Clarifying VMware operating system support with HP Insight Remote Support (July 2011, 5900-1616)

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Introduction
This whitepaper clarifies the situation concerning VMware support by HP Insight Remote Support. It
includes clarifications on VMware support on both the HP Insight Remote Support Advanced Central
Management Server (CMS) and the HP Insight Remote Support Standard Hosting Device (HD) as well as
on managed endpoint devices. This additional information will be incorporated into the HP Insight Remote
Support documentation shortly.
Figure 1 depicts an example of an HP Insight Remote Support environment with a CMS / HD managing
four endpoint devices and as such, it provides an architectural overview that should help to clarify the
terminology that is used within this whitepaper.
Figure 1 description
Three of the monitored devices are external to the CMS/HD, and one monitored device contains the
CMS/HD as it is important to monitor the health of the underlying hardware of the CMS/HD. There are
three monitored devices running VMware, (two running VMware ESXi and one running classic VMware
ESX) and one device running a non-virtual operating system such as Microsoft Windows or Linux.
Each ESX/ESXi device has two VM Guests running on the underlying VMware host. In the diagram, the
VMware host is referred to as the physical host as it is essentially the same as any other physical
monitored device. On the CMS / HD, the HP Insight Remote Support applications operate in one of the
VM Guest instances running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2.