Installing off-cycle device bundles for HP Storage Operations Manager

HP is showing off its shiny new storage resource management (SRM) software this week at HP Discover and its called HP Storage Operations Manager or SOM.  SOM is intended to replace Storage Essentials and it is a ground-up rewrite for heterogeneous storage management from HP.  It is based on the HP Network Node Manager (NNMi) framework so its a modern user interface and system.  SOM supports 13 families of storage arrays from HP and competitive vendors like EMC, NetApp and Hitachi Data Systems and fibre channel switches from Brocade and Cisco.

One of the more awesome aspects of this new software is its support for device bundles that allow customers to install new device support into the existing software version with a simple command restart.  The device bundle feature fixes a common gripe about Storage Essentials, which was new devices support was only introduced with a point or major release of the whole software package.

Installing a Device Bundle for SOM

1. The first step is to open a command prompt as an Administrator.  It must be Run as Administrator or it will not have the correct rights later in the process.
2. Navigate to the bin directory for the Storage Operations Manager product.  This is normally located in C:\Program Files\HP\HP BTO Software\bin for Windows systems and __ for Linux installations, unless you specified a custom path.

   1	cd "C:\Program Files\HP\HP BTO Software\bin"

3. Run the somreleaseprovider.ovpl command with a -f parameter to import the device bundle file provided from HP.

   1	somreleaseprovider.ovpl -f som-device-xxxx.bundle

4. The import will complete and you will be prompted to restart Storage Operations Manager.  You may import multiple device bundles at a time and then restart only after the last one is imported.  Respond yes to the onscreen prompt to restart or no to skip this.  The bundle is not active until you have restarted.
5. During the restart, if you are prompted to allow ovstop.exe and ovstart.exe to run, then you did not start the cmd prompt as an Administrator.  You may get a failure during startup.

Disclaimer:  HP provided me with early access to this product during the development cycle and HP paid for my trip to HP Discover where I spoke along side of the HP team about this product.  My views and opinions shared are my own from my hands-on experience with the product. 

Installation walkthrough of HP Storage Operations Manager

Installation walkthrough of HP Storage Operations Manager

New HP 3PAR StoreServ 20800 series array architecture make them easier to field upgrade

One of the interesting discussions I had during HP Discover was an HP 3PAR StoreServ 20800 architecture discussion with folks on the show floor.  At first glance, you’ll notice a large enclosure in the 20800’s cabinet in the photo to the right from the event and also prominently shown in the marketing photos.  I was immediately curious what was inside of this enclosure.

Turns out, these 16U enclosures are actually the 8 controllers for a 20800 array.  The enclosure is a lot like a blade enclosure with modular controllers that can be added from the back of the enclosure.  On the front, there is a bank of fans and batteries for the individual controller nodes.  The 8 controllers are wired together through a mid-plane, very simliar to a blade enclosure, and this shared mid-plane eliminates the needs for many wires that would normally wire together these nodes in the “mesh active” architecture.  The first thought is that field upgrades should be much simpler due to decreasing the amount of complex wiring required.

In addition to the controller enclosure, another major change in architecture is SAS backend for the 20800 series arrays compared to the 10800 series arrays they replace.  The drive enclosures are all connected back to the controllers with SAS cables and the folks I spoke with said that in the field, it should not be necessary to have more than a couple chained SAS connections from the controller to the drive enclosures even in a fully populated array because the controllers have so many available SAS ports.  This again keeps things simple for field upgrades.

Not only did the drive enclosures switch to SAS connections, but HP is also introducing a fiber SAS connectivity between the controllers and the drive enclosures to allow the rack of drive enclosures to be locate further away from the controllers themselves in crowded data centers.  These connections can extend up to 100 meters according to the people I spoke with.  The gallery below shows a little more detail of these changes.

HP introduces new 3PAR StoreServ 8000 series arrays for the midrange

After almost a 3 year run, HP is replacing the 3PAR StoreServ 7000 series with all new 3PAR StoreSev 8000 series arrays.  This news comes while HP is celebrating how well its mid-range 3PAR arrays have been selling versus competitors. The new arrays features upgraded hardware including 16-gigabit fibre channel and 12-gigabit SAS connectivity for its drives and will feature the same fifth-generation ASIC that were introduced in the 20000 series arrays earlier this year.  The 8000 series also increases the density of storage possible across the board in the 3PAR arrays, reducing the footprint and increasing the top-end capacities.

