HP Insight Control Server Provisioning 7.
© Copyright 2012, 2013 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. Confidential computer software. Valid license from HP required for possession, use or copying. Consistent with FAR 12.211 and 12.212, Commercial Computer Software, Computer Software Documentation, and Technical Data for Commercial Items are licensed to the U.S. Government under vendor's standard commercial license. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.
Contents 1 Introduction/overview.................................................................................5 2 Requirements and networking considerations.................................................7 Appliance VM and host requirements..........................................................................................7 Requirements for using the USB media or ZIP file software downloads.............................................8 Appliance networking considerations...........................
How to create a support dump........................................................................................47 Support dump contents..................................................................................................47 HP contact information.......................................................................................................48 Subscription service............................................................................................................
1 Introduction/overview What is Insight Control server provisioning? Insight Control server provisioning is a virtual appliance used to install and configure HP ProLiant servers. Insight Control server provisioning uses resources such as OS Build Plans and scripts to run IC server provisioning deployment jobs.
Table 1 Insight Control server provisioning available information. (continued) 6 Topic Where to find the information Migrating from HP Insight Control server deployment See the Data Migration from Insight Control server deployment to Insight Control server provisioning white paper, available at http://www.hp.com/go/insightcontrol/docs. White papers White papers on various topics are available at http://www.hp.com/go/insightcontrol/ docs.
2 Requirements and networking considerations Insight Control server provisioning is delivered pre-installed on a virtual machine (VM) that is optimized to run the application. Before you install Insight Control server provisioning you need to check the host system requirements, check the requirements for using the USB media or ZIP file software download and consider which network configuration you will use. NOTE: Please check the website http://www.hp.
Requirements for using the USB media or ZIP file software downloads Due to the large size of files contained within the USB media and ZIP file software downloads, some care is needed to use the media or download files and unzip the contents. There are different considerations for Windows and Linux systems. • USB Media: The USB media is formatted using the NTFS file system.
NOTE: In Multi-NIC mode, the appliance can access the iLOs through either the Appliance or Deployment networks, depending on your requirements. No special configuration changes are required for this. NOTE: New Insight Control server provisioning appliances for version 7.2.2 come with two network interfaces, however, if you are updating to 7.2.2 from a previous release, your original appliance only had one NIC.
Figure 2 Multi-NIC Mode Example IC server provisioning Appliance Internet NIC 1 Appliance IP NIC 2 Deployment IP Management web browser Management Network Deployment Network iLO can be connected to either network iLO Target Server NIC Deployment NIC Media Server NIC Production NIC Production Network In Mulit-NIC mode, the deployment network is typically a separate and often isolated network where the deployment operations take place, while the management network is the one where users connect
Figure 3 Multi-NIC Mode with Matrix OE Example IC server provisioning Appliance NIC 1 Appliance IP MOE CMS Internet NIC 2 Deployment IP NIC Appliance IP NIC Deployment IP Management web browser Management Network Deployment Network iLO can be connected to either network iLO Target Server NIC Deployment NIC Media Server NIC Production NIC Production Network In the Multi-NIC mode with the Matrix Operating Environment configured; note that the Matrix Operating Environment CMS requires a NIC on b
3 Installing your Insight Control server provisioning appliance for the first time This chapter provides first time set up steps for getting the HP Insight Control server provisioning software and installing the virtual machine appliance. IMPORTANT: If you already have Insight Control server provisioning installed and are installing an update release (such as 7.2.2), skip this chapter and see “Updating from version 7.2 or 7.2.1 to 7.2.2” (page 26) for the appropriate installation instructions.
1. Download the software or insert the USB media. If you are downloading the software: Go to http://www.hp.com/go/insightupdates and select Download the latest Insight Management software link near the top of the page. Then locate the Insight Control server provisioning software and download the appropriate ZIP file to your host computer. Select the ZIP file for either the VMware full appliance or the Hyper-V full appliance depending on which hypervisor you intend to deploy to.
3. Proceed through the vSphere steps to deploy the VM. CAUTION: HP strongly recommends importing your appliance using thick provisioning. If you use thin provisioning and your VM host disk runs out of space, the appliance will most likely encounter errors and terminate unexpectedly and may not recover. If this happens you will need to install a new appliance and restore from backup. Do not select Power on this virtual machine after creation. Select Finish to initiate deployment of the VM. 4.
5. Next you power on the Insight Control server provisioning virtual machine for the first time as described below. IMPORTANT: Before powering on your virtual appliance, verify the date and time are set properly on your VM host system. You should be sure to maintain an accurate time on the VM host system, such as with NTP, because the VM guest will synchronize with that time. If your VM host does not have the time set properly, the following message will be displayed when you boot the appliance.
