HP Logical Server Management Best Practices

provisioning mechanisms in the customer environment (e.g., a formal request tracking system, email, or other

mechanisms). In addition to manual entry of information, Matrix OE provides the ability to export and import storage

definitions in XML files (automating the population of storage details into the logical server storage pool entries).

Another variant of the above flow supports bulk creation of storage pool entries, wherein the storage administrator

reserves a set of initiator WWNs, creates, presents, and zones the storage, and then imports the storage (or has the

administrator creating the storage pool entry specify one of the reserved initiator WWNs and suitable storage

details). Storage export and import is covered later in this white paper.

The HP Storage Provisioning Manager provides a mechanism for the storage administrator to define storage

templates and import arrays and storage pools into a storage catalog.Matrix OE can match storage needs with

candidates SPM returns from that catalog (pre-provisioned or on-demand provisioned), eliminating the need for

manual information exchange and data entry of storage details. This facilitates the server and storage administrator

interactions captured in pre-work steps 1 through 3.

Figure 9 shows the flexibility the server administrator has in terms of defining logical servers. If the logical server

needs are anticipated (know the OS and requirements for CPU, memory, LAN, and SAN), then the logical servers

can be defined in advance (as pre-work step 4). If the specifics of the logical server needs are not known until a user

request is received, then the logical server can be defined as step 2. Regardless, the storage has been created and

zoned in advance (perhaps made available by the storage administrator via the SPM storage catalog) and is

represented by the storage pool entries which can be consumed by the logical server. When the server administrator

needs to respond to a user request for a new server to be allocated (step 1), they are able to activate the appropriate

logical server (step 3) on a specific blade. Upon activation, the HP Matrix OE software (step 4) applies the

appropriate WWNs and MAC addresses to the chosen blade, and it will be able to access the networks and SAN

fabrics. The server administrator can then proceed to install the operating system and application stack (or the

infrastructure orchestration capabilities can be used).

HP Storage Provisioning Manager

The integration of HP Matrix OE and the HP Storage Provisioning Manager (SPM) further facilitates the

communication between the server and storage administrators, resulting in faster logical server storage provisioning.

The same planning steps are required, but through use of a storage catalog, the storage pool entry requests can be

automatically matched against volumes in the storage catalog without requiring manual storage administrator activity

for each request.

Figures 10 and 11 make the value of HP Matrix OE and HP SPM integration more clear by comparing the

experience without and with SPM. Figure 10 shows the typical process of logical server storage provisioning. It is a

higher-level view of the steps in Figure 9, focused on the planning and pre-work steps required.