Infrastructure Management Software Blog

Enabling Enterprise BlackBerry Management

pspielvogel — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:46:00 GMT

We have conducted several webinars with analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA). I am very excited that Steve Brasen, Principal Analyst, has agreed to provide a “guest post” to our blog about “Enabling Enterprise BlackBerry Management”.
- Peter Spielvogel

So, what’s the big deal about managing mobile devices at the enterprise level? Isn’t it the same as managing desktop systems? Well, yes and no – but mostly no. At a high level, desktops, laptops and mobile devices all have similar requirements for support services in areas including provisioning and security along with incident, asset and configuration management. But the management practices necessary to meet these requirements are very different for mobile devices. Due to the portable nature of mobile devices, their smaller size provides less computing power than desktop systems and their unique user interfaces require specialized drivers and applications. Additionally, since mobile devices perform their functions remotely, there are additional management concerns around connectivity and security.

Certainly all these challenges are applicable to any mobile device type, but the recent and significant increase in the business adoption of BlackBerry devices has focused attention on providing solutions for centralized, enterprise-wide mobile management for that particular platform. Research in Motion (RIM) has already stepped up to the plate by offering its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) solution. BES enables centralized remote management of BlackBerry devices and acts as a secure conduit for accessing messaging services, such as email and file sharing applications. In EMA’s recently published Impact Brief, “HP and RIM Join Forces to Enable Holistic Enterprise BlackBerry Management,” it is revealed how back-end systems, such as mail servers and databases, also need to be administered from a single common management platform.

We are only beginning to see how mobile technologies will transform the way businesses operate in the near future, but clearly the foundations of managing a mobile workforce are being laid today and are building on established best practices and vetted technologies to simplify and enhance enterprise wide administration.

Steve Brasen
Principal Analyst
Enterprise Management Associates

Software Universe in Hamburg sneak preview

pspielvogel — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:53:00 GMT

Software Universe is only five weeks away. We hold this event twice each year, alternating between a United States and European location. The upcoming event is in Hamburg at the Congress Centre Hamburg (CCH) from Wednesday, December 16th – Friday, December 18th 2009.

(If you missed our last Software Universe in Las Vegas, you can download some of the presentations here.)

I’m very excited about this year’s show, as it gives me a chance to connect with many European customers and colleagues, many of whom I have only “met” through email and phone calls. In addition, there are many interesting presentations. Some highlights* (based on their relevancy to managing IT infrastructure - both physical and virtual) include:

Wednesday December 16

16:00-16:45	Optimizing cost by automating your ITIL v3 processes Jeroen Bronkhorst, Hewlett-Packard
17:00 - 17:45	“Monitoring ....inside the Cloud" Vincenzo Asaro, Telecom Italia
18:00 - 18:45	Orchestrating Virtual Infrastructures with HP OO Ralph Capasso, Hewlett-Packard

Thursday December 17

09:00 - 09:45	Automating operations management with HP Operations Orchestration Ralph Capasso, Hewlett-Packard
09:00 - 09:45	HP management of VMware vSphere: How does VMware fit in with your HP Software Infrastructure? Terry Lyons, VMware
10:00 - 10:45	The all new Operations Center licensing model: escaping the hardware bonds Jon Haworth and Peter Crosby, Hewlett-Packard
11:45 - 12:30	HP Operations Manager i: Best practices and lessons learned at CMT Kai-Uwe Jensen, Hewlett-Packard
15:15 - 16:00	BTO Impact of Virtualization on IT Management Dennis Corning, Hewlett-Packard
15:15 - 16:00	Operations Center, the road ahead Norm Follett, Hewlett-Packard
16:30 - 17:15	HP Operations Manager on Linux Lillian Hull and Hans-Peter Schmollinger, Hewlett-Packard
16:30 - 17:15	Capabilities in a Virtualized environment Lutz Bartsch, Hewlett-Packard

Friday December 18

09:00 - 09:45	Virtualization SPI - VMware management plug-in for HP Operations Center Jagannath Harish Gangaiah, Hewlett-Packard
11:45 - 12:30	HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping: a solution to regain control on your infrastructure Thomas Wirtz, Hewlett-Packard
11:45 - 12:30	Integrated approach to monitoring and the challenges encountered and overcome Mark Laird and Romain Maitret, Steria Ltd

* dates, times, and speakers subject to change

Hope to see you there.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group on LinkedIn.

