HP Infrastructure Software

Blogging about blogging...

David Claypool — Fri, 23 May 2008 01:56:00 GMT

As you may have noticed, for some reason I'm fascinated by the political process this go around. Here in the US, anyone who seriously follows the presidential elections and has a sense of humor gets a good dose of reality by watching "The Daily Show" on the cable/satellite network Comedy Central. Each night (Monday through Thursday) the self-proclaimed fake news program (broadcast from "Comedy Central's World News Headquarters) provides their take on current events. Any topic is in bounds, but the favorite target is politics. After a couple of segments of "news," there is a guest interview. Thursdays typically are reserved for celebrities, but the first three days of the week are for politicos, authors and experts.

Not too long ago the show featured university professor and author David D. Perlmutter to talk about his book Blogwars. Called the most comprehensive look at blogging and politics, one of the topics he examines is the practice of blogging to support a candidate without revealing one's association with a campaign or interest group. Apparently that has become a huge problem for blogs, so you really can't believe or take at face value anyone advocating a point because you don't know if they are being sponsored to do so or not.

Well, you don't need to worry about that here. This blog may be hosted on hp.com, but you can always rely on it for unbiased information about products.

Like the new HP Insight Dynamics - VSE, recently announced and now shipping. Insight Dynamics brings many of the tools previously only available on HP Integrity servers and the Virtual Server Environment to ProLiant servers. There's some new technology in there, too, like Logical Servers.

I may be biased, but, setting the technology aside, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity for sponsorship tie-ins. But no, all of my proposals were met with deaf ears. Who better to be the spokesperson for Logical Servers than Mr. Spock? It's topical again, even, with a new Star Trek movie in production featuring Zachary Quinto of TV show Heroes as Mr. Spock. But it wasn't to be. No spokesperson and no theme song for Insight Dynamics.

Well, even without a spokesperson or a theme song, ID-VSE is getting plenty of press coverage and has the blogosphere humming. You can learn more about HP Insight Dynamics by visiting the HP 3D Interactive Showcase.

Be careful what you wish for...

David Claypool — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:32:00 GMT

As I write this, today (4-Mar-2008) is primary day here in Texas, so it got me thinking. Over the past 20 or so years, I’m sure that numerous political party strategists have mused something along the lines of, “If only we had a credible, recognizable woman candidate that we could run for president...” Likewise, many of those same party luminaries as well as some different ones probably had the thought, “If only we had an African-American politico with mainstream appeal that we could run for president...”

Well, be careful what you wish for, because right now we’ve got both. I’m not saying anything about policies or their relative merits, but rather commenting on the inevitable: as in all contests, someone is going to win, and someone is going to lose. …and whoever is on the losing side is probably going to set back the opportunity for another person with the same characteristics in a future election by several years. In other words, no matter who wins the nomination, the pundits will inevitably conclude that America wasn’t ready for a [black or woman] candidate for president. Obviously, we’ll see how it goes.

But wishes so often have some kind of downside—witness the numerous genie-in-a-bottle and leprechaun jokes that abound (sorry, couldn’t think of one suitable to publish here, so do your own search). On a side note, I have always wondered why you couldn’t wish for 3 more wishes as your third wish and keep the ball rolling. But, back to the subject, just a few years ago there were organizations of all sizes looking at their infrastructure and wishing for a solution to what was called “server sprawl.”

This so-called sprawl was brought about because of the desire to have a stable and sustainable environment, so the practice of hosting a single application per server was deemed the best practice to avoid the dreaded “blue screen of death” since applications couldn’t be trusted to interoperate together. A side effect of this is that since Moore’s Law kept pushing processor performance higher and higher, the 1-application-per-server rule meant that average utilization would keep dropping with each successive generation of server. Now all of a sudden what started out as a technology policy had implications on the financial side, and that is that the return on IT assets didn’t look very good.

