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I’m very excited that HP has invited me to attend HP Discover in Las Vegas next week as a blogger. It’s going to be an intense few days, 15 hours of travel each way for 2.5 days of HP Discover!

I’m particularly looking forward to speaking to HP product managers and executives and chatting to other bloggers and attendees to get a sense of what’s new with the “new” HP.

Management

Product wise, I’m first of all keen to delve deeper into HP OneView, HP’s converged infrastructure manager which aims to finally bring together HP’s disparate management tools, ultimately replacing HP SIM which I really don’t like and incorporating Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager. HP OneView runs as a virtual appliance and you pull in your servers, iLOs, chassis, Virtual Connects etc. where they can be managed and reported on from one place. It has an API so you can finally script against it with PowerCLI and other tools which cannot come soon enough.

Read more…

UPDATE 29/04/2014

HP has released an updated HP Service Pack for Proliant which fixes the issue.

HP has released a very serious customer advisory saying that some Broadcom Nics which are used in G2-G6 servers and blades could be killed by a firmware update component in their HP Service Pack for Proliant 2014.02.

Using HPSUM, HP SPP or Smart Components for VMware to update the “Comprehensive Configuration Management” (CCM) firmware version to 7.8.21 can kill the nics which would require a hardware swap out to fix!

I would suggest immediately removing the update from HPSUM or the SPP.

If you absolutely need to update the firmware, you can run the component manually and chose not to update CCM.

Affected Nics:

Any HP ProLiant server with any of the following Broadcom Nics:

• HP NC373T PCIe Multifunction Gig Server Adapter
• HP NC373F PCIe Multifunction Gig Server Adapter
• HP NC373i Multifunction Gigabit Server Adapter
• HP NC374m PCIe Multifunction Adapter
• HP NC373m Multifunction Gigabit Server Adapter
• HP NC324i PCIe Dual Port Gigabit Server Adapter
• HP NC326i PCIe Dual Port Gigabit Server Adapter
• HP NC326m PCI Express Dual Port Gigabit Server Adapter
• HP NC325m PCIe Quad Port Gigabit Server Adapter
• HP NC320i PCIe Gigabit Server Adapter
• HP NC320m PCI Express Gigabit Server Adapter
• HP NC382i DP Multifunction Gigabit Server Adapter
• HP NC382T PCIe DP Multifunction Gigabit Server Adapter
• HP NC382m DP 1GbE Multifunction BL-c Adapter
• HP NC105i PCIe Gigabit Server Adapter

HP SPP Components

Linux:

• CP018941.scexe and CP018942.scexe – v2.9.21
• CP021160.scexe and CP021161.scexe – v2.9.24
• CP021536.scexe and CP021537.scexe – v2.9.26
• CP021068.scexe and CP021069.scexe – v2.10.15
• CP023112.scexe and CP023113.scexe – v2.10.16

Windows:

• cp018467.exe and cp018468.exe – v4.0.0.22
• cp021534.exe and cp021535.exe – v4.0.0.22 (B)
• cp021547.exe and cp021547.exe – v 4.0.0.26

VMware:

• CP019762.scexe – v1.0.21
• CP021532.scexe – v1.0.21.3
• CP021849.scexe – v1.1.10

Wow, that’s a big one, I thought the days of terrible Broadcom firmware updates were beyond us, I guess not!

HP has a minor but recommended update for its Virtual Connect firmware to 4.20 which adds sFlow monitoring support which didn’t make it into the final Virtual Connect 4.01 along with support for a new HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric-20/40 F8 Module.

Some of the older Virtual Connect switches are being retired from a software support perspective so be aware that beginning with VC 3.70, the HP 1/10Gb VC Enet Module (399593-B22) and the HP 1/10Gb-F VC Enet Module (447047-B21) are no longer supported. Beginning with VC 4.10, the HP 4Gb VC-FC Module (409513-B21) is no longer supported.

There are quite a few fixes in this release so make sure you read the Release Notes.

There is also a serious bug to do with file permissions which means the config may not be saved so ensure you have a look at OA Customer Advisory c02639172 to see if any changes you have made may not be kept.

If you have multiple enclosures linked together, you should NOT upgrade directly from VC 2.x but rather upgrade first to 3.7 or 4.1 and then on to 4.2. This is due to a big that can cause a network outage.

You will need to use the 1.9 Virtual Connect Support Utility update the firmware which was released last September.

HP has decided that going forward it will only provide firmware updates to customers who have a valid warranty for their equipment which normally means purchasing a support agreement or HP Care Pack.

