HP Insight Orchestration 6.0 User Guide

Important terms
• Infrastructure service A running configuration of infrastructure resources that is designed to run a
business application such as a multi-tier web application. Infrastructure resources include server blades,
virtual machines, SAN disks, networks, and IP addresses. It is also referred to as a service or service
instance.
• Template Specifies the requirements, or design, for an infrastructure service in terms of server groups,
networks, and storage. It can also define customization points that use HP Operations Orchestration
workflows to be executed during provisioning requests.
• Resource pools Defines groupings of physical server blades and VM hosts managed by the HP Insight
Dynamics. An administrator controls resource utilization by allowing users access to one or more Server
pools. A storage pool defines available logical unit numbers (LUN) used as boot or data disks for
physical servers.
• Request Users submit requests to perform initial provisioning and ongoing changes to the infrastructure.
Users can monitor and cancel requests. Requests can be approved, rejected, canceled or continued
by administrators. Users can submit the following types of requests:
• Create an infrastructure service
• Delete a service
• Place servers on standby
• Resume servers from standby
• Update a service to add servers
• Update a service to add storage
• Change the lease period on a service
• Allocation A request is assigned server, storage, and network resources based on the criteria defined
in the template, resource pools assigned to the user, and the current reservations or allocations of
resources completed by Insight Orchestration.
• Approvals An approval is required for requests submitted by self service users. Approvals are handled
by an administrator, and occur between the allocation and provisioning phases of a service.
• Provisioning The process of creating a service from a template. Through the Insight Orchestration
Self-Service Portal or the Insight Orchestration console, a user submits a request to create the service
and Insight Orchestration controller searches its inventory allocating the computing resources to all
logical resource definitions in the template.
• Lease period The duration, or lifetime, of an infrastructure service. It is set or changed by the user.
• Workflow Defines a set of additional actions that execute customer-specific IT tasks. Workflows are
designed using Operations Orchestration, the workflow designer embedded in Insight Orchestration.
You can use workflows to define integration with your IT processes, including approvals, manual
operating system deployment, manual storage provisioning, and sending notifications.
You can also associate workflows with Insight Orchestration templates. These service action workflows
are executed before and after the associated request. They are intended to perform actions specific to
the template and services created from it. For more information on executions points, see Using
Operations Orchestration.
Sample workflows are available in the folder Library/Hewlett-Packard/Insight
Orchestration/Service Actions/Samples. You can use these sample workflows as-is, copy,
or modify them.
Insight Orchestration users
• Architect Uses HP Insight Orchestration Designer (a graphical designer) to design and publish
infrastructure service templates which capture the requirements to provision the infrastructure service.
During development and design, the architect specifies attributes for the logical resources, such as
minimum memory required, IP address allocation, and the software required on the boot disk. The
Important terms 7