table 9 Launching software version control (continued) From Windows From the CMS management console GUI Description agent on the managed systems enables HP SIM to collect inventory and status information from them. Options→Version Control Repository... Enables you to configure the repository on the server where the VCRM software is installed. Obtaining HP SIM documentation The HP Version Control Installation Guide describes how to configure automatic software updates from HP: http://www.hp.
12 Generating reports The HP SIM reporting features enable you to generate many different types of reports. In addition to offering predefined reports, you also can create user-defined custom reports, and reporting features enable you to edit, copy, and delete any reports you create. All users with sign-in access to HP SIM can generate reports.
N Most frequent events Servers and corresponding VMs Servers running a particular version of system software Servers with specific memory or disc drive capacity Snapshot of events by severity Trend of user selected events See also Enhanced reports are not visible in HP Systems Insight Manager in “Troubleshooting Insight Control features” (page 31).
13 Backing up and restoring a CMS If your CMS environment becomes lost or corrupted, it might be necessary to restore the environment from a backup copy. HP has published a white paper that contains step-by-step instructions for defining backup and recovery procedures for HP Insight Management products running on a Microsoft Windows-based CMS. The white paper, Backing Up and Restoring HP Insight Management 7.3 Central Management Server (Windows) is available at the following web site: http://www.hp.
14 Troubleshooting Insight Control features Additional troubleshooting hints and tips for Insight Control features are contained in respective product user guides, which are available at the following web site:Enterprise Information Library User name and password not accepted If HP SIM was previously installed with a password that is not accepted by Insight Management, change the user name and password to include only the following characters: • Upper and lower case alphabetic characters • Numbers 0 (ze
3. Change the timestamp of the reports.xml file: a. For an upgrade to SIM 6.0, change the reports.xml file in /etc/opt/mx/config/preload/60/addfiles/ b. For an upgrade to SIM 6.1, change the reports.xml file in /etc/opt/mx/config/preload/60/addfiles/ c. For an upgrade to SIM 6.2, change the reports.xml file in /etc/opt/mx/config/preload/62/addfiles/ 4. Execute mxstart. Assuming this was the problem, links to the reports now appear in the Reports menu.
15 Support and other resources Information to collect before contacting HP Be sure to have the following information available before contacting HP: • Software product name • Hardware product model number • Operating system type and version • Applicable error message • Third-party hardware or software • Technical support registration number (if applicable) How to contact HP Use the following methods to contact HP technical support.
The service also provides access to software updates and reference manuals, either in electronic form or on physical media, as they are made available from HP. With this service, Insight software customers benefit from expedited problem resolution as well as proactive notification and delivery of software updates. For more information about this service, see the following web site: http://www.hp.
Book title The title of a book. On the web, this can be a hyperlink to the book itself. Command A command name or command phrase; for example ls -a Computer output Information displayed by the computer. Ctrl+X or Ctrl-X A key sequence that indicates you must hold down the keyboard key labeled Ctrl while you press the letter X. ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE The name of an environment variable; for example PATH Key The name of a keyboard key. Return and Enter refer to the same key.
16 Documentation feedback HP is committed to providing documentation that meets your needs. To help us improve the documentation, send any errors, suggestions, or comments to Documentation Feedback (docsfeedback@hp.com). Include the document title and part number, version number, or the URL when submitting your feedback.
Index C Central Management Server see CMS CMS, 5 backing up, 30 migrating to another server, 24 restoring, 30 sign in, 9 web address, 9 CMS management interface, 9 console alternative, 6 CMS, 5 deployment server, 18 Insight Control for Microsoft System Center, 6 Insight Control for vCenter, 6 power management, 21 D diagnostic test running Insight Management Advisor, 11 digital signature, 7 documentation feedback, 36 HP SIM, 10 Insight Control, 5 Insight Management Advisor, 12 server deployment knowledge ba
documentation, 23 launching features, 23 real-time analysis, 23 reports, 23 power consumption monitoring, 21 power management, 6, 21 accessing actions from system page, 22 console, 21 documentation, 22 reports, 21 task run now, 9 scheduling, 9 view results, 9 thermal output monitoring, 21 troubleshooting, 31 enhanced reports not visible, 31 user name and password, 31 U Q quick launch HP SIM, 9 user name allowable characters, 31 V R Remote Support Advanced software, 32 report generating, 28 S security