The server market is a tough one with low margins. IBM has decided they can’t be bothered and have flogged their x86 business to Lenovo. HP has been going through a tough time recently with widespread redundencies and is obviously under pressure both to get a handle on costs and increase revenue so is looking to ensure it can extract maximum extra value from its hardware sales.

HP’s announcement says:

This decision reinforces our goal to provide access to the latest HP firmware, which is valuable intellectual property, for our customers who have chosen to maximize and protect their IT investments. We know this is a change from how we’ve done business in the past; however, this aligns with industry best practices and is the right decision for our customers and partners.

Our customers under warranty or support coverage will not need to pay for firmware access, and we are in no way trying to force customers into purchasing extended coverage. That is, and always will be, a customer’s choice.

This is a shortsighted and misguided change which will hurt HP and is certainly not the “right decision” for their customers and partners.

Read more…

Virtual Connect

HP has released a new version 4.10 of its Virtual Connect firmware for use in HP Blade Chassis. 4.10 is a minor update compared to the release of Virtual Connect 4.01 which added major functionality.

Virtual Connect 4.10 add IPv6 functionality which requires HP Service Pack for Proliant (SPP) 2013.09.0 (B), Onboard Administrator firmware 4.01 and minimum iLO firmware of 1.30.

The ability to hide unused FlexNics from the OS has been added which is very helpful. FlexNics that don’t have a mapping to any server profile connections are not presented to the OS. This means even if you have a full complement of 8 FlexNics defined in your profile but only map 4, your OS will only see 4 Nics rather than 8.

There is a new auto-deployment feature which allows you to configure a Virtual Connect domain from a centralised location using DHCP and TFTP.

SR-IOV support has also been added for direct VM access bypassing the vSwitch on certain FLBs and mezz cards for Gen 8 servers as well as BL620c G7 and BL680c G7.

There are a number of bug fixes as well including some Cisco DAC cables reporting as “Linked/Uncertified” when they should work.

Make sure to read the Release Notes in case there is anything else that may trip you up.

There is also an updated Virtual Connect Support Utility which can be used to update the firmware.

Onboard Administrator

HP has also released an update to the Onboard Administrator firmware to 4.01 which adds IPv6 support, a few new hardware models and a list of bug fixes.

There is a problem with Emulex firmware prior to version 4.1.450.7 that can result in SmartLink otherwise known as Device Control Channel (DCC) not working with a 10Gb physical link when you have full height blades. When you upgrade the OA, you may lose network connectivity. Update the NIC firmware and look at Customer Advisory c03600027 before upgrading the OA.

HP has announced a new product to manage HP BladeSystem and ProLiant G7/Gen 8 infrastructure called HP OneView which is due to be released in October.

HP thinks the existing way of deploying and managing servers is built on models from 20 years ago and is in need of an update. This is certainly true particularly with HP servers despite HP having a number of tools such as HP Systems Insight Manager (HP SIM), HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager (VCEM), HP Insight Control and HP Intelligent Provisioning.

HP OneView has been built from the ground up to simplify and speed up the server deployment and management process for servers, networking and storage. OneView runs as a self contained virtual appliance and you connect via a web browser.

HP says the user interface is a “consumer-inspired user experience” built on a “software-defined architecture” with an “open extensible platform”. HP says it has been four years in the making and has been built with the input of more than 150 of HPs biggest customers.

OneView will be a licensed product per physical server it manages starting at about £571 for a single license including three years support and updates. There will be an upgrade available from iLO Advanced, Insight Control and VCEM.

Read more…

VMware has announced its latest update to version 5.5 of its global virtualisation powerhouse, vCloud Suite.

To read the updates for all the suite components, see my post: What’s New in vCloud Suite 5.5: Introduction

vSphere Replication

 What’s New:

• The user interface within the Web Client has been beefed up. The VM and vCenter management panes have been enhanced to configure and monitor replication.
• You can now deploy new vSphere Replication appliances to allow for replication between clusters and non-shared storage deployments and also to meet load balancing requirements.
• There are now multiple points-in-time snapshots so if you have VM with an OS corruption that has already been replicated you can select an earlier snapshot to recover from before the corruption occurred. This isn’t the same is replicating VMs with existing snapshots which isn’t supported. Point-in-time snapshots are created at the recovery site after replication.
• There is now Storage DRS Interoperability so replicated VMs can be Storage vMotioned across datastores without interrupting ongoing replication.
• VSAN support has been added to protect and recover VMs running on the new VSAN datastores.

vCenter Site Recovery Manager

What’s New:

• Storage DRS and Storage vMotion are now supported when VMs are migrated within a consistency group.
• VMs running on (Virtual SAN) VSAN datastores can be protected using vSphere Replication. You can use VSAN datastores on both the protected and recovery sites. There are a few considerations when using VSAN and SRM so read the documentation.
• You can now recover and preserve multiple point-in-time snapshots of VMs that were protected with vSphere Replication.
• VMs that reside on Virtual Flash (VFlash) can be protected. VFlash is disabled on VMs after recovery.
• IBM DB2 is no longer supported as an SRM database

VMware has announced its latest update to version 5.5 of its global virtualisation powerhouse, vCloud Suite.

