HP Insight Control 7.3 Update 1 Getting Started Guide

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.
If you have chosen a VMware vCenter Server as your primary console, you can install HP Insight
Control for VMware vCenter Server software which adds several extensions to make the ProLiant
management information available through the VMware vCenter Server console, enabling
comprehensive monitoring, remote control, and power optimization directly from the vCenter
console.
HP Insight Control for Microsoft System Center and HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter Server
can be obtained from the HP Insight Software downloads web site:
http://www.hp.com/go/insightupdates
The installation instructions and other documentation are included in the ISO images.
Insight Control features and capabilities
A full installation of all Insight Control components provides the following features and capabilities:
NOTE: If you did not install all components of Insight Control the list of features will vary for your
environment.
• Rapid OS provisioning
Insight Control provides a server provisioning solution that facilitates the installation,
configuration, and deployment of high volumes of servers. Server configuration time is reduced,
making it possible to scale server deployments to high volumes in a rapid fashion.
NOTE: HP Insight Control server provisioning replaces HP Insight Control server deployment.
See “Insight Control server provisioning” (page 17).
Insight Control also enables you to perform remote operations on the server such as turning
power on or off and rebooting. The only physical intervention required by your IT staff is
installing the server into the rack, connecting the server to the network, and reading the server's
serial number/iLO information pull tab.
See “Provisioning operating systems and virtualization software to managed systems” (page
17) for more information.
• Virtualized environment management
Insight Control virtual machine management capabilities provide tracking, monitoring, and
control functions for organizing an effective virtualized environment.
Key benefits include the ability to manage physical and virtual servers from one user interface,
being able to gauge the health of the complete infrastructure using performance indicators
for hosts and virtual machines, and automatic responses to predictive hardware failures on
hypervisor host servers by relocating virtual machines before a server fails, reducing downtime.
See “Managing a virtual machine environment” (page 19) for more information.
• Robust power management
Insight Control includes a set of power management tools that provide centralized monitoring
and control of server power consumption and thermal output.
See “Optimizing server power consumption and cooling” (page 21) for more information.
• Robust server performance monitoring and management
6 Getting started with HP Insight Control