Two strategies for your new data center

pspielvogel — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:33:00 GMT

I read an interesting article in eWeek on “HP vs. Cisco: Polar Opposites in Data Center Strategies.”

The article focused on whether it is better for companies to choose from a collection of partners or a one-stop shop. From my personal experience with my home electronics purchases, I prefer to purchase components from a single vendor, as the integration and support generally runs more smoothly. On the other hand, I have other friends and colleagues (many of whom are more technical than I am) who follow the opposite approach, picking what they believe are the best in class components and integrating all the pieces themselves.

In both cases, when the systems run smoothly, both approaches work equally well. The challenge, of course, is when things do not go as planned - either during the setup or when something breaks. In a home environment (at least mine), things are pretty static. I don’t add or update components very often. A corporate data center is another story. Data centers are very dynamic, with companies adding servers, applications, and other components daily in many cases. And, add to that the changes from virtualization, where business services are created on-the-fly, based on changing demands. And, if you want to leverage runbook automation, it’s probably easier if you are automating software from a single vendor.

The data center has no time for finger pointing or blame storms. When an incident occurs, I want a single console to see what broke, its impact on the business, and the shortest path to resolving the problem. In my mind, this is a clear reason to follow the one-stop approach.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

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Sonja Hickey has joined the HP Operations Center team

pspielvogel — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:23:00 GMT

My name is Sonja Hickey and I just joined the HP Operations Center team 3 days ago. I will be focusing on the data collection aspects of the Operations Center product line and working with Peter Spielvogel and Jon Haworth as a Product Marketing Manager.

I’m really excited to be working for Hewlett-Packard for several reasons. First, I like HP’s financial strength, which I think is due to its diversification in many different areas. It’s pretty obvious that HP doesn’t put all of its eggs in one basket and that has paid off. You’ll learn through my posts that I am very much into investing and as I read through my latest financial newsletters, I take note of comments like “HP has a pragmatic culture” and “HP was better positioned than most when the recession hit”. I think you can now see why I’m very happy to be part of the HP team.

I also truly believe in the products that I will be representing - products that help IT teams effectively monitor and manage their IT infrastructure and environment. In my opinion, these are not “nice-to-have” products, but rather “must-have” products for any company that want to be successful in today’s marketplace.

On a different note, I’d like take this opportunity to let you know a little about me. From a work/career perspective, I’ve primarily worked in the high-tech space in either product management or product marketing roles for the past 12 years. Outside of work, my free time is spent with my family (3 children and a wonderful husband) as well as reading historical fiction books and honing my investing skills (sorry, I don’t provide stock tips!).

I’d like to end this post with a request. Pease do not hesitate to post a comment should you have any questions, concerns, issues, etc. around the Operations Center products. This will help me understand the problems and issues you face and how our products can help solve them. I may not have an immediate answer or I may not be the right person to answer your question, but I will get back to you. That’s a promise.

Thanks so much for reading my blog and I look forward to hearing from you.

For HP Operations Center, Sonja Hickey.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group on LinkedIn.

BlackBerry Management Webinar (Empowering a Mobile Workforce)

pspielvogel — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:52:00 GMT

We have written about the challenges of managing Black Berry Enterprise Server environments, mostly because of all the disparate elements that must work together properly to ensure that people receive their email. For a user to successfully send or receive a message, the following applications must interact smoothly: BlackBerry Enterprise Server, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Active Directory, and Microsoft SQL Server.

You can imagine the challenge of troubleshooting performance problems if you do not have a single console from which to manage faults and performance data. When the CEO is calling about his or her email, I would certainly want an easy way to determine when the service will be back online.

If you manage BlackBerry Enterprise Servers, you will certainly want to attend this.

One lucky attendee will win a BlackBerry (actual device will depend on your coverage area)!