To read the updates for all the suite components, see my post: What’s New in vCloud Suite 5.5: Introduction

vCloud Networking and Security has been updated with two networking enhancements, LACP and flow based marking & filtering.

Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) is used to bond your physical network uplinks together to increase bandwidth, have better load balancing and improve link level redundancy. vSphere5.1 supported a simplified version of LACP with support for only a single Link Aggregation Group (LAG) per host and not much choice of load balancing algorithms.

LACP in 5.5 gives you over 22 load balancing algorithms and you are now able to create 32 LAGs per host so you can bond together all those physical Nics.

Flow based marking and filtering provides granular traffic marking and filtering capabilities from a simple UI integrated with VDS UI. You can provide stateless filtering to secure or control VM or Hypervisor traffic. Any traffic that requires specific QoS treatment on physical networks can now be granularly marked with COS and DSCP marking at the vNIC or Port group level.

Manageability has been enhanced in the vSphere Web Client with an object-policy based model.

Firewall Rule management has been made easier. You can now reuse vCenter objects in firewall rule creation and there is an option to create VM vNIC level rules with full visibility into the virtual network traffic via Flow Monitoring.

Upgrades

To upgrade vShield, you must first upgrade vShield Manager and then upgrade the other components in this order:

1. vShield Manager
2. vCenter Server
3. Other vShield components managed by vShield Manager
4. ESXi hosts

You can upgrade just vShield to 5.5 if you want and still run vCenter Server 5.1 and ESXi 5.0/5.1 hosts.

VMware has announced its latest update to version 5.5 of its global virtualisation powerhouse, vCloud Suite.

To read the updates for all the suite components, see my post: What’s New in vCloud Suite 5.5: Introduction

vCloud Director 5.5 has been updated with changes to the Content Catalog, vApp provisioning and lifecycle management process, an improved OVF import/export function and new browser support including Mac OS.

vCloud Director Virtual Appliance

The vCloud Director Virtual Appliance is still only to be used for PoC and Eval use for simple deployment and setup. With the appliance you can choose to use an internal/embedded database or an external MS SQL or Oracle database. Hopefully the appliance is extended in the future to be the default deployment solution in some highly available way or maybe even merged with vCenter.

vCD is still a standalone web client, not integrated as an extension to the vSphere Web Client. There are contextual shortcuts to help you navigate between the two. I don’t actually think that vCD in the future will become an extension to the vSphere Web Client but the admin functionalities of vCenter and vCloud Director will merge into a single appliance but this is just speculation.

Read more…

VMware has announced its latest update to version 5.5 of its global virtualisation powerhouse, vCloud Suite.

To read the updates for all the suite components, see my post: What’s New in vCloud Suite 5.5: Introduction

VMware Virtual Flash (vFlash) or to use its official name, “vSphere Flash Read Cache” is one of the new standout feature of vCloud Suite 5.5.

vFlash allows you to take multiple Flash devices in hosts in a cluster and virtualises them to be managed as a single pool. In the same way CPU and memory is seen as a single virtualised resource across a cluster, vFlash does the same by creating a cluster wide Flash resource.

VMs can be configured to use this vFlash resource to accelerate performance for reads. vFlash works in write-through cache mode so doesn’t in effect cache writes in this release, it just passes them to the back-end storage. You don’t need to use in-guest agents or change the guest OS or application to take advantage of vFlash. You can have up to 2TB of Flash per host and all kinds of datastores are supported, NFS, VMDK and RDMs. Hosts can also use this resource for the Host Swap Cache which is used when the host needs to page memory to disk.

A VMDK can be configured with a set amount of vFlash cache giving you control over exactly which VM disks get the performance boost so you can pick your app database drive without having to boost your VM OS disk as well. You can configure DRS-based vFlash reservations, there aren’t any shares settings but this may be coming in a future release. vMotion is also supported, you can choose whether to vMotion the cache along with the VM or to recreate it again on the destination host. vSphere HA also is supported but when the VM starts the cache will need to recreate again on the recovery host.

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