Dynamic workload movement with BladeSystem Matrix: Fluid movement between physical and virtual resources for flexibility and cost-effective recovery

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Dynamic workload movement with

BladeSystem Matrix: Fluid movement

between physical and virtual resources for

flexibility and cost-effective recovery

Technical white paper

Table of contents

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 2

Capabilities and Limitations .................................................................................................................. 3

Supported Platforms ......................................................................................................................... 4

Overview of Cross-technology Configuration ........................................................................................... 4

Configuring Logical Servers for movement between physical and virtual targets ....................................... 5

Configuring Logical Servers for movement between dissimilar physical servers ........................................ 7

Configuring and Managing Portable OS Images ..................................................................................... 7

PISA ............................................................................................................................................... 7

PINT ............................................................................................................................................... 8

Configuring and Managing Cross-technology Logical Servers ................................................................. 15

Portability Groups .......................................................................................................................... 15

Defining Cross-technology Logical Servers ......................................................................................... 17

Storage Definition .......................................................................................................................... 18

Moving between technologies ......................................................................................................... 19

Target Attributes ............................................................................................................................. 20

Moving between blade types ........................................................................................................... 21

Configuring and Managing DR Protected Cross-technology Logical Servers .............................................. 21

Setting failover target type preference .............................................................................................. 21

For more information .......................................................................................................................... 23

Summary of content (23 pages)

