HP Insight Control Integrations

The vCenter management platform from VMware is a proven solution for managing the virtualized infrastructure, with tens of thousands of customers utilizing it to keep their virtual datacenter operating efficiently and delivering on Service Level Agreements. For years, these same customers have relied on Insight Control from HP to complete the picture by delivering an in-depth view of the underlying host systems that support the virtual infrastructure. While delivering a complete picture of both the virtual and physical datacenter assets, the powerful combination of vCenter Server and Insight Control has required customers to monitor two separate consoles. Until now.

The HP Insight Control extension for VMware vCenter Server delivers powerful HP hardware management capabilities to virtualization administrators, enabling comprehensive deployment, provisioning, monitoring, remote control and power optimization directly from the vCenter console. In addition, Insight Control is an integration point for the broader portfolio of infrastructure management, service automation and IT operations solutions available from HP. Key capabilities integrated into the vCenter console include:

• Combined physical and virtual view: From a single pane of glass, monitor status and performance of virtual machines and the underlying host systems that support them.
• Integrated troubleshooting: Receive pre-failure and failure alerts on HP server components and invoke HP management tools, such as Systems Insight Manager, iLO, Virtual Connect Manager and Onboard Administrator, in-context, directly from the vCenter console.
• Visually trace and monitor your network end-to-end, from the host, all the way to the individual network modules connected within your domain, delivering comprehensive management of the network making it easy for you to review and change any HP-specific information.
• Powerful Remote Control: Remotely manage and troubleshoot HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers using HP Integrated Lights Out Advanced capabilities directly from the vCenter console.
• Proactive power management: Get the most out of your existing power envelope by comprehending and proactively managing power for hosts and pools of virtual machines across hosts.
• Role-base security: Assign permission to Insight Control for VCenter Single-sign on using the three role levels part of VMware vCenter server to segment the level of access and control.
• Maintain stability by monitoring firmware information on HP ProLiant ESXi hosts that have the HP software bundle installed.

Using the HP Insight Control Storage Module for vCenter included with this download and integrated together with the server plug-in, manage HP storage with the following capabilities:

• View and Monitor HP Storage: Monitor portfolio of HP Arrays (XP, EVA and P4000 SAN and P2000 MSA. View volume and LUN connections to your virtual machines or ESX server hosts.
• Provision HP storage: Add new datastore, deleting or expanding an existing datastore, creating new VMs, or cloning existing VMs. This is currently available for the P4000 and P6000/EVA series arrays.

A core component of HP Insight Control, the VMware vCenter Server extension is included with HP Insight Control, which can be purchased as a single license, in bulk quantities, or bundled with HP ProLiant and BladeSystem hardware. Existing Insight Control customers who are under a current Software Updates contract can even download this extension free of charge!

New with HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter server 6.3.1:

• Support for VMware vSphere 5: Move forward with confidence leveraging the enablement efforts done by HP that enhances reliability, availability and scalability of VMware solutions running on ProLiant servers and increases the management capabilities delivered by HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter server 6.3.1
• Deploy ESX/ESXi hosts on bare-metal ProLiant servers directly from VMware vCenter using new HP Insight Control Deployment Wizard available in the Home section of the vSphere client. Newly deployed servers can be added to the appropriate VMware vCenter cluster once the deployment is completed.
• Maintain stability and reliability of your environment with firmware updates of system components present in the managed host such as System ROM, SmartArray and iLO. Firmware inventory data can be exported in a common delimited format for easy consolidation in a change management tool.
• Expanded capabilities to our leadership network management diagram with additional end-to-end connectivity diagram information for VC FlexFabic / VC - Fiber Channel and iSCSI interfaces. VLAN ID Tagged, VM level traffic, usage statistics are also provided on the diagram with a customizable bottleneck detection feature.
• Accelerate physical identification of a server in your data center by turning on or off the UID led on a server. Current status of the UID led is also provided in the monitoring dashboards of the Insight Software tab.
• Direct communication with SNMP Agents/CIM Provider for health and monitoring information gathering on HP ProLiant servers.

HP Insight Control Storage Module for vCenter 6.3 specific enhancements for this release:

• Converged Storage VASA integration that enables monitoring of HP Storage from within the primary vCenter console and lays a foundation for quality of service based profile management.
• Active management for the P2000 G3: Add new datastore, deleting or expanding an existing datastore, creating new VMs, or cloning existing VMs.