Deploying HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter

This post is dedicated to the deployment of HP Insight Control for vCenter, an addon for VMware vSphere and storage administrators that need more insight in their systems or more control using a single tool.

As you might have seen in my post Deploying VMware vSphere on HP BladeSystem best practices HP Insight Control for vCenter is of great value when you are administrating a vSphere environment running on HP blades and maybe even using HP storage series like StoreVirtual or 3PAR. All information of these systems and access to Out-of-Band utilities will be available in one place after installing the software: the vSphere (Web) Client.

This post is written using HP Insight Control for vCenter 7.2.3.
Features in this release and older releases using information from the HP.com website:

Seamless integration of features in VMware vCenter Server

• Combine physical and virtual views: From a single pane of glass, monitor the status and configuration of HP server, networking and storage that supports your virtualized infrastructure, all of this in context of the cluster, host or virtual machine selected in VMware vCenter.
• Visually trace and monitor your infrastructure 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.
• View and Monitor HP Storage: Monitor the configuration of your HP Arrays portfolio by diving into detailed tables that provides the relationship between volumes to LUN connections to your virtual machines or ESX server hosts.

Reduce planned and unplanned downtime

• Automate actions on Alerts: Receive pre-failure and failure alerts on HP server components and automate evacuation of VM’s based on events that affects your physical systems. Templates are provided and ready to be configured.
• Take control by invoking HP remote management tools, such as iLO, Onboard Administrator, Virtual Connect Manager and Systems Insight Manager, in-context of the host you have selected, directly from the vCenter console.
• Accelerate configuration of VMware host networking and Virtual Connect by viewing required host networking changes and synchronizing configuration with a single click.
• Proactively manage power: Get the most out of your existing power envelope by comprehending and proactively managing power for hosts and pools of virtual machines across hosts.

Increase capacity on demand

• Deploy ESX/ESXi hosts on bare-metal ProLiant servers directly from VMware vCenter with a simple right click on a cluster or datacenter, deploy VMware hypervisor on a bare-metal server. Once deployment is completed, your newly created hypervisor is added to the appropriate cluster.
• Provision HP storage: Add new datastore, delete or expand an existing datastore, create new VMs, or clone existing VMs.

Maintain stability and reliability

• Maintain stability by monitoring and deploying firmware on HP ProLiant ESXi hosts that have the HP software bundle installed.
• 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.

Now, onto the actual installation. As preperation make sure you:

• Install the software on your test environment first to see if it would help you in your daily tasks
• Download the latest version of HP Insight Control for vCenter Server (https://h20392.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=HPICE)
• Create a service account that has the Administrator role on your vCenter Server
• Have passwords of your HP Blade Enclosure, Virtual Connect, VMware root account and vCenter Server local admin account

Start the installation of the software you just downloaded (at moment of writing this should be Insight_Control_for_VMware_vCenter_7.2.3_Software_-_Sept_2013_Z7550-01163.exe). Follow the screens shown in the gallery below. Check out the captions for information during a particular step in the wizard.

Is this the software you want? Click next =)

I accept, ofcourse

Custom means more options =)

If you don’t have HP storage like 3PAR or StoreVirtual pick Server Only, or if you don’t want to manage your software using HP Insight Control

I accept, again

Change if you want to

Depends on the environment

Change ports if needed. I didn’t have any issues installing it using these ports on a vCenter Server

If you are upgrading an existing installation, click yes and supply the path

All of our vSphere administrators are also allowed to manage storage. So I picked all vSphere users.

Fill in the FQDN of your vCenter Server and supply the service account you created earlier. Caution; if your service account name is longer then supported by the pre-windows 2000 naming, use the short name here

A summary of your configuration

Installation will take about 5 minutes

Installation complete! Now onto the configuration part

After finishing the installation, the software can be used without additional configuration. But to get the most out of the software, follow the next steps.

Use the Insight Control for vCenter shortcut in your start menu to configure vCenter Server

Fill in the FQDN of your vCenter Server

Enter the vCenter service account details you created earlier

If you have HP SIM, enter details here. HP SIM will be used to gather even more information about your systems

Enter the global credentials that will be used to gather information about your iLOs and Onboard Administrators of your BladeSystem Enclosures

Done!

Open the “Storage Administrator Portal for vCenter” in the start menu to open this screen. If you cannot login with your admin account, login with the local admin account. Click Add

After picking a storage system (3PAR, StoreVirtual, etc) Fill in an IP address or FQDN of one of your nodes. It will automatically read your whole Management Group. If you have multiple Management Groups you need to repeat the process.

Open vSphere (Web) client and open the HP Insight Management plugin.

On top of the screen, open Server Password Management in the drop down menu. Add entries for your HP BladeSystem Enclosures (OA), VirtualConnect and iLOs

After information has been supplied you can click an ESXi host in the vSphere Client and open up the HP Insight Management tab. In this tab you can access tons of information, next to easy buttons to access iLO (Out-of-Band), Onboard Administrator and VirtualConnect.

You can also create diagrams of your ESXi host that shows all virtual networks, physical NICs, physical VLANs and switches. I have hidden most information as this could be classified.

After you are done, you have created a single pane of glass for administrating VMware vSphere, physical blades, VirtualConnect, Onboard Administrators and your HP Storage!

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