Title: Empowering a Mobile Workforce: A Holistic Approach to Managing your BlackBerry Ecosystem
Date: Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Time: 11 am Pacific / 2 pm Eastern / Check Your Time Zone
Additional Speakers:
- Pierluigi Buonicore, Product Manager, Research in Motion (RIM)
- Jonathan Evans, Product Marketing, Research in Motion (RIM)
- Jon Haworth,Product Marketing Manager, HP

Behind every executive’s BlackBerry is a complex IT infrastructure for delivering messages and mission-critical mobile applications. So, when performance or availability issues occur, the Operations Team has no time to waste in identifying the cause of the problem and fixing it. Using a single event monitoring console improves visibility across the BlackBerry ecosystem and streamlines communications among your subject matter expert teams - enabling faster problem resolution and less downtime.

In this one-hour webinar EMA VP Dennis Drogseth, Research in Motion (RIM) Product Manager Pierluigi Buonicore, Jonathan Evans from RIM Product Marketing, and HP Product Marketing Manager Jon Haworth will explore solutions that will enable a holistic support environment for managing BlackBerry resources across the enterprise. Topics of discussion will include how to:

Identify the most common challenges to enterprise BlackBerry management
Utilize best practices, such as ITIL, to increase the supportability of mobile devices
Enable prompt problem identification and improved time to resolution
Evaluate new solutions that will enable a common interface for managing enterprise BlackBerry support services

This is a can’t-miss event for any organization supporting BlackBerry devices or looking to empower their mobile workforce.
Register now (and have a chance to win a BlackBerry).

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group on LinkedIn.

Why I love Information Technology (IT)

pspielvogel — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:21:00 GMT

Last night I watched the U2 live concert webcast on YouTube (www.youtube.com/u2). During the show, I just enjoyed the concert, which of course comes with Bono’s philosophizing. (BBC News review of the concert.) Afterwards, I marveled at the technology that made it all possible.

Billed as “the world's biggest band performing on the world's largest stage” (on the YouTube ad for the event). They said that people were watching on all seven continents. I can’t even imagine how much bandwidth this single event consumed.

I cannot recall a live event available in the identical format to people everywhere on the planet. Sure, major news events are followed around the world, but people typically watch on their local news channel or in some local language portal.

There was a similar effort several years back with Live 8, a free concert to “make poverty history”. But, this contained several channels, one for each of the global venues, and I recall the user experience was less than optimal, both in video and audio quality. The U2 show was crisp on my home DSL connection (1.5 Mbps), which is far from speedy compared to what is available here in Silicon Valley or especially in Asia. There were a few sub-second lapses, but overall the experience was amazing.

Think about the U2 event for a moment. Technology (and global standards) made it possible for anyone on earth to experience the same concert at the same time in the same format, regardless of the viewing platform.

To me, this is truly amazing. And that’s why I love IT and am proud to work for a company that makes so much of the infrastructure possible.

Kudos to Google and YouTube (and U2) for pulling this off!

If anyone knows what IT infrastructure they used to do this, please let me know.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group on LinkedIn.

Operations Manager Basics (product overview videos)

pspielvogel — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:29:00 GMT

I spent the past two days in a planning meeting with my product marketing peers from different product groups including infrastructure monitoring, application monitoring, network monitoring, CMDB, service management, and IT financial management. We reviewed all our respective product plans and our go to market strategies (you will need to watch during the year to learn what we decided). While everyone had some idea about what high-level problems each product line solves, some people were not familiar with specific Operations Manager functionality, especially the current version's capabilities.

They asked for the fastest and easiest way to come up to speed. After some thought, I pointed them to two videos - one for Operations Manager (focused on consolidated event and performance management) and another for Operations Manager i (focused on advanced event reduction using topology-based event correlation). I have posted the links below.

HP Operations Manager
Peter Spielvogel and Jon Haworth discuss how Operations Manager allows customers to monitor heterogeneous IT environments, reduce management costs, and speed time to problem resolution.

(While the demo is on Operations Manager on Windows (OMW), the functionality is virtually the same for Operations Manager on Linux (OML) and Operations Manager on Unix (OMU).)