In terms of portfolio, HP touts a single architecture, single OS and single management across a wide range of solutions with the HP 3PAR.  With the 8000 series introduction, the difference between 3PAR models comes down to the number of controller nodes and associated ports, the types of drives in the array and the number of ASICs in the controllers.  The 8000 series features a single ASIC per controller node and the 20000 series features 2 ASICs per controller node along with more CPU capacity and more RAM for caching.

Both the 8000 and 20000 series arrays feature the 3PAR Gen5 ASIC, which is the latest generation introduced earlier in 2015.  If history repeats, additional capabilities of the Gen5 ASIC will get unlocked by future software upgrades on these two new series of arrays, but out of the gate, the new platforms are already touting density and performance gains in the new platforms.  HP says that they have increased density by 4x, performance 30 to 40 percent and decreased latency by 40 percent between the 7000 and 8000 series arrays.  HP says the 8000 series can provide up to 1 million IOPS at 0.387 ms latency.

HP also announced a new 20450 all-flash starter kit.  This model scales to a maximum of 4 controller nodes as opposed to 8 controller nodes in the 20800 and 20850 models. The 20000 series are the high-end storage arrays HP introduced earlier this year to replace the 10000 series arrays, and are typically targeted at large enterprise and service providers.

That rounds out the HP 3PAR portfolio with the following models:

• HP 3PAR StoreServ 8200 is the low-end dual-controller model that scales up to 750TB of raw capacity
• HP 3PAR StoreServ 8400 scales up to 4 controller nodes and is capable of scaling out to 2.4PB of raw capacity
• HP 3PAR StoreServ 8440 is the converged flash array that provides similiar high performance to an 8450 array, but with the ability to also have spinning disks.  It scales up to 4 controller nodes and includes an increased amount of cache on the controller pairs, comparable to the cache on node with an all-flash array.
• HP 3PAR StoreServ 8450 is the all-flash storage array scales up to 4 controller nodes and up to 1.8PB of raw capacity and a usable capacity over 5.5PB.  This is the model HP talks about when it says 1 million IOPS at under 1 ms of latency.
• HP 3PAR StoreServ 20450, a quad-controller, all-flash configuration with larger scale than the 3PAR 8450
• HP 3PAR StoreServ 20800, the workhorse array with up to 8 controller nodes and a mix of hard disk and solid state drives.
• HP 3PAR StoreServ 20850, the all-flash configuration of the 20000 series.

HP announced the new 8450 all-flash array is available in 2U starter kit priced at just $19,000 for 6TB of usable storage.  When HP talks about usable storage and the all-flash array, it assumes a 4 to 1 compaction using its thin-provisioning and thin-deduplication – both native, realtime capabilities powered by the ASIC.  The same array can also be configured with up to 280TB of usable capacity in just 2U of space.

All this news comes just in time for VMworld, where HP is going to be showing the new arrays publicly for the first time.  I look forward to checking them out on the show floor and talking with some HP folks to find out more.

How to install Windows Server 2012 on HP ProLiant Servers

HP ProLiant servers and blades are a mainstay in the data center. The market leader for some years with good reason, ProLiant technology represents a remarkably stable continuum of server hardware management tools. HP SmartStart CDs and DVDs have been used countless times since Compaq ProLiant days to accelerate and standardize server deployments by integrating the right HP drivers and utilities into the OS installation process.

No SmartStart for HP Gen8 ProLiant, Windows Server 2012

A hardware migration to the Gen8 ProLiant platform prompted HP to end the SmartStart legacy with version 8.70b (12/2011) being the last media version. HP stated that SmartStart will not be updated beyond version 8.70. SmartStart will still be available on the web for supported ProLiant G7 and earlier servers through their supported end of life. Since Windows Server 2012 was not an operating system choice in SmartStart 8.70, it won’t be possible to use SmartStart to install Windows Server 2012.

New Gen8 and later ProLiant servers use a different technique for assisted installation. There is no media kit included with ProLiant Gen8 products.Intelligent Provisioning replaces SmartStart CDs for ProLiant Gen8 servers. The software that came on SmartStart media is now embedded on a flash chip on ProLiant Gen8 servers and Gen8 server blades. The pre-loaded flash chip is bootable when a user presses the F10 key during server boot (POST). The server will then boot to the pre-loaded flash chip and show the Intelligent Provisioning software.

New way to provision HP ProLiant: Smart Update Manager (HP-SUM)

For everyone that does not have ProLiant Gen8 servers, use the Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP) at http://www.hp.com/go/spp to get firmware and software updates, since only Gen8 can use Intelligent Provisioning. You will also need to use the SPP if you are installing Windows Server 2012 on any HP hardware prior to Gen8. There is also a Windows Server 2012 Supplement for Service Pack for ProLiant that includes drivers and software for all ProLiant servers.

