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HP announces OneView 2.0

June 4th, 2015 2 comments

oneviewHP has announced the latest version of its intended all encompassing converged infrastructure management application HP OneView. HP plans to ship this in the autumn(no specific date mentioned)

OneView was built initially to support the configuration of HPs version of the Vblock, the ConvergedSystem 300s and 700s. This has extended to be able to manage blade systems and 3PAR storage, The December 2014 1.2 release added a standard version so you could monitor any HP G6-Gen9 servers for free without having any of the configuration options. There is still a “tax” to upgrade your existing HP iLO Advanced license to a full management included OneView license but HP is looking into this. Make your feelings heard loud and clear that HP shouldn’t be charging extra on top of extra to manage their own hardware.

HP is putting a lot of effort into OneView. At HP Discover every infrastructure component is managed via OneView. This is from Hyper-Converged, stand alone blade chassis to Converged Systems. They have plans to extend this into HP and now Arista networking.  HP has a whole new initiative called “Composable Infrastructure” which I will go into in more detail in a future post but this is all about Infrastructure as Code with using OneView with a single API call to create physical infrastructure from automation tools like Chef, Puppet etc.

So, what’s new:
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Categories: HP, HP Discover Tags:

HP Discover Buzz: HP Software

June 3rd, 2015 No comments

IMG_7635Last year, one of the highlights of HP Discover for me was spending some time one-to-one with HP Software’s VP of Strategic Marketing, Paul Muller, who walked and talked around the show floor going through some of what HP Software is doing in a forthright and honest way which I appreciated. HP Software has a pretty diverse portfolio including LoadRunner, Fortify, TippingPoint & Arcsight on the infrastructure side and a ton of other stuff from Haven, Vertica, Idle for Big Data and a number of performance analysis suits and tools for application engineering and testing.

Paul spoke again today about the “continuous innovation enterprise”. Paul said enterprises are struggling to differentiate through “digital” (a buzz term I don’t particularly like BTW). He says 25% of companies will miss the shift and lose market position (does this include HP!?). He then went to on to talk about how HP is trying to help business and IT leaders understand this transformation. I was kean to hear concrete examples of software HP is developing to do this rather than just though leadership or some advisory service. Paul used the examples of their Application Lifecycle Management product suite which is used by developers for testing, performance engineering and lifecycle management all delivering apps to various places including mobile delivery. An interesting piece he spoke about what using Big Data analytics to be able to predict bugs in software development using historical defect rates before code is shipped which can dramatically reduce the bug rate and increase user experience.
Last year when we chatted about buzzword “Big Data”, Paul had mentioned he preferred the term “Connected Intelligence” which I liked.

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Categories: HP, HP Discover Tags: ,

HP Discover Buzz: HP Storage

June 3rd, 2015 No comments

The HP Storage Coffee Talk session that we attended was first of all to introduce the new New SVP & GM of HP Storage, Manish Goel, who takes over from David Scott who worked for HP, left to start 3PAR and then brought it into HP.

David has been credited with revitalising HPs storage portfolio with its now flagship product range based mainly on 3PAR based. Manish therefore has big shoes to fill. He started at HP storage in March having being a 7 year NetApp veteran, another storage titan facing difficulties at the moment. He left in 2013 and tried his hand at retirement and a startup which apparently didn’t agree with him and he’s now at HP.

HP has some announcements around the 3PAR storage platform which you are read more about:
A new StoreServ 20850

HP 3PAR Streaming Remote Copy Replication

I asked how with the move away from central SAN storage towards server SAN and hyper-converged how HP Storage manages this transition. HP is in a unique position hardware wise that they sell both servers and SAN but its is separate business units and separate product portfolios (3PAR vs. Lefthand VSA vs. VSAN etc on HP DAS).

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Categories: HP, HP Discover Tags: , ,

HP Discover: Preview & Where to for HP from here?

May 28th, 2015 No comments

download
I’ll be heading to HP Discover in Last Vegas next week to find out about all things HP.

Where to from here?

It’s no secret HP is having a terrible time at the moment. They are in the middle of a very expensive, very distracting, very time consuming split into two new companies, HP Inc and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Will two separate companies make any difference to HP? They just reported their worst revenue since 2007. They are spending as much of this declining revenue on Capex as stock buy-backs to prop up the share price. This means they are spending even less money to be able to create future money.

All big IT companies have been transitioning themselves away from tin sellers to service companies, well HP Enterprise Services has been told to find another $2 billion in savings in 3 years. That’s because in the last quarter they had a 16% drop in turnover. Are they going to continue to cut costs so drastically that there isn’t anything left to build on?  They just can’t seem to compete with the cloud.

Storage which is one of the shining product portfolios has seen its revenues head down by 8.4%. Luckily for them they are still not doing as badly as NetApp but that’s only very very slight consolation. Storage buying is changing, it’s moving to converged, hyper-converged and cloud. Storage is becoming more of a server thing so I wonder how HP is going to show its figures when external storage and internal storage just become two options delivery mechanisms for the same thing.