HP Operations Manager i
Jon Haworth and Dan Haller talk about increasing IT event processing efficiency with OMi.

If you have additional questions, please let me know.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group on LinkedIn.

The full stack (OMW, SiteScope, OMi, NNM, Service Desk, CMDB)

pspielvogel — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:35:00 GMT

As I was getting ready to leave yesterday, a colleague stopped by my desk and asked “do you want to be a hero?” That certainly peaked my interest. It turned out we had a customer downstairs in our executive briefing center that wanted some clarification about all the pieces of our stack fit together.

Background
The customer was the CTO of a major IT firm in the Asia-Pacific region. They manage approximately 4,000 servers using OMW 8.1. They use both agents and SPIs, as well as SiteScope agentless monitoring. In addition, they monitor the faults and performance of their network using NNM, and roll those events into their Operations Manager console. In addition, they use Service Desk 4.5 along with a CMDB (configuration management database) that tracks all the configuration items and relationships among them across their enterprise. A *very* rough schematic of what they have appears in the diagram below in red.

Our discussions were divided into two main areas:
1. What they are doing today and what they should be doing?
2. What can they do in the future?

Current Situation
The first question was about best practices. Were they using the software correctly to manage their infrastructure? The answer is a resounding yes. They use OMW as the central event management console, collecting data from agents, SiteScope (agentless monitoring), and NNM for network events.

And, they integrate their service desk with OMW, opening and closing tickets, and tracking changes to the IT infrastructure in their CMDB. They implemented the CMDB about two years ago, in conjunction with their Service Desk implementation.

Next Steps
The next questions focused on what should they be doing or what can they do next to improve their IT management.

We started with a discussion about OMi. The customer was confused about how OMi fits with OMW - the first question was whether it replaces OMW, whether they receive OMi as part of an upgrade (entitlement), and finally, what specific value OMi provides since they currently use OMW as the centralized event consolidation tool.

As readers of this blog know, OMi is a separate product that adds on to Operations Manager. (See green box at top of the above diagram). Its main value is that it leverage the system topology information in the CMDB to greatly speed the time to repair IT problems, especially in complex environments. We have many resources to learn more about OMi, including:
Product overview
High-level webinar on OMi
Deep-dive technical webinar on OMi
Answers to technical questions on OMi

The next topic was automation. We talked about how companies use Operations Orchestration (OO) to automate their IT processes (runbooks). OO uses events in OM to trigger its process flows. The good news was that this customer has spent the past two years documenting and improving their IT processes. They already know what processes occur frequently and how much manual effort they require. This may be the next logical step for them as it leverages their existing IT infrastructure and processes. EMA recently write a white paper on how process automation augments event consolidation.

Migration Challenges
One issue that arose was that the CMDB connected to their service desk is not the latest UCMDB that OMi uses for its topology-based event correlation (TBEC). The customer has two options here.
1. Leave the existing CMDB in place and let OMi create an operational data store that contains the configuration information it needs. The advantage of this approach is that it leaves the current management infrastructure intact and just adds OMi on top. OMi uses the SPIs to auto-discover the IT infrastructure and relationships among the elements. OMi’s data store is self-contained and requires minimal external input.
2. Migrate the existing CMDB associated with Service Desk to the latest version of UCMDB. The advantage of this approach is that the customer ends up with a single CMDB. They can migrate their existing data using a tool such as ICM (information consolidation manager) from Netscope.

Conclusions
For organizations already integrating their events into a single Operations Manager console, you are on the right track. If you already use a CMDB to track your IT infrastructure, you are very far along the IT management maturity curve, even more so if you use some means of automatic discovery to keep it current.

To take things to the next level, you have two options: focus on further event correlation and reduction with OMi or automate your existing IT processes with Operations Orchestration. You can pursue these in series or in parallel, depending on your priorities. Both will deliver a tangible return on investment and fast payback period.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group onLinkedIn.