Think of it this way: if you operated a dry cleaner and owned several washers, dryers, pressing machines and whatever is used to do “dry” cleaning (and just what is “Martinizing” anyway?) and they were in use less than 30% of the time—equivalent to what Gartner Group and others report average utilization of servers to be—how long would it be before your accountant commented that you needed to either improve your usage of those assets or look to downsizing?

Virtualization rode in on its white horse to save the day. Now there was an effective method to stack multiple instances of an operating system on a single server to improve utilization. Server consolidation projects became all the rage in the wave of “virtualization 1.0.”

What’s interesting is how many customers I’ve chatted with that have said that their server consolidation project was undertaken with no more analysis than “We have too many servers. Reduce them by half. (By next Tuesday…)” Along the way, another phenomenon occurred. It became so easy to deploy a virtual machine that now we had to confront a new horror: virtual server sprawl. You see, even when virtualized, a server has to have an operating system and applications and connections to the outside world. And those components have to be configured, secured, administered and monitored. And it’s the same amount of work whether it’s a physical host or a virtual one.

Virtualization isn’t a technology magic bullet. If you move from physical to virtual and use the same processes, procedures and tools that you always have, your administration costs are going to remain the same. That’s why it’s so important that as part of a well-considered virtualization strategy that you implement time-saving tools such as HP Systems Insight Manager, in which an IDC report documented that administrator-to-server ratios could be doubled afterward (yes, I know I’ve blogged about this before). There’s even a more recent report that shows that the addition of the Insight Control Environment (which includes specific management for virtualization from VMware and Microsoft) can provide even more cost savings when implemented.

Okay, I’m off my soapbox for the week.

New and improved...

David Claypool — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 21:49:00 GMT

One of the best parts of my job is that I get to travel the world to meet with colleagues, partners and customers and talk about infrastructure software. Last week I spent in Tokyo and got my first “taste” of Japan. Unfortunately, snow nipped at the city's heels several times during the week and put a damper on any sightseeing on my part, but I think I got a good introduction to real Japanese culture, not just the Americanized version of it. Among other things, I learned at dinner one night that “teppanyaki-style” dining referred to the hot griddle in the middle of the table on which selections came out from the kitchen onto to be kept warm or to finish cooking. Not once during the evening did a faux kitchen samurai approach our table with a Benihana dinner show performance, so I know it was authentic. I requested that they not tell me what a few things were until after I’d eaten them, but it turned out that nothing more outrageous than tripe and squid were served. I thoroughly acquitted myself with my chopstick technique, and I didn’t have to ask for a fork even once.

The reason I was in Japan was to do training and meet with customers on HP Systems Insight Manager 5.2 and other future products. HP SIM 5.2 announced today (11-Feb-08) and is immediately available, as is the updated Insight Control Management DVD that contains the updated HP SIM install. Something important to know before upgrading to HP SIM 5.2 is that there are internal changes that affect the ability of plug-ins like Performance Management Pack, Vulnerability and Patch Management Pack and others that require the plug-ins to be updated for this new version of HP SIM. Therefore, it is better to use the Insight Control Management DVD for your install rather than the straight HP SIM-only install because it will automatically take care of updating the plug-ins for you. If you don’t use this path, you could very well have a happily updated HP SIM installation with plug-ins effectively disabled until they are updated, and then you’ll need the Insight Control Management DVD anyway to correct it.

Usually when we release a new version of a product there is a long laundry list that goes along with it of all the new features. While there are some new features in HP SIM 5.2, the list is rather modest; rather, the focus of this release was on improving its installation process, usability, and a number of UI enhancements requested by users.

My favorite new feature is ‘Manage Communications’ which provides a new level of detail and analysis for users trying to debug connections between the HP SIM central management server and the devices it is managing. Not only does it tell you what is going on, it makes recommendations on how to fix it and also lets you jump right in to the ‘Configure or Repair Agents’ function to make automatic corrections.

I encourage everyone to download and install the new version as soon as they can so you can stay up to date with the latest software from HP. This new version of HP SIM may even surprise the most cynical users by its responsiveness and user-pleasing UI enhancements.

