HP Server Automation complements HP Insight Control to manage HP BladeSystem servers (487616-001, February 2008)

Figure
5
: Performance Management Pack
—
Online
a
nalysis
Software
c
ompliance
Server Automation
has a
powerful automa
tion engine
that
supports the creation of policies to define
the software installation and configuration standards for a data center, a view showing which systems
are out of compliance, and remediation to restore the correct configuration.
The Compliance
D
ashboard, illustrated in
Figure
6
,
shows at a glance if the servers are in compliance with
configured
policies. Icons represent the following categories of policies:

Application configuration:
These
policies manag
e configuration files associated with applications.

Patching:
You can create p
olicies from patch databases downloaded from an operating system
vendor such as Microsoft.

Audit:
These p
olicies let you specify the ideal state of a server in areas such as fi
le system
permissions or registry values.
You can run a
udits on an ad
-
hoc basis if desired. If
audits
are
scheduled, their results are shown in the dashboard. For audit policies, while you can see the results
of hardware inventory comparisons,
you can reme
diate
only value
-
based results.

Software:
These policies model the desired state of an application installation, which
might
include
patch and application configuration policies
,
in addition to software package specification.
In addition to the policy com
pliance icons, the
Compliance D
ashboard also shows a change in the
icon to the right of the server name to indicate if the Server Automation core server is unable to
communicate with its agent
,
the managed server.
Server Automation Compliance Dashboard sho
ws that the system is not compliant with one of its
application configuration policies.
Viewing
Details
shows that the database configuration is out of
compliance with the policy settings.
After verifying the policies are correct and discussing them with
t
he database administrator, the system administrator learns that
,
to help troubleshoot another