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

Intro
duction
In the world of racked, stacked
,
and wired computing,
you can spend
up to 80% of
your
IT budget
running the systems compared to the 20%
you
spen
d
to acquire
the systems
.
The HP BladeSystem
environment improves this ratio by making it easy to manage
many systems
through
a consolidated
infrastructure.
A
populated
BladeSystem
enclosure
is an
adaptive
infrastructure in a
n
enclosure
.
The
enclosure
packages cables, power supplies and fans, networking, redundancy
,
and more
.
You can
easily
add servers, stor
age
,
and interconnect blades to build
an
infrastructure
with
a smaller footprint
that consumes less power
.
HP Insight Control and HP Server Automation software extend the manageability of BladeSystem
environments. Insight Control management software makes
management of BladeSystem servers
especially simple, automating steps in every hardware management process
—
from provisioning to
recovery.
The combination of technology embedded in the BladeSystem infrastructure with Insight
Control and HP Systems Insight
Manager
(HP SIM)
software enables
you to
manage large numbers of
BladeSystem servers.
After
the hardware management process
begins
, Server Automation software
enables you
to easily and consistently manage the software and application stack for large
-
scale
enterprise environments.
Together
,
Insight Control and Server Automation simplify the operations of
BladeSystem servers and the application infrastructure.
The first half of this white paper provides an overview of the features of BladeSystem, Insight Cont
rol
,
and Server Automation.
The second half of the paper
provides
real
-
world examples to show how
you
can use
these two products to reduce time and effort in data
center operations.
HP BladeSystem
A
populated
BladeSystem
enclosure
is an
adaptive
infrastruc
ture in a
n enclosure
.
With
a BladeSystem
enclosure
,
you can build
vital
business
solutions that are more affordable, take less time to maintain,
use less power
,
and are ready to grow
as needed
.
The
all
-
in
-
one design
provides
the essentials
for
you
to build
and maintain
a server
infrastructure from start to finish.
T
housands of applications on
Windows®, Linux, HP
-
UX
,
and more
are available to be hosted within
the enclosure
.
BladeSystem
infrastructure
can support a combination of virtual machines,
HP
storage
and server blades
—
ProLiant,
Integrity
,
and StorageWorks
—
and can
connect to a variety of the most popular networking
environments
and standards including Ethernet, Fibre Channel
,
and InfiniBand.
Server
blades range from servers and storage devices to workst
ations and virtual desktops.
Many of
the
most popular
HP
products are now available in a blade design
, including ProLiant and Integrity
server blades.
Each
server
blade is inserted into the
HP
BladeSystem enclosure
,
which provides
redundancy, network conne
ctions
,
and a more efficient, shared power and cooling design.
A variety
of tools are built
-
in t
o help
you
set
up and maintain
the
server
blades at every step.
Virtual Connect
A simple solution to multiple challenges
,
HP
Virtual Connect Ethernet and Fibre
Channel modules are
options for the HP BladeSystem c3000 and c7000 enclosures.
They abstract and pool the server
-
edge
connections so
connections
look like NICs and
host bus adapters (
HBA
)
to the
local area network
(
LAN
)
and
storage area network
(
SAN
)
.
This
enables
server administrators to independently manage
server blades and their connectivity
.
You can maintain h
igh
-
availability connections throughout
the
server racks
,
with secure administration of
media access control (MAC),
w
orldwide
n
ames (WWN)
,
and In
ternet protocol (IP) addresses for each server.
Together, Virtual Connect modules and
HP
Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager
(VCEM)
enable
you to
manage
input and output
connectivity for up to
100
blade enclosures from a central console,
establishing pools
of servers for flexible deployment, spare allocations
,
and
substantial
management
simplification. All MAC and WWN addresses are stored in one database
,
which reduces the risk of