P.S. I want to extend a big thank you to Makoto Akai, Junichi Kobiyama and Takao Ooe of HP Japan for the great way they organized my week and did their best to take care of me and make my visit special.

Just the facts, ma'am...

David Claypool — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 07:42:00 GMT

A few weeks ago, several of my colleagues and I were in the studio shooting a number of short videos about HP Systems Insight Manager and the Insight Control Environment. These will appear in the not-too-distant future on hp.com so you’ll be able to see the results.

I have long complained that the process of creating presentations for products is extremely un-natural, and that in distilling thoughts into a few bullets on a slide, we aren’t able to convey all of the “cool” aspects of the product, why people should be interested, and what the benefits to customers are. I’m not alone, and there are those that claim that PowerPoint is evil (not picking on Microsoft here—equivalent blame is due OpenOffice Impress and like products; they just aren’t as ubiquitous)and will be the death of the human race, or at least human communications, or maybe just you. I’m sure everyone has attended at least one “training” session or briefing in which a slow death by PowerPoint was administered.

A skewering example of this is the brilliant rendering of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in PowerPoint, a speech thought by many to be the most poetic, poignant and perhaps most important political speech ever made by an American president. At the other end of the spectrum is former art school student David Byrne, notable for his participation in the 80s band Talking Heads, who started out to lampoon PowerPoint because of its limitations, but instead embraced it, finding an almost haiku-like freedom in its restrictions.

Back to the videos, since the essence of a product is so often missed in the presentations, with the videos the product managers would be able to talk about their products directly. Tell about all the cool features that they know about and tell customers, but so often get missed when sitting down to create a presentation. So the videos had no scripts, no limiting factors, just reality-TV HP-style. We were told not to prepare anything, just show up and talk. Two cameras and 2 days of studio time.

The point I’m getting to is this: after doing about 4 different videos covering various products, one of the camera operators after the cut asked me, “Aren’t you ever at a loss for words?” That’s it, isn’t it? I can talk at length about the topic and about the products, and I do, all around the world. Some people get tired of me, I’m sure, with my persistent examples and analogies. But finally, I get to shut up. Because you don’t have to listen to me anymore; you don’t have to subscribe to my belief that HP infrastructure software is cool, that it has value, and that it saves customers money.

That’s because world-renowned researcher International Data Corporation has the data about how it saves.

In a just-published report, “Gaining Business Val u e and ROI with HP Insight Control,” IDC writes about the results customers who adopt Insight Control achieved:

A savings of $48,380 per 100 users over 3 years

IDC identified that the savings fell across 4 categories:

IT staff efficiencies
IT infrastructure cost savings
User productivity
Time savings (allowing IT personnel to focus on value-add initiatives)

The full details and the methodology are in the report. Access it at the link above.

It ain't easy being green...

David Claypool — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:23:00 GMT

Kermit the Frog probably said it best when he sang, “It’s not easy being green,” but then again, he was talking about a completely different subject. I am amazed at how quickly society and the commercial sector have transformed ecological energy awareness from socially-awkward kookiness (embodied best by Ed Begley, Jr., in his HGTV show “Living with Ed”) to the new cool. Sure, a lot of it is credited to the “man who invented the internet,” but face it, Al Gore, Jr. isn’t much cooler than Ed. But in an all-pile-on frenzy, the media have become laser focused on the topic and public sentiment has followed suit. Even the peace/love/save-the-world sixties didn’t have as much impact on this topic.

But poking beneath the surface, it seems that appearing green is more important to some than actually being green. During conversation at dinner last night, the owner of a Toyota Camry hybrid confessed to not being in the “in” crowd because you had to look closely to see that it was a hybrid—it looked just like the regular Camry and so didn’t shout “Green!” to everyone who saw it, so he wasn’t supporting the cause the same way as if he had a Prius (although if you really wanted to publicly display green-ness, the homely Honda Insight would be the way to go). This “green image” has got to be a consolation prize, because there is widespread disappointment with hybrid gas mileage, even leading to several lawsuits. And now there’s a big blow to all of those whose consciences have been soothed by buying a hybrid, a recent report that a Prius does more environmental damage than a Hummer. It seems like the most eco-friendly thing to do is to really use less by changing habits and driving less often.

