New Capabilities by Product Area

VSE Agent Software Installation is now integrated with the HP SIM Configure or Repair Agents task. This enables you to install a default set of VSE agents and providers to Windows, HP-UX and Linux managed systems. This capability is accessed by choosing ConfigureConfigure or Repair Agents and then selecting the “Install VSE Management Agents” option.

Installation of agent software to HP ProLiant Linux managed systems is supported on HP ProLiant Windows CMS. This capability is accessed via ConfigureConfigure VSE AgentsInstall Linux VSE Agents.

ID-VSE 4.1 Support for OpenVMS Systems  In ID-VSE 4.1, the Virtualization Manager and Capacity Advisor collect, process and display data from OpenVMS systems. ID-VSE 4.1 requires installation of the HP WBEM Services kit 2.8 and the HP WBEM Provider kit version 1.7 to collect data from OpenVMS systems. The WBEM kits and documentation reside on the OpenVMS WBEM homepage. Click on the “HP Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) services” link at the following website: http://www.hp.com/products/openvms/systemmanagement

HP Insight Orchestration extends Insight Dynamics – VSE to provide rapid provisioning and repurposing of infrastructure services from shared resource pools using a self-service portal. Insight Orchestration delivers advanced template-driven design, provisioning, and ongoing operations for multinode, multi-tier infrastructure services built around HP infrastructure technology.

Insight Orchestration provides lifecycle management for groups of physical and virtual servers. Insight Orchestration includes:

HP Virtualization Manager visualization has greater scalability and performance in this release. Visualization of x86 ProLiant Linux nodes has also been added. A number of new UI features have been added, including a Focus icon, which allows you to focus on a single compartment and filter out other compartments, the Onboard Administrator icon, which allows one-click access to the Onboard Administrator for an enclosure, an iLO console for server blades, and a VMM console for ProLiant virtual machines. New tools are also available from the Insight Software suite on a Windows Central Management Server (CMS), including the Insight Orchestration icon, which allows you to deploy environments by using templates and the Insight Recovery icon, which allows you to setup and administer disaster recovery sites.

HP Application Discovery inventories applications that are running and/or installed on servers in a network, and allows you to centrally monitor application activity. In combination with HP Virtualization Manager, Application Discovery allows you to group running processes into applications that can be added to a workload for more comprehensive resource management. This release provides simplified user authorization, agent configuration without certificate exchange, and numerous defect fixes.

HP Capacity Advisor provides capacity analysis and planning software that allows you to anticipate changes needed to optimize workloads across your virtual server environment for the best utilization of server resources. In this release, Capacity Advisor provides an agentless data collection alternative for Microsoft Windows servers; a hypervisor-specific utilization overhead calculation when automating server consolidation planning; usability improvements in menu organization and labeling, Edit Scenario controls and meters, and the Profile Viewer; as well as improved performance and accuracy in Smart Solver solutions and Capacity Advisor report results.

HP Partition Manager (product number B.31.02.04.02) allows you to configure and manage nPartitions on HP server systems and perform complex configuration tasks without having to remember commands and parameters. This is a maintenance release.

Virtual Server Environment Configuration Assistant (vseassist) helps you configure HP VSE components and troubleshoot installation problems. In this release, vseassist has been extended with additional checks supporting new features of VSE Management Software 4.1 and Insight Dynamics – VSE 4.1, including checks for required version of VMware ESX hosts and Windows Service Pack 2. This utility is included with HP Virtual Server Environment Management for Integrity systems and HP Insight Dynamics – VSE for HP ProLiant systems.

Logical Server Management has been enhanced to provide expanded technology support and ease-of-use features. You can now create and manage logical servers on HP Integrity server blades (running HP-UX, Linux, and Windows), in addition to HP ProLiant servers (running Linux and Windows). You can create logical servers on Hyper-V hypervisors in addition to ESX hypervisors, manage recovery for logical servers using HP Insight Recovery, and provide life cycle services for groups of physical or virtual servers using Insight Orchestration. Logical Server Management also provides read-only support in Virtual Connect blade logical servers for multiple networks. Optionally, it lets you validate your Virtual Connect blade logical server storage configuration by performing on-demand checking of Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) and Modular Smart Array (MSA) storage. Logical Server Management now modifies storage definitions with pre-presented LUNs and provides multiple storage pools to logical servers. In addition, the modify logical servers feature, job status feature, and LSMUTIL database utility have been enhanced and several features have been made easier to use, such as importing logical servers and powering a logical server on or off.

For more information, see the white paper Using logical servers: Simplifying data center management with HP Insight Dynamics – VSE.

Insight Dynamics – VSE 4.1 now provides a centralized launch point for licensing. Instead of using multiple menu items for various products' licensing screens, licensing is accessed through the HP SIM License Manager. Select Deploy -> License Manager... on the HP SIM menu, select the appropriate license type, and then click the Manage Licenses... button.