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Dynamic workload movement with BladeSystem Matrix: Fluid movement between physical and virtual resources for flexibility and cost-effective recovery Technical white paper Table of contents Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 2 Capabilities and Limitations .................................................................................................................. 3 Supported Platforms ...
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Introduction HP Insight Dynamics (HP ID) is the infrastructure management at the core of the HP BladeSystem Matrix, a converged infrastructure solution spanning servers, storage and network resources that is an ideal platform for delivering shared services. HP ID 6.2 introduces new capabilities1 to facilitate the fluid movement of workloads between dissimilar servers within a site and across sites. Workloads may be moved between physical servers and virtual machines and between dissimilar physical servers.
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that host. Since this pattern repeats daily, the physical to virtual and virtual to physical moves must be achieved quickly (minutes, rather than hours) and automatically. A customer has two datacenters, each at a different site. The production workloads run on physical servers at the primary site and are configured to be failed over to the recovery site, in case of a disaster at the primary site. The recovery site is equipped with a set of servers configured as virtual machine hosts.
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virtual machine hosts that may be potential targets for the Logical Server – the same as used to present the Logical Unit to a physical server target. Likewise, the target WWN(s) used to present the Logical Unit must be the same across virtual and physical targets. (Note that the recovery Logical Server that provides DR protection at the remote site will have its own set of target WWN/LUN values that will differ from the Logical Server at the local site.
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Configuring Logical Servers for movement between physical and virtual targets 1. Prepare a Logical Server with a portable image In this step, we start with a Logical Server configured to run on a physical server, and prepare its system image for movement between physical and virtual servers. Storage Configuration The PISA (“Portable Images Storage Assistant”) tool prepares the storage configuration of the image so that it can be booted in both the physical and virtual environments.
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Present the boot/data storage using the same LUN/WWN values to the VM hosts in the portability group. Refer to the section Configuring and Managing Cross-technology Logical Servers - Storage Definition below for more information. 4. Perform physical to virtual and virtual to physical movements to verify OS configuration Move the Logical Server from physical to virtual and back again.
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section Configuring and Managing DR Protected Cross-technology Logical Servers - Setting failover target type preference below for more information. Configuring Logical Servers for movement between dissimilar physical servers HP ID 6.2 provides the ability to fine tune the list of targets that are considered „most suitable‟ for a given Logical Server.
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also be configured to emulate either the LSI Logic Parallel or LSI Logic SAS storage type if using Windows 2008 or LSI Logic Parallel if using Windows 2003. In all versions of Windows 2008, the driver needed to properly operate the virtual version of the LSI controller is installed, but disabled. In Windows 2003 the necessary driver is not there and needs to be installed and enabled. PISA is used to enable the LSI support in the Windows image.
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In all instances, new interfaces are automatically configured to use DHCP. In moves of the sort we are talking about, it is usually desirable for the network configuration to be the same after the move as it was before. This is where PINT comes in to the picture. PINT gathers network configuration information from the OS on the original server and stores it in its configuration file.
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Windows PINT Operation The Windows version of PINT runs in two modes. The primary mode is the service as discussed above. It is the mode that actually performs moves and monitors the network configuration. The PINT service is installed and stays active in the system. In conjunction with the service, PINT can also be run in command line mode.
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If the user has several NICs on the target machine, one of which has a MAC address of 11-AA-22-BB33-CC, and wishes to force the third configuration from the source machine to be applied to that NIC.
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PINT is installed and setup to run during server startup. The system is not actively monitored for changes but PINT can be run from the command line to affect some changes. Use the following installation procedure for Red Hat: 1. Copy the hp-pint-redhat-x-x.x.x-x.i386.rpm file from the SMP Application Station to the source server. 2. Run rpm -ihv hp-pint-redhat-x-x.x.x-x.i386.rpm, which will install and start the PINT service. Use the following installation procedure for SuSE: 1.
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If the Mac address is found in the PINT configuration file then the network configuration, backed up by the Operating system, for the corresponding Ethernet interface in the PINT configuration file will be assigned to the network configuration with the corresponding MAC address.
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eth3 New MAC J For RedHat the network configuration that was backed up for that network controller is applied to the network configuration for that controller, as follows: ifcfg-eth0.bak : Eth with New MAC G ifcfg-eth1.bak : Eth with New MAC H ifcfg-eth2.bak : Eth with New MAC I ifcfg-eth3.
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Command Line Interface Enter /usr/bin/hppint -i to remove the migrate.cfg file and to then re-create the migrate.cfg file. Enter /usr/bin/hppint -u to update the migrate.cfg file. Enter /usr/bin/hppint -m to move the network configurations using the PINT move algorithm. Red Hat only-Enter /usr/bin/hppint -s to save the operating system network configurations to the /etc/sysconfig/hppint/ifcfg-save directory as ifcfg-ethx.bak files.
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ESX - All ESX Hypervisors HYPERV - All HyperV Hypervisors Each Virtual Connect Domain Group – each VCDG will have its own default portability group. Until now, user-defined portability groups only allowed you to select a subset of targets found in any single default portability group. Insight Dynamics 6.1 introduced the ability for you to create userdefined portability groups that extend the portability of a Logical Server to unlike underlining technologies.
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Provide the portability group a name and optional description – the name will be used when defining logical servers. The set of Group Types is selected automatically based on the targets inserted into the portability group. Valid combinations of targets include: A single Virtual Connect Domain Group (VCDG) A set of ESX Hypervisors A set of Hyper-V Hypervisors A set consisting of a single VCDG plus a set of ESX Hypervisors.
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Logical servers can be made portable through techniques described earlier in this whitepaper. However, only administrators and end-users can determine if the provisioned operating system within a logical server truly performs as desired under a variety of platforms. If a logical server has never been active on a platform type, ID-VSE will show a warning for each target of that type in the Target Selection page during moves and activations.
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Storage pool entries must be created within the same portability group in which logical server(s) that will use the storage exist. Moving between technologies Activation and movement of cross-technology logical servers are affected in the same fashion as that of standard logical servers. However, a new operation type of “Unlike Move” is now introduced.
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Target Attributes Logical server target attributes allow you to track where a logical server has been successfully activated or moved in the past. This gives you a greater number of “most suitable” targets on which to activate or move a logical server. An administrator can view or modify target attributes on a logical server by selecting the LS and then Modify -> Logical Server Target Attributes -> Manage menu selection.
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Moving between blade types Logical servers with target attributes provide the benefit of letting the logical server management software potentially identify more possible targets when moving or activating a server. As with all cross-technology logical servers, the administrator is responsible for ensuring appropriate performance and functionality of the logical server on various platforms.
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If the administrator specifies „Virtual‟ as the value of this parameter, HP IR will choose a VM host as the target for activating a cross-technology Logical Server during failover, and will choose a physical server only if no VM host is available. If the value specified is „Physical‟, then a physical server is preferred as the target.
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For more information The latest versions of manuals and white papers for HP Insight Dynamics and related products can be downloaded from the HP Web. Documents for HP Insight Dynamics software can be found at http://www.hp.com/go/insightdynamics/docs. User guides related to Logical Server Management and Insight Recovery may be of special interest. For more information about HP Insight Dynamics and related products and solutions, visit the following HP website: • HP Insight Software: www.hp.