Virtual Infrastructure Management (Q&A from HP-VMware webinar)

pspielvogel — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:52:00 GMT

Thank you to everyone who attended the joint HP-VMware webinar on how to “Reduce Costs and Gain Control of Your Virtualized Infrastructure with Consolidated Management.” The speakers were Terry Lyons, Technical Alliance Manager, Enterprise Systems Management, VMware Corporation and Mike Shaw, Director of Product Marketing, HP.

If you missed the live event on October 7, 2009, you can view a replay here.

Here are the questions that people asked during the event, along with the answers.

Question	Answer
Great to see you are working closely with VMware. What are you doing to support other hypervisors?	For now, the HP Virtualization SPI supports VMware ESX and Microsoft HyperV. We are looking at adding other hypervisors, based on our customer’s needs.
Can you explain the difference between siloed management compared to Central? What is the benefit to centralizing?	Siloed management refers to managing each IT silo using a separate element manager. Centralized management relies on a single event console to consolidate and correlate events from disparate IT domains. Using a single event console can reduce costs and speed the time to problem resolution.
How do you plan the systems and applications for the data center capacity? Which kind of instruments/solutions do you use for the capacity planning?	Please see our blog post on capacity planning, written by Hyperformix.
What is the minimum release of HP Operation Manager that enables the VMware API integration, or is the VMware SPI the only dependency?	First, the Smart Plug-In (SPI) is called the Virtualization SPI, because it supports hypervisors beyond just VMware, although that is the most commonly requested platform. The Virtualization SPI works with Operations Manager on Windows 8.10, Operations Manager on Windows 8.16, Operations Manager on Unix 9.0, and Operations Manager on Linux 9.0.
Can you talk about how HP SIM fits in to this? i.e. hardware and VM Management. thanks,	HP Operations Manager consolidates events from all the various element managers across the enterprise. In the scenario you mention, SIM will send its events to Operations Manager where a single team can monitor the HP servers and any other infrastructure. There is a SIM Smart Plug-In (the SIM SPI is available at no charge) that integrates between SIM and Operations Manager. If an operator needs to perform advanced troubleshooting of the HP servers, he or she can launch SIM through the Operations Manager console.
Can this solution allow me to generate FTE savings?	We answered this during the webinar. This solution centralizes event management to a single Operations Manager console, leaving vCenter as the expert tool for advanced troubleshooting or escalations. This shifts event management to your tier 1 operators in the Operations Bridge, freeing your virtualization administrators (very hard to find these days) to work on more strategic tasks.
What specific HP software products are needed to implement the scenario presented?	We answered this during the webinar. You would use Operations Manager, agents for each of the managed nodes, along with the Virtualization SPI to manage the hypervisor.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group onLinkedIn.

Network Management Customer Success Story (webinar)

pspielvogel — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:29:00 GMT

My colleague, Aruna Ravichandran, in Network Management Center Product Marketing, asked me to share information about a customer webinar in which they describe their success in upgrading to NNMi. Since many Operations Bridges also manage networks in addition to the server infrastructure, I agreed. As an aside, OMi and NNMi share the same underlying technology in their respective causal engines.

Listen to this on-demand webinar with a customer working for a leading $15 Billion consumer manufacturing company. You will get the complete story on their upgrade to NNMi. The speaker focuses on the ROI he was able to demonstrate to his management to justify spending the time and resources to go through the upgrade process.

In this webinar, you will learn how the customer was able to:

Increase network availability from 97.5% to 99.98%
Reduce capital and operating costs by consolidating 5 servers down to 1
Increase operator efficiency and productivity by decreasing the time spent on L2/L3 escalations from 8 hours to 2 hours/day through automation
Enhance its disaster recovery solution with automated application synchronization

Here is the link to the recorded ROI webinar.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group onLinkedIn.

Capacity planning in virtualized environments

pspielvogel — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:42:00 GMT

In our joint webinar with VMware last week “Reduce Costs and Gain Control of Your Virtualized Infrastructure with Consolidated Management”, a question arose about capacity planning in a virtualized environments. I asked Rob Carruthers of Hyperformix to share his expertise on the topic. Readers of this blog may recall his podcasts on “virtualization and IT transparency” and “virtualization and capacity management”. Rob's response follows.
-Peter

Capacity planning is becoming more important because virtualization offers a safe and logical method to get more out of IT infrastructure elements at a lower cost. For example, many companies are stacking between 10 and 15 virtual machines on a single server. Traditionally, companies have been using rules-of-thumb estimates and spreadsheets for capacity planning. Over the past few years a host of automated solutions have come on the market to assist IT professionals with getting the most out of virtualized environments. These tools fall into two broad categories – Placement tools and capacity planning tools.