A common scenario is that you will install Windows Server 2012 on a pre-Gen8 ProLiant manually, that is, without HP software-assisted installation. Then afterwards you will run the SPP and/or Windows Server 2012 Supplement to install the HP hardware integration features. HP published a 13-page Technical white paper in September 2012 on Windows Server 2012 implementation recommendations, which makes clear that HP supports Windows Server 2012 installation on G7 and Gen8 ProLiant hardware, and also advises which drivers to use and where they are located (SPP or Supplement). Not all ProLiant hardware previous to G7 and Gen8 may be supported by HP drivers and software on Windows Server 2012.

Figure A shows the HP Smart Update Manager (HP-SUM) interface running on a freshly installed Windows Server 2012 computer, an older ProLiant G5. HP-SUM will detect the latest editions of the appropriate software and drivers and show whether they are available on the DVD, to download, or in a local repository. This older G5 ended having no driver support for the HP management module, but all other drivers and software installed and worked as expected.

Figure A

HP Smart Update Manager (SUM) locates the latest versions of Windows Server 2012 drivers. (Click to enlarge)

To run HP-SUM, download the SPP software at hp.com; the current release at this writing is 2012.08. Expand the software distribution, locate and run the E:\hp\swpackages\hpsum.exe file (where E: represents the drive letter the virtual SPP software DVD is mounted to). If you will be installing HP Agents, it is recommended that you pre-install the SNMP Service feature on Windows Server 2012. The HP Systems Insight Homepage on the computer will require SNMP to render any data. The first thing HP-SUM will do is prompt you to connect over the Internet to ftp.hp.com for the latest updates. If you have established an on-site HP software repository, you can connect to that rather than, or in addition to, using the Internet. Figure B shows the download of components from HP.com in progress. The component download and the software install are two independent steps, and there is an ability to add other ProLiant to a list of servers to be updated. This allows you to download the software on one ProLiant and install it on multiple other ProLiants at the same time.

Figure B

HP Smart Update Manager (SUM) downloading updated drivers from HP.

Install and configure with HP Tools

You will need to push the Enter Credentials button to specify a username/password—or to use the currently logged on user—for the install work. After doing a self-discovery on the local server and a discovery of any other network servers you have added to the list, HP-SUM will display any failed dependencies needed to fix to install the updates. A “Select bundles” option makes it easy to see all the software available and selected for installation. After installation and reboots, the handy HP tools like HP Array Configuration Utility (ACU) and Integrated Lights Out (ILO) configuration tool are ready to use. Access HP tools from the Windows Start screen shown inFigure C.

Installing Windows 2012 R2 on ProLiant DL380 G7 without SmartStart

Since HP SmartStart CD went the way of the dodo bird before Windows 2012 R2 was released, HP ProLiants older than a Gen8 require administrators to manually install Windows 2012 R2.  On ProLiant Gen8 and higher, you have Intelligent Provisioning – the replacement for SmartStart – embedded on the system, but this isn’t available on G7, so the user needs to manually install Windows according to the Implementing Microsoft Windows Server 2012 technical whitepaper.

In the case of the HP ProLiant DL380 G7, the normal Windows installation doesn’t recognize the P410i storage controller during installation and it fails with the strange “We can’t create a new partition or locate an existing one.”  Searching forums, you find several solutions suggesting boot order or removable mdia like USB or SD storage causes the problem in many cases, but for the DL380 G7, however to get past this on my servers, I needed to download the storage controller driver and add it during installation.

You will need a USB drive where you can load the drivers during Windows installation.

The steps to do this and successfully install Windows 2012 R2 are below:

1. Browse out to hp.com and go to the Drivers & Software download section or directly to http://www8.hp.com/us/en/drivers.html.
2. Search for the DL380 G7 in the search and click on the link for the server displayed after search.
3. Select Windows 2012 R2 as the operating system dropdown.
4. Navigate to Storage Controller and download the latest “HP ProLiant Smart Array SAS/SATA Controller Driver for Windows Server 2012 x64 Edition.”  If you use this link, make sure to check revision history to ensure this is the latest available.
5. Click the Download button and then run the .exe file.  Use the Extract button to copy all the files onto a USB stick.
   
6. Boot the system and begin Windows 2012 R2 installation from CD or from ISO connected via remote console on the iLO.
7. Click the Install Windows.
8. Custom Installation.
9. Storage window – choose Have Disk.  Make sure USB is plugged in on the server.
10. Choose the HP driver
11. Click next and the installation will now continue instead of giving the error.