3. In the Import Virtual Machine wizard, browse to where you unpacked the Hyper-V image zip file and click through until you see the directories called Snapshots, Virtual Hard Disks and Virtual Machines. Select the parent directory of those three directories. 4. Continue through the steps in the wizard to import the appliance virtual machine.
IMPORTANT: (see below). 5. Be sure to select "Copy the virtual machine” (create a new unique ID) option Verify that the Insight Control server provisioning VM is configured to meet the host requirements (see “Appliance VM and host requirements” (page 7)), set up thick provisioning and set up network adapters on your VM host. If you need to edit settings on the VM, right-click on the appliance VM and select Settings.
IMPORTANT: Before powering on your virtual appliance, verify the date and time are set properly on your VM host system. You should be sure to maintain an accurate time on the VM host system, such as with NTP, because the VM guest will synchronize with that time. If your VM host does not have the time set properly, the following message will be displayed when you boot the appliance. The time and date on your hypervisor appears to be incorrect.
Figure 5 Login screen TIP: On ESXi/vSphere hypervisor console release your cursor from the Console with Ctrl-Alt. Restart first time set up in the Console with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.
Figure 6 Set a new password IMPORTANT: Make sure you remember the new administrator password. Note that there is a password reset service if needed. Configure appliance networking HP Insight Control server provisioning requires you to configure an Appliance IP and a Deployment IP and corresponding netmask. See “Appliance networking considerations” (page 8) for additional information.
Figure 7 Appliance Networking screen The next step is to configure the Appliance IP: • “Configure Appliance IP” (page 21) And then you configure the Deployment IP on the same or a different network: • “Configure Deployment IP on the same network” (page 23) • “Configure Deployment IP on a different network” (page 24) • “Check for errors in first time setup” (page 25) Configure Appliance IP To begin configuring the Appliance IP, select the 1 Appliance network interface in the Appliance Networking scr
Figure 8 Appliance IP configuration edit fields Enter the networking information for the Appliance as follows: • Host name: This is the host name of the appliance. From a supported browser, you can navigate to the appliance by using this name or by using the appliance IP address. If you are supplying a DNS server, this host name must be fully qualified. 22 • IP address: This is the IP address you are assigning to this appliance (the Appliance IP).
Routing (CIDR) mask representing the number of bits reserved for network identification. Valid CIDR values are 1 to 30, inclusive. • Gateway address: This field is not required, but HP strongly suggests configuring it to ensure access to the appliance. Specify the IP address for the network interface on your router. • Preferred DNS server: IP address of your preferred DNS server. Not required. • Alternate DNS server: IP address of your alternate DNS server. Not required.
by the deployment engine within the appliance. It is used to communicate with a target server’s deployment interface IP address. This configuration only requires the first network adapter on the VM. Select OK or Logout. Selecting the OK button applies the information you have supplied. Allow 15 minutes while the appliance configures and reboots to complete the configuration. Selecting the Logout button exits from the appliance without saving the appliance networking information.
To configure the Deployment IP on a different network interface than the Appliance IP, select Independent on and enter the information for Deployment IP as described below. This configuration requires two network adapters on the VM and the Deployment IP will be on the second one. • IP address: This is the IP address used by the deployment engine within the appliance. It is used to communicate with a target server’s deployment interface IP address.
4 Updating from version 7.2 or 7.2.1 to 7.2.2 If you are a new customer, follow the instructions in “Installing your Insight Control server provisioning appliance for the first time” (page 12) to download and install a full Insight Control server provisioning appliance. If you are an existing customer with HP Insight Control server provisioning 7.2 or 7.2.1 installed, follow the instructions in this section for updating your Insight Control server provisioning appliance from 7.2 or 7.2.1 to 7.2.2.
Dedicate resources to the appliance Another option to ensure your appliance has the resources it needs, is to use the VMware settings to dedicate CPU and memory resources to your appliance. In the resources tab of your VM settings, set a reservation for at least 8000 MHz of CPU and 16384MB of memory. This is particularly helpful if you cannot perform the update during a maintenance period. When the update is complete, you can remove these reservations.
IC-server-provisioning-7.2.2-update.bin file. If you are updating from 7.2.1 to 7.2.2 then you install the IC-server-provisioning-7.2.1-patch.bin file first and then the IC-server-provisioning-7.2.2-update.bin file. • IC-server-provisioning-7.2.0-patch.bin — patches the current 7.2 version • IC-server-provisioning-7.2.1-patch.bin — patches the current 7.2.1 version • IC-server-provisioning-7.2.2-update.bin — updates to a new 7.2.2 version Continue to check your prerequisites and then begin the update.