HP still make very very good enterprise hardware, reliable servers, fast storage but this matters less and less when workloads are moving to the cloud. EMC just bought Virtustream for $1.2B to further build out its Hybrid Cloud offering. HP has made similar investment and a lot of noise about its HP Helion public OpenStack based cloud but this doesn’t seem to be translating into sales or a strategy that enterprises can buy into for the long run.

HP says it is not competing against AWS, in my opinion that’s just admiting you are not in the cloud business. You may as well change your company name to HP Legacy.

Lots of uncertainly about HP, can they turn this sentiment around?

Discover Preview

Back to HP Discover, HP has the world watching, what are they going to say?

Software Read more…

Categories: HP, HP Discover Tags: ,

HP Service Pack for ProLiant 2015.04.0 released, includes vSphere 6.0 support

April 17th, 2015 No comments

HP server users may be glad to know that HP has released the latest update to its Service Pack for Proliant which will be supported until April 30, 2016.

vSphere 6.0 support has been added so super-keen upgraders now have HP driver and firmware to match.

http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?sp4ts.oid=4091567&swItemId=MTX_8f34f27973a04a71b211d728ab#tab1

This latest SPP has added support for:

  • New HP ProLiant servers:
    • HP ML10 v2
    • HP XL730f Gen9
    • HP XL740f Gen9
    • HP XL750f Gen9
    • HP ML110 Gen9
    • HP XL170r Gen9
    • HP XL190r Gen9
    • HP WS460c Gen9 Graphics Server Blade
  • New HP ProLiant options
  • Red Had Enterprise Linux 6.6, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, VMware vSphere 5.5 U2 and VMware vSphere 6.0
  • HP USB Key Utility for Windows v2.0.0.0 for downloads greater than 4GB
  • Select Linux firmware components available in rpm format
  • HP Smart Update Manager v7.2.0.

Release Notes are here:

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/doc/p1205445419/v108284/2015.04.0-SPPReleaseNotes.pdf

The contents list is here:

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/doc/p1205445419/v108284/2015.04.0SPPContentsReport.pdf

HP ESXi image for vSphere 6.0 available here:

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=OEM-ESXI60GA-HP&productId=491

Happy patching…

 

Categories: Flex-10, HP Tags: , ,

Trouble downloading HP Service Pack for Proliant (SPP)? Save yourself the hassle, call HP for a fix

July 11th, 2014 1 comment

tl;dr rant avoiding summary: HP SPP downloads may be broken for you, call them for a direct link

HP has recently started charging for firmware.

Part of the new procedure for downloading the Service Pack for Proliant is checking whether you have a valid support contract or HP Care Pack associated with your account.

HP has one of the world’s worst websites so you can imagine the convoluted process you need to follow to achieve anything. I managed to add a valid Care Pack to my account and thought I was ready to go. Nope, I somehow descended into the 7 circles of hell going round and round logging on numerous times, selecting one of various ways to get to the SPP download, clicking on “Obtain Software” to head straight back to a notice saying I needed a valid entitlement with either a support contract or Care Pack and try again and again.

I then tried to run a chat session with someone from HP, had to enter all my details again as it must be too hard to read these from my account and click the Submit button which went nowhere.

I didn’t want to log a support ticket as it being a low priority I would probably get a reply when Gen700 servers are available.

I called phone support, spoke to a very friendly guy who took my server serial number, confirmed I should have access to download the SPP and then said he could see the entitlement was not linked correctly to the support side for downloading the SPP.

He said many HP customers are having the same issue and they are apparently working on sorting out all this linking and with the large number of accounts they have this is taking some time.

He then emailed me with a download link and username and password to get the SPP.

If you are having any issues downloading the SPP with your login, call HP and ask for the download link, don’t try to fight it yourself.

HP, please sort your house out. We want to believe you’ve turned a corner and are heading in the right direction but don’t force your customers to pay for downloading firmware and then not have the back end processes worked out so they can actually do this.

The other infrastructure vendors are laughing at you when they have simple, often free software downloads and can update software and firmware with a single click and no downtime.

Categories: HP Tags: ,

HP Smart Array Controller can cause an ESXi PSOD – patch now available

July 7th, 2014 No comments

Time to check your HP Smart Array Controller driver versions.

HP has issued an advisory for ESXi 5.x with a number of Smart Array Controllers that can cause an out of memory condition which could lead to a PSOD if you are running the hpsa driver version 5.x.0.58-1. VMware also has a KB explaining the issue.

You can now avoid this without having to downgrade the driver but upgrade to the 5.x.0.60-1 version so that’s HP Smart Array Controller Driver (hpsa) Version 5.0.0.60-1 (ESXi 5.0 and ESXi 5.1) or Version 5.5.0.60-1 (ESXi 5.5).

You can download the new driver in various formats and update your hosts using a VIB file, the HP software depot or grab the latest offline bundle.

The latest HP supplied ESXi images for June 2014 do contain this latest patch so probably easiest to upgrade using these if you are happy to update the whole bundle.

Categories: ESX, HP, VMware Tags: , ,

HP’s new management appliance OneView updated to 1.1

July 4th, 2014 No comments

HP has updated its new all singing all dancing management appliance, OneView to 1.1

This is now available for download after being announced at HP Discover last month.

image

HP OneView will be the ultimate replacement for HP Systems Insight Manager (HP SIM), HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager (VCEM), HP Insight Control and HP Intelligent Provisioning. It is delivered as a virtual appliance running on a hypervisor.

