HP SIM V5.1 User Guide (356920-009, January 2007)

Related procedures
• Installing Software and Firmware
• Setting up managed systems
Related topic
▲ About the Version Control Repository Manager
Virtual Machine Management Pack
HP ProLiant Essentials Virtual Machine Management Pack provides central management and control for the
following types of virtual machines; Microsoft’s Virtual Server and VMware’s GSX Server or ESX Server.
Using Virtual Machine Management Pack, all virtual machines and virtual machine hosts can be managed
from the HP Systems Insight Manager (HP SIM) console.
The Virtual Machine Management Pack is ideal in the following environments:
When implementing one of the following projects (or others) that involve server virtualization:
• Server Consolidation projects. The Virtual Machine Management Pack reduces server sprawl using
virtualization technology to host several servers on one physical server.
• Disaster Recovery projects. The Virtual Machine Management Pack helps maintain disaster recovery
site without using same number of physical servers.
• Test and Development projects. The Virtual Machine Management Pack uses virtual machines to quickly
provision and scale test machines and rapidly transition to newer projects.
• Client Consolidation projects. The Virtual Machine Management Pack hosts several clients on high
capacity servers, reducing the manageability burden associated with stand-alone clients.
When you want to perform the following tasks:
• Use existing employees, processes, and tools to manage virtual machines in addition to physical servers.
• Implement common management irrespective of virtualization layer (VMware Server, VMware ESX
Server, VMware GSX Server, or Microsoft Virtual Server).
Workload management and legacy environments:
• Workload Management. Leverage the ability to easily move virtual machines from server to server to
manage server workloads.
• Extend life of legacy environments. Take advantage of ability to run legacy applications in a virtual
machine that removes dependency on specific hardware.
The Virtual Machine Management Pack displays a tree view of the virtual machine hosts and virtual
machine guests in the left pane of the HP SIM console. After selecting a system in the left pane tree, information
for the system selected is displayed in the right pane.
Virtual Machine Management Pack consists of two major installed components: the Virtual Machine
Management Pack service and the Virtual Machine Management Pack agent. The Virtual Machine
Management Pack service must be installed on the HP SIM Central Management Server (CMS) on a supported
Windows platform. The Virtual Machine Management Pack service performs the following tasks:
• Provides the user interface
• Interfaces with HP SIM
• Directs the Virtual Machine Management Pack agent, installed on VMware ESX Server and Windows
virtual machine hosts, to perform virtual machine management activities on licensed virtual machine
hosts
A Virtual Machine Management Pack agent on virtual machine hosts can be directed to perform virtual
machine control operations (start, stop, pause, and so on) and copy and move virtual machines among
virtual machine hosts from the HP SIM console.
HP SIM relies on Virtual Machine Management Pack to identify virtual machine hosts during the Identification
process. After HP SIM has identified a system as a server, it determines whether the system is a virtual
machine host. If Virtual Machine Management Pack indicates to HP SIM that the system is a virtual machine
Virtual Machine Management Pack 397