• If you are updating from 7.2.1, select the IC-server-provisioning-7.2.1-patch.bin to upload first. NOTE: If you are starting from 7.2.0 release appliance, the appliance version will be 7.2.0–50506, before you install the patch. If you are starting from 7.2.1 release appliance, the appliance version will be 7.2.1–60611, before you install the patch. As the file is uploaded, you will see an uploading progress bar in the Update Appliance dialog box.
Once the file is uploaded and verified, you can click the Release Notes link to read the release notes. There is a Remove link that allows you to remove the uploaded file from the appliance. If you upload a file and then close the browser without installing, the uploaded file persists. When you return to the Update Appliance dialog box, you will be able to pick up where you left off (post-upload and pre-install).
• Generate and upload WinPE to the appliance. Follow the instructions in the “Generating and uploading WinPE to the appliance” (page 43). You should generate and upload a new WinPE even if you already did this when initially setting up your appliance. IMPORTANT: For customers updating from 7.2 or 7.2.1 to 7.2.
IMPORTANT: You cannot change the Deployment IP address, so if you switch between Shared with appliance (single NIC) and Independent (multi-NIC), the Appliance IP will need to be changed since shared IPs need to be on the same subnet but independent IPs need to be in separate subnets. HP does not support changing the Deployment IP, even when changing network interface modes like this. 3. 4. 5. In the Edit Appliance screen select 1 Appliance and change the Appliance IP address and settings as needed.
A list of the components of the REST call is shown in the following table: REST component Description URL: https:///rest/appliance/firmware/image where you supply Message Type: POST HTTP Headers: accept: application/json content-type: multipart/form-data accept-language: en-us (optional) auth: Request Body: None, but use —F option to supply form data with the absolute path of the IC-server-provisioning-7.2.
5 DHCP server setup Insight Control server provisioning requires a DHCP server to provide IP addresses to target servers during the provisioning process. Insight Control server provisioning has a DHCP server internal to the appliance you may use, or you can set up your own DHCP server external to the appliance. NOTE: A DHCP server is still required for Gen8 servers. Even if PXE is not used, a DHCP server is needed to bring the server into maintenance and contact the appliance.
• You already have a DHCP server on your network • You require more advanced features than you can configure using the appliance UI. NOTE: The appliance TFTP server required to allow target servers to PXE boot from the appliance will always run regardless of whether the DHCP server you use is internal or external to the appliance.
To set up an external Linux DHCP server: If you are using a standard ISC Linux DHCP server, set the following options in order to PXE boot servers from the appliance. 1. Be sure to set the lease time to at least one day. Here is an example: default-lease-time 86400; max-lease-time 129600; 2. The following lines must be included in global options declarations: option buildmgr_ip code 186 = ip-address; option buildmgr_port code 187 = unsigned integer 16; 3.
6 Setting up the Media Server Follow instructions in this section to use the Insight Control server provisioning Media Server setup utility to create your Media Server. Instructions for manually setting up a Media Server are available in the HP Insight Control Server Provisioning Administrator Guide, found at http://www.hp.com/ go/insightcontrol/docs.
Every time support for a new OS or HP SPP is added to the Insight Control server provisioning appliance, the Insight Control server provisioning Media Server setup utility within the appliance is also updated to support the new media.
3. 4. 5. Save the Insight Control server provisioning Media Server setup utility executable to a local folder on the Windows Media Server machine. Set the environment variable TEMP to where you would like the Insight Control server provisioning Media Server setup utility log file, serverdeployment.log, to be written. As administrator, launch the icsp-mediaserver-setup.exe file from the utility Welcome as shown below. Figure 11 Insight Control server provisioning Media Server setup utility Welcome 6. 7.
NOTE: You may run the Insight Control server provisioning Media Server setup utility any number of times to selectively install media or to fix failed media installations. 10. From the Parameters screen shown below, specify the following information: • Windows File Share Name Specify the name you wish to use for the Windows file share. This single file share name is used to access all the media on your Media Server, including any captured images.
Figure 14 Insight Control server provisioning Media Server setup utility Distribution Installation Specify the following: • Prerequisites Prerequisites are automatically verified. If the prerequisites are not met for the media, an error will be displayed and setup will not continue. • Options Items in this area depend on the media being installed.
