For those of you using HP storage arrays (P2000, P4000, P6000, 3PAR, XP) HP has released a major update to their vCenter plug-in. You can now actively manage a wider range of HP arrays, you get full vSphere 5.1 web client capabilities, and expanded VASA support. You can check out a brochures about it here. For additional details and download links, you can view their HP Insight Control page here.
Features and Benefits
- Â Monitor and manage the physical/virtual relationships between the VMware Virtual Machines, ESX servers and the HP arrays:
- Map VMware/virtual environment and provide detailed information about the HP storage being used
- Create/Expand/Delete datastores on HP arrays
- Create a Virtual Machine from a template on HP arrays
- Delete an unassigned volume
- Includes support for vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA), which enables vCenter to query and capture the capabilities of HP arrays and make use of the new vSphere 5 Storage DRS and Profile-Driven Storage features
- Available for the following arrays: 3PAR, MSA, EVA, XP, and LeftHand including the Virtual SAN Appliance.
New Features in v7.1
- Full Interoperability with VMware’s latest version — vSphere 5.1.
- New Web Client Graphical User Interface introduced in vCenter with vSphere 5.1.
- Portlet based overview and detailed table dashboards for HP Server, HP Infrastructure and HP Storage
- Active management for 3PAR arrays, including the ability to perform storage provisioning operations such as adding a new datastore, deleting or expanding an existing datastore, creating new VMs from a template, and cloning existing VMs.
- In context launch of HP management ecosystem tools (iLO, Onboard Administrator, Virtual Connect, HP Storage Management)
- One installer delivers both vCenter .Net Client Graphical User Interface and the New Web Client Graphical User Interface
Overall this looks like a great release, and is great to see the feature enhancements. Prior versions may have been somewhat feature lacking, so the full support for vSphere 5.1 and active management of most HP arrays is quite welcomed indeed.Â
Hi, Derek. I wonder if you have looked at how the self-signed certificates for the HP Insight Control for vCenter Server Module might be replaced with trusted certificates. Files server.key, server.pem, and server.p12 are located at “C:\Program Files (x86)\HP\HP Insight Control for vCenter\uim\” and a different server.key and server.pem at “C:\Program Files (x86)\HP\HP Insight Control for vCenter\hpcs\share\”. There is also a vasa.keystore file in “C:\Program Files (x86)\HP\HP Insight Control for vCenter\Storage\JBoss\standalone\configuration\”, but I think that is for the Storage Module and is accessible through the HP Insight Management Administration GUI in vCenter. As things stand vCenter complains about the untrusted… Read more »
@Jeffry: Thanks for the great blog post! When I have some time I’ll go through it and see how it fairs for me. I wish companies would really make the process easier. Security should be “easy” or people won’t do it.