HP is putting a lot of effort into OneView and really trying to reimagine server management. I was never a fan of HPSIM as I felt it was unnecessarily cumbersome, HP has specifically said one of the goals of OneView is to make server management far easier and quicker with a lighter touch. In fact they are not rushing to add functionality to OneView but taking a pragmatic approach and only adding what is absolutely needed. HPs answer to Vblock is its Converged Systems which are built, configured and managed by OneView so HP has skin in the management game. Converged infrastructure is not just connecting hardware together but requires converged management which OneView aims to deliver.

Moving over to OneView is going to be a long process however as OneView has been designed to manage only Gen8 and future servers with just a little bit of management available for G7 servers. Far more complicated though is there is no migration path from Virtual Connect to OneView, you need to delete your virtual connect domains and recreate them in OneView which means shutting down every blade in your domain (up to 4 chassis) and starting from scratch. HP calls this a transition, not a migration. Not all current Virtual Connect functionality is available in OneView so you may not even be able to configure your newly purchased chassis in OneView depending on your required network config.

Saying that, OneView is going to be the future of server management so you should be thinking in that direction for your future plans. One of the stumblers may be licensing, you need to purchase or upgrade existing management software licenses to use OneView.

What’s new with 1.1?

  • Now available as a Hyper-V appliance along with ESXi
  • You can now provision and manage 3PAR storage, integrating the configuration into server profiles.
  • Added support for the new 20/40 FlexFabric Modules
  • Virtual Connect support for untagged traffic and VLAN tunnelling (OneView was pretty hampered by this before).
  • BIOS settings as part of server profiles (nice one!)
  • Inventory views of Cisco Nexus 5000 switches and HP FEX module which will be very useful.
  • Server Profiles for Gen8 rack mount servers to update firmware and BIOS settings for DL360/DL380
  • HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter Server is now HP OneView for VMware vCenter
  • HP Insight Control for Microsoft System Center is now HP OneView for Microsoft System Center
  • HP Insight Control for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is now HP OneView for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

Here’s all the documentation and another link with some of the others guides (HP, may be worth putting them all in one place).

Categories: HP Tags: , , , ,

HP releases latest Service Pack for Proliant (SPP) 2014.06

June 30th, 2014 2 comments

imageHP has released its latest Service Pack for Proliant (SPP), the integrated firmware and software bundle which it will support for the next year .

I had spotted it in the wild at HP Discover, it was dated 23 June so HP must have given it another week before releasing it into the wild and even then the documentation isn’t available  yet.

In terms of hardware support, the new FlexFabric 20Gb adapters and switches are now supported. These give you 2 x 20 rather than 2 x 10Gb downlinks to each blade.

The SPP fixes the latest OpenSSL issue CVE-2014-0224

Virtual Connect gets updated to v4.20(b)

Smart Update Manager gets updated to v6.4.1

The SPP is intended for use with the new HP OneView 1.10 which hasn’t actually been released yet.

This will be the last SPP to support G5 and earlier servers so HP is further reducing the effectiveness of your older kit after starting to charge for firmware.

This is also the last SPP to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

The full ISO download is available today but they haven’t released Windows/Linux/Blade/Non-Blade versions yet. I still hope they do away with the distinction between blades and non-blades. Just have a full Windows and full Linus options please, people don’t generally distinguish between blades and non-blades when manage server firmware.

As for documentation, this doesn’t seem to be updated yet, it seems the download has been made public a little too early. Probably best to wait to see what he niggling issues are and what the new Virtual Connect and HP SUM software contains unless you are extraordinarily keen.

Categories: Flex-10, HP Tags:

HP Discover US 2014. The Day 3 Buzz & Wrap Up

June 13th, 2014 2 comments

Series:

Today was the final day of HP Discover.

HP Software

There was meant to be a blogger Coffee Talk this morning from HP Software but I was the only one to attend. The HP Software division isn’t in my normal area of interest so was an opportunity to find out what its all about. Instead of having a group blogger chat, I spent an interesting hour with Paul Muller, VP of Strategic Marketing & Chief Evangelist who is a passionate, blunt, straight talking Aussie (the best kind!). If like me you are not aware of HPs software portfolio, it encompasses tools for Business Service Management, Network Management and Automation, Application Lifecycle Management, Quality and Performance Validation, Security, Automation and Cloud Management, Information Optimization, Big Data Analytics, IT Service Management and Mobile Application Development.

image That’s quite a broad portfolio. Products within these group I had heard of were LoadRunner, Fortify, TippingPoint, Arcsight, Cloud Service Automation, Autonomy but there are so many more. Paul explained how some integrate such as security with Big Data analysis so you can search all information leaving your company network and find out whether any sensitive information is escaping, not just looking for a “confidential” tag on a doc but deep inspection along with machine learning that can correlate patterns across multiple information sources.

Autonomy?

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Categories: HP, HP Discover Tags: , , , ,