There’s a lot of truth to this as it applies to the computer industry as well. Since a fair percentage of servers exhibit low utilization on average, stacking applications on servers through the use of virtualization has been a popular method of consolidation. HP even cooperated with Pacific Gas & Electric in a rebate program designed to cut energy use through virtualization. PG&E’s interest was in cutting future demand growth so it could avoid having to build new power generating capacity to meet the projected need.

HP has taken many steps to reduce energy consumption in ProLiant servers. When we moved to the Generation 5 series, we transitioned from hard drives with 3.5” platters to 2.5” that (if I did my math right) require about half the power at peak and operating modes. We also have been providing highly efficient power supplies for some time, and been designing for power efficiency. Recently, we’ve qualified low-power memory DIMM options for ProLiant servers which have resulted in placing 3 of our servers in the top 5 of the new SPECpower_ssjTM 2008 benchmark results.

Server-class processors from Intel and AMD have also become available that consume less power and allow stepping down power consumption to meet the demands of lower utilization. If you’re using an operating system that recognizes that, some power savings can be realized. However, self-deterministic individual policies aren’t really in keeping with data center operational best practices, and administrators want to have a way of getting insight into what actually is happening and the actual wattage consumed and the BTUs produced.

Enter HP Insight Power Manager. This plug-in to HP Systems Insight Manager interfaces with the Integrated Lights-Out processor on ProLiant servers and blades (and the newest version supports Integrity servers, too) to monitor and control power. It’s available as part of the Insight Control Environment license, on its own, or as a bundle with an iLO 2 license. Insight Power Manager lets you collect data from systems on how much power they actually are consuming as well as actual thermal output and retain it for up to 3 years. You also can input what your local utility charges on a per-killowatt-hour basis so it can express costs to power the system. Probably best of all is that you can set the dynamic power saving mode across one or more systems, and by using the iLO 2 management processor, it’s able to sample utilization up to 5 times a second without having to install any software on the operating system. Testing in the lab has found that for servers with utilization up to 80%, there is no sacrifice in performance in running in this low-power mode (see “Power Regulator for ProLiant,” page 6). It also can enforce an average power “cap” on a set of systems and soon it will be able to cap the maximum power as well.

What does it all mean? Even though power prices have gone up, it’s still relatively cheap, isn’t it? Well, analysis shows that the 3-year cost of power and cooling can actually exceed the equipment cost. Whoa. But there’s more. Since power consumption has actually been growing faster than Moore’s Law (see “Data Center Cooling Strategies,” page 3), unless you’re using some power conservation strategy, you’re probably paying for wasted electricity.

It’s more than just paying your electricity bill. Power consumption has implications for the server room or data center with each new device added to it. And data center build-outs are millions of dollars of capital expense. It’s easy to see that using one or more of the strategies above is an imperative for a business, not just from an economic standpoint, but also an ecological one. In fact, HP’s own efforts at data center consolidation and efficiency are designed to reduce IT power and cooling consumption by more than 50 per cent—enough to power a city the size of Palo Alto, California, where HP is headquartered.

Go green. Be green. Live green. Learn more at HP’s Green Power and Cooling Seminar.

It's about time...

David Claypool — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:34:00 GMT

I frequently have the chance to present in front of real customers who come in to find out the latest that HP is doing during visits to the Executive Briefing Center here in Houston and also in Cupertino. This morning was one of those times, but a little bit different, because the customer was a little smaller than those who usually visit (not that there's anything wrong with that). It was the CIO and one of the members of the server admin team, and the company runs around 40 ProLiant servers from the DL300 series, and a StorageWorks SAN.