Placement tools – Help answer the question: How do I correctly place applications within a virtual cluster for optimal performance? These tools provide analysis of current resource consumption, behavior, and assist with placing complementary workloads within a virtual cluster. Some of these tools perform linear forecasting to estimate future resource consumption based on past growth.

Limitations: Growth is often not linear. Demand for some applications grows faster than others, which can result in mismatches in capacity. Some clusters may have excess capacity, while others have shortages. Most placement tools do not factor in end user response time SLAs, which can result in “green” status for capacity but “red” status when users experience application slow-downs.

Capacity planning tools – Examine both the migration of applications to the virtual environment, and the post migration capacity requirements. These tools generally allow IT to plan growth based on the number and types of users, and take into account the non-linear aspects of business growth and can translate that into an actionable capacity plan. More mature tools also consider the end user experience and can forecast response times that users will actually experience for the business transactions they are running. Tools which provide ongoing (not just one-shot plans) are referred to as capacity management tools.

Limitations: These tools generally require more granular data and automated collection to produce accurate and timely results. Hypervisor and system management vendors have been adding support for key virtualized metrics of late, remediating this issue and making capacity planning easier and faster.

The market need for both placement tools and capacity planning tools has encouraged several vendors to create solutions. Some key players in this space include: VMware, Vizioncore, Platespin, Cirba, Neptuny, and Hyperformix.

When evaluating which method and product to use, customers should first ask several big picture questions:

How can I get the most cost savings with virtualization without sacrificing the ability of my company to transact business?
What tools will improve my agility when Lines-of-Business owners change the plan, or our end customers do it for us?
Is my capacity planning tool integrated with my Hypervisor and System Management tools to provide “one source of the truth”?
Are the answers provided by my capacity planning tool accurate and reliable?

The full potential of virtualization depends on delivering financial returns back to the business. Capacity planning can ensure economic returns can be delivered safely without negatively impacting performance.

Rob Carruthers
Director of Product Marketing
Hyperformix

Managing Virtualization and BlackBerry Ecosystems (Q&A from Vivit technical webinar)

pspielvogel — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:30:00 GMT

Thank you to the 90 people who attended the Vivit webinar on What's New In Operations Management: Virtualization & BlackBerry Smart Plug-Ins Demo". Jon Haworth and Dan Haller presented on how to get more from your existing Operations Management environment by adding the new smart plug-ins for Virtualization and BlackBerry.

If you missed the event, you can view a replay of the webinar on the Vivit web site.

Here are the questions that people asked during the event, along with the answers.

