Ever since I can remember Compaq/HP has offered their Insight Manager. Hot off the presses is their new 7.0 version which sports some major upgrades. You can download the multi-gigabyte ISO images here for free. Even if you don’t use Insight Manager, you might be very interested in their totally new Insight Control for VMware vCenter Server. See the end of the feature list below for all the new goodies. If you have HP BladeSystem and Virtual connect the previous version was very good for mapping all of the networks through Virtual Connect and into the VMs. Hopefully they will release the 7.0 version soon.
- ProLiant next-generation (Gen8) servers supported
- Database support for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP3 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1
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HP Systems Insight Manager 7.0:
- KVM hypervisor support on RHEL 6.1 and SLES 11
- Updated licensing reports
- HP SUM integration support for software/firmware baselines
- HP SUM integration support for off-line firmware upgrades (tech preview only)
- Discovery & identification of HP Networking A-series products (3COM)
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HP Insight Control 7.0:
- Intelligent Power Discovery for HP BladeSystems
- Enhanced power and thermal reporting with under-utilized server reports
- Easy power configuration modifications (using ipmimport)
- Data Center Power Control (DCPC) support for goal-oriented responses to power & cooling events
- Updated performance recommendations on memory configurations
- Performance management using network adapter (NIC) teaming and configurable monitoring administration
- Full VMware ESXi 5 support (lockdown/non-lockdown modes, autoboot, stateless/stateful modes)
- Server migrations across iSCSI and FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE), and across Linux SAN environments
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HP Insight Control for Microsoft System Center 7.0:
- HP ProLiant Agentless Management Pack can manage the health of new ProLiant Gen8 servers without the need for loading SNMP agents or WBEM providers
- HP ProLiant Updates Catalog uses System Center Configuration Manager to install and update ProLiant drivers and firmware using HP Service Pack for ProLiant
- HP ProLiant Linux Management Pack and HP ProLiant VMware Management Packs are now available separately, providing additional installation choice and flexibility
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HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter Server 7.0 (coming soon):
- Support of new HP ProLiant Gen8 servers Agentless Management that delivers health monitoring and configuration data without the need for loading Insight Control agents or CIM providers on the VMware hosts
- Enhanced bare-metal deployment: Deploy ESX/ESXi on HP ProLiant Gen8 servers from VMware vCenter using the HP Insight Control Deployment Wizard
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Complete refresh of the user interface delivering a new look and feel in the following areas:
- Optimized view of the converged infrastructure health and configuration dashboards
- Grouping of all the plug-in actions and control capabilities under one button
- Integration of a News Feed in the main area to deliver updates on health, configuration changes and actions results
- Dark and white theme selection
- Easier to use integrated installer for both the server and storage modules
- Active Directory support for role based security
