Integrity Essentials Virtualization Manager

This product is the core of the new VSE management suite of products; it provides the integration point for all the other products described in this chapter. It provides discovery, visualization, monitoring, and configuration of other VSE technologies. It makes it possible to manage the VSE without requiring the user to have detailed knowledge of what other tools or products are being used.

Key Benefits

There are a few key benefits of this product, and they are big ones.

• It helps you visualize the partitioning hierarchy that has been deployed on your systems.

• It provides a logical mapping between workloads and the systems and partitions they are running on.

• It provides a single point of management.

The first thing that you will see when you point your browser at the VSE management suite portal is a big-picture view of all of your servers and workloads that are using VSE technologies. The partition big-picture view allows you to see a hierarchical view of all the partitions on all your servers. This also provides a high-level view of the status of each of your partitions. Because of the ability of VMs to move around and the ability you have to make different combinations of partitions on each of your servers, this is truly a critical view.

The big-picture view of your workloads provides a list of all of your workloads and tells where they are running and their status. In addition, both of these views can be customized for each user so they can get a view of only the partitions and/or workloads they are responsible for.

The other key feature is that this product serves as the launching point for accessing whatever functionality you might want from any of the VSE management tools. By selecting a workload or partition you can:

• View information about the workloads running in the partitions or the partitions the workloads are running in

• Get real-time or historical performance reports about the partitions or workloads

• Get or modify the configuration of VSE technologies

• Get or modify information about the Global Workload Manager (gWLM) policies defined for the workloads

• Activate or deactivate gWLM policies for the workloads

• Get capacity-planning reports about the workloads or partitions

This is only a subset of the functionality, but you get the idea. The Virtualization Manager doesn't provide all this functionality, but it is the component that makes it all easy to understand and use.

Key Tradeoffs

There are also a few tradeoffs. Generally speaking, these tradeoffs are due to the fact that this is a new product. Some of the configuration tools for underlying VSE technologies will be tightly integrated from the start and others will have only visualization or launch capabilities and tighter integration will be provided in future releases. Examples of this include:

• Initial support for vPars is visualization only, configuration is done using the command line tools

• Initial support for secure resource partitions created in Process Resource Manager and Workload Manager is through the context sensitive launch of the GUI's for those products.

• Initial support for Serviceguard is visualization and launch

The first tradeoff is that the first release of the Virtualization Manager will have limited support for some of the VSE technologies. These include:

• Virtual Partitions: the Virtualization Manager will discover and allow you to view the configuration of existing vPars, but you will need to use the vPars command-line utilities for configuration operations. Over time, it will support some of the simpler reconfiguration tasks, such as moving a CPU from one vPar to another.

• Secure Resource Partitions: If you have created the secure resource partitions using Process Resource Manager or Workload Manager, you will have view-only capabilities in Virtualization Manager. The first release of the Virtualization Manager will provide the ability to launch those GUIs from the partition view. A later release will discover secure resource partitions and allow you to view current resource consumption, but you will need to use Process Resource Manager or Workload Manager to create or modify the configuration of the secure resource partitions. Since Global Workload Manager is tightly integrated with the Virtualization Manager, you will have links and menu items available so you can view, create, or modify these secure resource partitions from the Virtualization Manager GUI. Over time, support for secure resource partitions created by Process Resource Manager and Workload Manager will be added.

• Workload Manager: A number of Workload Manager menu items are available from the Virtualization Manager GUI, but these will simply provide a context-sensitive launch of the Workload Manager GUI.

• Serviceguard: Support for Serviceguard Manager will be phased in over time. The initial release will support visualization of clusters and context-sensitive launches of the Serviceguard Manager GUI. Subsequent releases will provide tighter integration. Right away, you will be able to view the nodes and/or partitions that are part of each of your Serviceguard clusters in the Virtualization Manager. You will also be able to see a status of the nodes and the packages in each cluster. However, when you want to modify the configuration or initiate a package move, you will need to use the Serviceguard command-line utilities or launch the Serviceguard manager. This integration will be improved in future releases.

Sweet Spots

The Virtualization Manager is designed to provide the central point of management for a large number of technologies. Visualization alone is a significant benefit when you have an environment as dynamic as what is available in the VSE. The real sweet spots for this product are:

• any time you have multiple types of partitions on a single system

• any time you are using multiple management tools

If you are using different types of partitions on each of your servers, the Virtualization Manager will be indispensable. This is especially true if you have combinations of partitionssuch as VMs inside of nPars, for example.

Sweet Spot #1: The Virtualization Manager Manages a Hierarchy of Partitions

The Virtualization Manager will be indispensable if you have multiple types of partitions in your infrastructure. This will be even more important if you have multiple types of partitions on each system.

Another key sweet spot of the Virtualization Manager is that it provides you with a consolidated management view of all your workloads, regardless of which types of partitions they are running in and what management and automation tools you are using for them.

Sweet Spot #2: The Virtualization Manager Provides Consolidated Views of Workloads

Over time it will be likely that you will be using different combinations of VSE capabilities and management tools on different servers. The Virtualization Manager will provide a single workload view that provides access to all the management functionality required for each workload, regardless of what other tools are in use.

If you are using any of the other VSE management tools, the Virtualization Manager provides a common look and feel, as well as the launch point for the functionality of all the other tools. In fact, HP viewed this as so important that you can't get gWLM or Capacity Advisor without the Virtualization Manager.

Sweet Spot #3: The Visualization and Configuration Management Tool Provides Access to the Features of Global Workload Manager and Capacity Advisor

The Virtualization Manager is the integration point for all the VSE management tools and provides the context for accessing the functionality for all those tools.

Tips

If you are in a sizable datacenter, the left-hand side of Systems Insight Manager will tend to accumulate a large number of servers. We recommend you use SIM system lists to create groups that make sense for how you manage your systems. These lists can be organized any way you wantyou can even have groups for each of your administrators that have only the systems that that administrator is concerned about.

A nice feature of the Virtualization Manager is the ability to create a custom workload, which can be any combination of processes running in a partition. It does not have to be managed by PRM, WLM or gWLM. This is used only for monitoring. The custom workload configuration can be used to instruct the utilization WBEM provider to collect resource consumption statistics for an application running on a partition even if it is in a consolidated environment with other applications. This data can also be used with Capacity Advisor.