HP Matrix Operating Environment Automated Storage Provisioning: "Static"SAN volume automation via multi-initiator NPIV

Insight Orchestration – Storage Automation via NPIV

Introduction

HP Insight Orchestration (HPIO) is a software package providing core automation of data center

infrastructure lifecycle operations to enable the creation of a self–service data center. This document

describes the use of server side NPIV as a technique for enabling SAN storage provisioning to a

server while maintaining strict Server Administrator and SAN Administrator management boundaries.

Rapid provisioning of a SAN attached physical server requires the ability to quickly request and

present SAN based storage to a server. In many data centers, this process cannot be made efficient

due to explicit boundaries and management processes which govern the Server and the SAN

administrator relationship. This results in a SAN resource order and fulfillment process which typically

requires multiple days or weeks to complete, a fact which is in direct conflict with the Server

administrator’s need to quickly react to changing demands for server resources.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the provisioning process for a virtual machine does not encounter

the same kind of delay. Instead, the SAN administrator periodically provides to the Server

administrator a set of pre-allocated SAN resources which are used to build a shared “storage pool”

available to one or many hypervisor hosts. Within this shared environment, virtual machines may be

created, destroyed, and re-created at will. As long as the storage requirements for the virtual

machine are contained within the pre-allocated “storage pool”, the Server administrator is able to

exercise full lifecycle control over the virtual machine without having to involve the SAN administrator

every time a virtual machine is created, modified, destroyed, and re-created.

Server side NPIV is a technique which may be leveraged to bring “virtual machine” like flexibility to

the physical server lifecycle while still preserving the existing tools and processes used by both the

Server and the SAN administrators within the data center.

Overview

HPIO supports physical server provisioning by leveraging an HP C-Class blade technology called

Virtual Connect. HP VirtualConnect provides server virtualization technology by extracting key pieces

of the server’s identity into a server profile. This profile may be flexibly assigned to different C-Class

server blades over time. The server profile includes, among other things, a set of one or more MACs

and WWNs. When the server profile is assigned to the C-Class blade, these MACs and WWNs

become the server’s identity on the Ethernet and FibreChannel fabrics to which it is attached. Any

SAN resources available to the server profile are also available to the physical server to which the

profile is applied. This effectively allows the SAN resource access to travel with the server profile

rather than being constrained to a specific physical server.

But, even with the capability provide by VirtualConnect, deploying SAN storage is still difficult.