As I asked questions to get a better picture of how they managed things in the environment, it became apparent that their current state was something they arrived at accidentally; it wasn't planned. Their practice was to load the ProLiant server management agents on the servers as they built them, but they didn't have any coordinated approach to how they used them. The server admin in the meeting today said he thought one of his colleagues had "Insight Manager" set up some where, but he wasn't sure what version it was, how often it was used, and only that person had access to it. In fact, the CIO had asked the server admin in the last week if he could report on how much memory was in their Citrix server, and he logged in to the ProLiant server management agents' System Management Homepage for each of them (luckily there were only 4) and was able to tell the CIO the information.

I thought that was a good example of an issue I've discussed with a lot of CIOs. In most IT organizations, there are certain fixed costs, like facilities. It takes some amount of power to keep the lights on and the cooling going, physical security, and so forth. Not a lot of variability in those costs. Likewise the hardware and software costs--sure you negotiate the best you can with your suppliers, but the biggest lever is always going to be volume, so unless you plan on doubling the number of servers you have in the next year, there isn't much to talk about.

What it gets down to is that for most IT organizations the cost that can be controlled the most is people cost. Getting back to the customer this morning, that almost made the CIO fall out of his chair laughing, saying I'd made his day. According to him, any control he had over his staff was at most an illusion. So I asked a few more questions and got mostly the answers I expected, because I've seen it time after time. His staff is made up of very skilled and experienced administrators. The kind of dream team that you can throw anything at and expect them to deal with it. But since you don't need the services of a "rocket scientist" every day, sometimes the tasks they do aren't always a match for their expertise.

I've said this many times to audiences around the world... (with some apologies for Jeff Foxworthy and his 'You might just be a redneck...' routine)

If you see a Microsoft Certified System Engineer in your server room with a screwdriver in hand racking servers, you have a problem...
If you see a Cisco Certified Network Administrator having to stand in front of a rack of equipment, you have a problem...
If you see a Red Hat Certified Engineer with CDs in hand installing an application or operating system module, you have a problem...

I'm sure a lot of you just thought of an incident that happened recently in your own organization similar to that described above. I know every time I talk about this with groups of customers I always see heads nodding in agreement. In a way, we've all done this to ourselves. By not getting ahead of the curve and really planning out how incidents are dealt with and implemented solid procedures that are replicatable and repeatable, we end up in a situation where we need an extremely experienced crew because Murphy's Law always applies.

Think about it. If everyone who came into an ER, whether with a head laceration, broken bone or in full cardiac arrest all required immediate and continuous care from an experienced physician, it would be unmanageable (not to mention extremely costly). When you come to an ER you get triaged, and depending on the severity of your complaint, may end up being cared for by an intern, resident, physician's assistant, or nurse for part or all of your visit. How is this possible? Because of well-defined procedures and escalation processes.

From a process and procedure perspective, HP Systems Insight Manager can be a big help. If you utilize it properly, it can help to parcel out easy tasks like replacing a hot-plug hard drive to less experienced staff members. You also can use it to document how situations have been solved, thereby building organizational knowledge. While you may have enjoyed my story above and generally agreed with my logic and conclusions, we have the data to prove the benefits of using HP SIM from real customer reports. What they report is that by using HP SIM, most administrators can double the number of servers they supervise. Additionally, unplanned downtime can do down by as much as 77%, because of features like the pre-failure alerts on CPU, disk and memory, and the quality of information provided that can minimize downtime when it happens. This is documented in a report published by IDC called "Gaining Business Value and ROI with HP Systems Insight Manager." The methodology and quotes from the customers interviewed is available in the report.

But what do you think? Reports are well and good, but do you have an experience to share on this topic as well? Use the comments feature to talk back!

Ya gotta love Industry Standards!

David Claypool — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:23:00 GMT

industry standards, IPMI, iLO, iLO2, management process, management

Welcome!

David Claypool — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:56:00 GMT

infrastructure software