Question	Answer
Managing Virtualization - System Support
We have OVPM for UNIX. Does VISPI still only work with OVPM for Windows? Currently we have a work around from HP Support to run with OVPM for UNIX. Will newer versions of VISPI work with OVPM on UNIX?	VI SPI 1.5 is supported with OMU 9.0 - so OMU on Solaris and HP-UX and OM on Linux. We now include Performance Manager (PM) with new installations of OMU 9.
Can you run the virtualization SPI if you only have the operations agent and not the performance agent?	No, you need both agents. Stay tuned for some updates regarding our agents. This issue will become moot on November 1.
Does VM SPI require both an OV agent and an OVPA agent on all the Virtual machines and Hosts?	No. You can choose to monitor the VMs with OM agents if you wish. If no OM agent is installed on a VM then a Target Connector license is required.
Does the agent install on ESX3i version 4 USB drive?	With VI SPI 1.5 the agents are no longer installed on the ESX / ESXi hypervisor - they are installed on the vMA (a virtual management appliance VM supplied by VMware). If your ESX3i version 4 USB drive has a vMA installed or is monitored by a remote vMA then the VI SPI (on the vMA) will be able to monitor it.
Do we have any plan for supporting Solaris and HP virtualized environment?	We are investigating other virtualization technologies. We named this product the Smart Plug-In for Virtualized Infrastructure specifically to indicate that it is not constrained to monitor just (e.g.) VMware. The first version of the VI SPI supported only VMware ESX. Version 1.5 added Hyper V and ESXi. While we cannot comment on specific product plans, you can follow the trend.
Is a LINUX VM guest required? We only have Windows guests.	The Linux vMA (Virtual Management Appliance) is provided by VMware - you just download it from their web site. It's pre-built so you do not have to 'know' anything to utilize it. VMware has information on vMA on their web site. http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vima/
Managing Virtualization - Licensing
When is 1.5 of the VI SPI going to be released	It achieved Manufacturing Release status week of September 28th and is just ready for shipping now.
How much is System Infrastructure SPI?	It is included with the OM agent.
Is there a limitation on the number of virtual machines that can be monitored?	We are suggesting that a single VI SPI is limited to monitoring 200 instances. Each host, guest (VM), resource group and cluster counts as one instance. We have tested considerably more than this but are using 200 as our recommendation.
Do you need a SPI license per ESX host or per vma?	Per VM host (ESX/ESXi or Hyper-V)
Is the VISPI different than the Nworks VMware SPI and can this be used as well?	Yes it is a completely different SPI to the Nworks / Veeam SPI - and has a fundamentally different architecture (high resolution agent based monitoring as opposed to agentless monitoring). I guess you could use both products but I'm not sure exactly what you would gain.
Managing BlackBerry Ecosystem
How does licensing of BES SPI work?	You purchase on BES SPI license for each BES server that you wish to monitor (physical or virtual). It is a flat price structure (no tiers etc.). Obviously you also need an OM agent for each BES server in order to be able to deploy the BES SPI.
Is the BES SPI available for OM 8.1 or is it only available for OMi?	The BES SPI includes the OMi Content Pack. So you could purchase the BES SPI for your OMW 8.10 system and make full use of its "SPI" functionality or, if you have OMi connected to OMW, you can also make use of the OMi features such as Health Perspective Views and Topology Based Event Correlation.
Is there any reference data that shows how BES performance improves when using SPI?	Not right now although we would expect some of the existing application and service availability / performance improvements for OM to be valid
Can the BlackBerry SPI account for devices that are turned off or out of range when monitoring the number of messages waiting to be sent?	The total queue size of unsent messages and calendar updates that are enqueued for all handhelds is monitored. A report (by device) of pending messages is not available at this time.
Does the HP smart plug-in for BES support a Lotus Notes environment?	Not right now. This capability is under investigation.
Other Operations Management Questions
How do I get more information about the integrated OVO and OVP agent...what is this new agent called?	At present this is just a licensing change. We will provide more information on November 1. We will be executing on some technology updates in the future so keep listening for news.
How often data are collected from devices and how?	As per all OM message threshold policies the schedule is easily configurable. Out of the box, some are collected every two minutes, some every 5 minutes and some less often.

For HP Operations Center, Jon Haworth.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group onLinkedIn.

Are you reinvesting IT savings? We want to hear your story.

Michael_Procopio — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:25:00 GMT

We want to hear how you are reinvesting your IT saving?

When the recession hit you answered the call. Whether it was through consolidation, virtualization, automation, or other means you found ways to save money in IT.

Now comes an equally important part: how are you reinvesting those savings? Because while cutting costs keeps you competitive, figuring out how to turn those savings into business value is the ultimate goal. New products and services, innovation, training, reallocation of IT funds to sales and marketing can all build business value and competitive advantage. If you’ve saved money through one of these initiatives, what areas are you targeting for reinvestment?

We’re exploring this topic in a feature article on HP.com and want to hear your story. We are not seeking any kind of endorsement, comment or opinion of HP or any of its products or services. As a source for the story, you’ll have a chance to review and approve any quotes or references prior being published.

