This was really cool.  It was literally the most impressive thing at HP discover for me.  It also tied in the Instant On Enterprise theme or slogan in seeing the power cloud maps and automation in the Matrix OS…  In the past as working as a customer and consultant I was able to implement and administrate Insight Control, however I never had the chance to use Insight Orchestratration.

Some Quick Notes that I took are:

• The Matrix software is version 6.3 running on a DL 380 Central Management Server
• Blades Chassis with Flex-10 Virtual Connect/Flex-Fabric…
• All HP Storage is Supported even Netapp and EMC…
• To use Storage Provisioning Manager you have to use an EVA or 3Par, I found it odd not 3Par Lefthand

Here is what we did in Lab…I’ll try to get slides, btw besides your workstation with a takehome lab manual they provided the information on a 17inch notebook as well.  It was really done Vegas style.

1) Creating Cloud Maps-  Inside Insight Orchestration Designer we created two templates on for physical servers on for virtual servers.  On the template we dropped the logical group objects for networks, storage, and servers being physical or virtual then published them.

2) Self Service Portal- We logged into this, and were presented with history of requests, running services, and resource utiliziation.  You can specify here in the self service portal also what users have access to what templates.  Next we created a service this creates a request to deploy your cloud map.  Once this is done the only thing left is to approve.  We approved and our infastructure was automatically deployed.  No lab hangs up.  It worked flawlessly.

3)  Importing Cloud Maps-  This was the coolest thing we did in lab, it really demonstrated the power and dynamic capability of the tool, definately makes you think Instant on Enterprise.  We logged into Insight Orchestration Designer and imported in a very elaborate cloud map.  It just showed how easy it would to replicate private cloud infrastructures through the process of importing and exporting cloud maps.

4) Storage Provisioning Manager and SPE –  As stated earlier this is the part that is only supported with EVA and 3Par.  It manages storage provisioning in the Matrix OS.  

 Two main use models are:

• Pre-poulated model the adminstrator populates the SPM catalog with storage services to be exposed to server management software, then sets access rights…Matrix then enables an administrator to request storage, which is sent to SPM as a storage services requests.  SPM then provides canidate services, and the administrator selects one or more apporiate volume services to fulfill the set of goals(requests)
• Request Based Model-  Administrator uses Matrix OS to request storage before it is imported or created.  The Administrator then adds the arrays and volumes to fulfil the goal.

In class we modified SPE (Storage Pool Entities) and changed storage type, portability, OS, and added a volume. 

Insight Capacity Planner/Advisor- 

• We created a planning senario selecting 20 legacy then gathering the performance statistics we could do senario forecasts with entering in CPU, Memory, Network I/O, and Disk I/O growth rate. 
• We also created a planning senario in which we consolidated to VMs
• Power and Price were also reportable and comparable

A lot.  I got to see in the flesh at HPDiscover last week, couldn’t really talk about it before then… So many new features and enhancements for one code release upgrade for existing x400 customers, that is the first thing that came to mind as I poured over all the new features in the P6000 from HP, not to mention the P6000 itself.  HP released the P6300 and P6500 looks like there isn’t an option as of yet for the 8400 replacement in terms of cache.  Can only guess 3Par is the probley the reason why…

Here is my summation, I am probley missing some:

1) Thin Provisioning –  This needed to be done, glad to see it is finally here.

2) Dynamic Capacity Management – This is free now.

3) Business Copy – Support for VMFS volumes; also support for large luns

4) Different Connectivity Options – You can get different connectivity options like iSCSI FCoE FCP this is nice

5) Shrink live luns

6) Change vRaid on Fly (can’t be thin provisioned)

7) Move Lun between diskgroup –  This is great; I wouldn’t want autotiering anyhow

Drive Form Factor shelves are either LFF 12 drives or 24 SFF SAS

9) 6Gb Sas Connectivity for drive shelves…

10) Multiple connectivity option e.g. fibre channel, iscsi, FCoE, not to mention combo option e.g. fibre channel and iSCSI

What’s Missing?

Still not sure on VAAI support and where this is headed

What do I have to do to get there?

Buy a P6000, or upgrade your existing commandview and xcs firmware

Anything you don’t like?

Yeah, I don’t like that they took the EVA4400 controller design and implemented it in the P6000 design with 2 controllers and 1 shelf.  I liked the previous EVA6400/8400 design much better.

How about the price?

The price is significantly less