• When setup has completed, select Close. The Insight Control server provisioning Media Server setup utility will automatically begin setting up the next media if there are more to set up. 12. When all media have been installed, each installation will have either a success (green), installed with warnings (yellow), or installation failed (red) status on the Select OS Distributions to Install screen. Check the log file for details. 13.
7 Generating and uploading WinPE to the appliance WinPE (Windows Preinstallation Environment) is the service OS for the Windows operating system. It is a special purpose operating system that is used when provisioning a target server with a Windows OS. WinPE runs entirely in system memory on the target server and is used for deploying Windows operating systems and for capturing and deploying Windows images.
6. From the HP Install Package dialog, select Run shown below. Figure 15 Insight Control server provisioning WinPE image generation utility Welcome 7. 8. The Insight Control server provisioning WinPE image generation utility will self-extract to a temporary folder and then display the Prerequisites screen. Select Continue once you have made sure all the prerequisites are met. From the Setup screen shown below, select Install. Prerequisites are automatically verified.
8 Recommended actions after initial setup Once the IC server provisioning VM is up and running, additional configuration tasks may be need to be configured in your environment. These Recommended actions are listed in the Help area. As you visit the links as shown in the following figure under Recommended actions, a check mark will be displayed next to those items visited. You do not have to complete the task to have the check mark appear, simply visit the link.
expect these keys. If you do not enter your product keys on this screen, you must modify the HP-provided configuration files before they will work properly. • Configure DHCP – Links to the Settings→Edit DHCP screen where you can configure your DHCP settings and upload the required WinPE service OS to the appliance. A DHCP server is required in order to provision servers. You may use the internal DHCP server supplied with the appliance or an external DHCP server.
9 Support and other resources Contacting HP Before you contact HP Be sure to have the following information available before you contact or call your authorized support representative: • Technical support registration number (if applicable) • Insight Control server provisioning version • Applicable error message • Third-party hardware or software • Operating system type and revision level • Support dump (optional): “Creating a support dump” (page 47) Creating a support dump When you might want t
• NTP servers Information about the running appliance, including: • All processes • Memory • Disk space • Network statistics • Routing • Hardware information Log data, including: • All standard Linux operating system logs • All appliance logs • Logs from all jobs run in the past three days • Installation logs • The system audit log Other information: • Status report of all processes • Dates of any certificates used NOTE: The following types of items might be included in the suppo
notification of product enhancements, new driver versions, firmware updates, and other product resources. Related information Documents The following documents are available at http://www.hp.com/go/insightcontrol/docs. • HP Insight Control Server Provisioning Online Help (in PDF form) • HP Insight Control Server Provisioning Administrator Guide • Technical White Papers for Insight Control server provisioning Websites • Software download website: http://www.hp.
WARNING A warning calls attention to important information that if not understood or followed will result in personal injury or nonrecoverable system problems. CAUTION A caution calls attention to important information that if not understood or followed will result in data loss, data corruption, or damage to hardware or software.
10 Documentation feedback HP is committed to providing documentation that meets your needs. To help us improve the documentation, send any errors, suggestions, or comments to Documentation Feedback (docsfeedback@hp.com). Include the document title and part number, version number, or the URL when submitting your feedback.
Glossary agent Software on managed servers used to make changes to the servers. Functions supported include software installation and removal, software and hardware configuration, and server status reporting. answer file See configuration file. appliance See virtual appliance. AutoYaST file The specific term to use when referring to a SLES configuration file. bare metal Describes a server that does not have a production operating system installed.
HPSUM HP Smart Update Manager, a common tool for firmware and driver updates. iLO See Integrated Lights-Out (iLO). iLO Virtual Media An HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) feature that allows you to attach a removable storage device or image file from a client machine to the server, and have that appear to the server as a local device. The server can boot from that virtual device or use it with a running operating system.
OS personalization The process of giving a running server the characteristics that make it unique, including IP configuration, host name, and domain. A server can be personalized during the initial OS deployment or after the OS is already installed. package A single compressed (zipped) file that can contain executables, configuration information, and script files. An example of a package is a .zip file of Windows drivers to be used during unattended installations. preboot environment See service OS.
See also maintenance mode, provisioned, and unreachable. service OS A special purpose operating system that runs entirely in system memory and is used to perform various maintenance functions on a server, including preparing a system for operating system installation. Insight Control server provisioning has service OS's based on Linux and Windows. See also LinuxPE and WinPE. SLES Stands for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. A Linux-based operating system developed by SUSE. software package See package.
Index D DHCP server, 34 external to appliance, 35 documentation providing feedback on, 51 F files serverdeployment.