Please respond if you’re interested and include an email address or phone number so we can follow-up. Michael [dot] Procopio [@] hp.com

2 upcoming virtualization webinars

pspielvogel — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:16:00 GMT

It seems that every conversation about IT infrastructure management eventually turns to virtualization. To help you better understand how we help you reduce the cost of administering virtualized environments and better manage performance of applications running in a virtual machine, we have two virtualization webinars next week.

1. Wednesday 10/7/09 Reduce Costs and Gain Control of Your Virtualized Infrastructure with Consolidated Management (HP and VMware)

2. Thursday 10/8/09 What's New in Operations Management: Virtualization & BlackBerry Smart Plug-ins Demo (HP and VIVIT)

Details and registration links appear below:

Webinar 1
Webinar title: Reduce Costs and Gain Control of Your Virtualized Infrastructure with Consolidated Management
Webinar date : Wednesday, October 7, 2009 12-1 PM Eastern Time, 9-10 AM Pacific Time

Abstract: Virtualization is hot! Even in this tough economy, virtualization was cited as the top spending priority for CIOs in a 2009 CIO Insight survey. Most organizations are seeing real benefits in flexibility and utilization but virtualization also creates some unique management challenges. Join HP and VMware, industry leaders in virtualization and infrastructure and application management for this one hour webinar to learn how you can reduce management costs and gain increased visibility and control of your virtual infrastructure.
During this webinar, you'll learn:
• How virtualization can introduce new management silos and actually increase the time and cost to detect and resolve issues
• How consolidated event and performance management can reduce costs and regain control
• How new technology from HP and VMware can pinpoint the root cause of system issues and eliminate duplication of effort chasing symptoms
Don't miss this chance to get maximum value from your virtualization investments.

Webinar 2
Webinar title: What's New in Operations Management: Virtualization & BlackBerry Smart Plug-ins Demo
Webinar date : Thursday, October 8, 2009 12-1 PM Eastern Time, 9-10 AM Pacific Time

Join us for an exclusive webinar on October 8th and be one of the first to see a demo of the new HP Operations Manager Smart Plug-ins for Virtualization and BlackBerry Enterprise Server. During this webinar and demo, we'll show you how to get more from your existing Operations Management environment by adding the new smart plug-ins for Virtualization and BlackBerryEnterprise Server. These new smart plug-ins include domain-specific discovery, fault detection and performance data collection policies that provide explicit insight into the application and their impact on the entire IT ecosystem.

For HP Operations Center, Peter Spielvogel.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group onLinkedIn.

Operations Manager 9.0 on Linux Now Available

pspielvogel — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:58:00 GMT

I am excited to announce general availability of HP Operations Manager 9.0 on Linux! (That's me holding the media kit for OML.) Although Operations Manager has been able to monitor Linux system for years, this is the first version of Operations Manager that can run on a Linux server. This gives the increasing number of customers that have moved to Linux a way to standardize on that platform for all their monitoring needs.

This latest version of Operations Manager extends a 15-year tradition of innovation. It gives organizations the ability to reduce the cost of managing their increasingly complex IT environments by consolidating events into a central console and to speed the time to resolution by identifying the root cause of event storms.

As previously noted in this blog, HP is positioned in the “Leaders” quadrant in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for IT Event Correlation and Analysis. IT Event Correlation and Analysis software helps decrease mean time to repair and prioritize IT support by how much value it provides to business processes. You can manage agents and perform configuration exchange among Operations Manager management servers on Unix, Windows and now Linux.

While it is a new offering that allows customers to leverage industry standard hardware (x86-64) and Linux open source software, it also shares the same level of stability and robustness as its ancestor, Operations Manager on Unix. We have taken a large step in convergence of Operations Manager functionality across different platforms and are convinced that customers will reap the benefits of this commonality including decreased training costs and lower development costs through re-use of common elements.

Judging from the volume of email and phone calls I’ve been receiving asking about availability of HP Operations Manager on Linux, I’m positive there will be a healthy demand for the newest member of the HP Operations Center family of products.

For HP Operations Center, Lillian Hull.

Get the latest updates on our Twitter feed @HPITOps http://twitter.com/HPITOps

Join the HP OpenView & Operations Management group onLinkedIn.