The Virtual Server Environment is HP's answer to the need for increased utilization and application isolation on large servers. Partitioning Solutions isolate applications on a large server while still allowing the partitions to share resources. Utility Pricing Solutions provide the ability to add resources to a server when it is convenient and remove them when they are no longer needed. And finally, management tools simplify the management and maintenance of this dynamic environment. One of the side effects of virtualization and the flexibility that these technologies provide is that management of the VSE can be more challenging. You now have resources freely moving between partitions, workloads moving between systems in high-availability clusters and even virtual machines flexing and moving between physical systems. HP has developed a new set of integrated management tools, called HP Integrity Essentials, to simplify the management of this adaptive environment. These include visualization and configuration, automation, and capacity planning. Visualization refers to the ability see where all your workloads are running and what resources they are consuming. Configuration is the ability to create or modify the configuration of each of the VSE technologies. HP has put these together because the visualization and configuration of each of these products naturally go together. Each of the products in the VSE has a configuration interface.
Automation refers to the ability to automate reconfiguration operations so you don't need administration staff dedicated to monitoring the environment and making decisions about when something needs to done and how to do it. There are four management products in this space.
Capacity planning in the context of VSE management is the ability to get reports that will give you valuable guidance about how to take advantage of the VSE technologies for your specific workloads. The key product in this area is capacity advisor.
We will provide more details on all of these products later in this chapter and through the rest of this part of the book. |