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Servers and Storage Technology for the Adaptive Enterprise

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Issue 1/2006

All clear for business takeoff

It may seem a paradox, but businesses that use IT most effectively often spend far less than their competitors. The reason is they focus on attaining more value from what they do spend. With management tools – such as the new HP Control Tower – companies can simplify management of resources and make more effective use of IT staff time.

In the average data centre, the cost of IT operations can amount up to 80% of total cost, while the initial purchase is only 20%. Within the greater outlay are costs lost to low productivity, downtime and system administration.

By achieving higher device-to-administrator ratios, a data centre not only has the ability to lower IT management costs, it can also increase productivity and flexibility. Yet, one of the biggest barriers to achieving this is the hard-wired, static, silo design of the IT infrastructure. This forces manual, one-to-one IT practices.

Time-smart environments

In order to transform modern data centres into time-smart environments, IT managers need to lower costs and increase productivity. As part of the HP BladeSystem c-Class launch, this game-changing technology aims to achieve lower costs and productivity with a 200-to-one device/administrator ratio. This is accomplished with out-of-the-box automation and management tools that will enable administrators to spend 40 hours or less per server per three years.

Transforming a data centre into a time-smart environment requires a portfolio of tools, such as HP Systems Insight Manager (SIM), the HP ProLiant Essentials Rapid Deployment Pack (RDP), Integrated Lights-Out 2 (iLO 2) and the new HP Control Tower for the HP BladeSystem.

Control Tower is an all-in-one, blade-centric management and deployment software solution built on Linux. It offers simplified mass-management capability designed to give administrators deep, automated control over BladeSystem and HP ProLiant BL server deployments of both Linux and Windows environments. The graphic interface and structure is highly intuitive to use, even for administrators unfamiliar with Linux.

The solution stems from the Control Tower software from RLX Technologies, which HP purchased in October 2005. The RLX technology has received many awards, including: Technology of Year Award Best Blade Server Solution from InfoWorld for two years in succession (2003–2004) and an Excellent Blade Server Rating by eWeek in September 2004.

Now a key component in HP’s unified infrastructure management portfolio, the solution enables en masse systems management. This includes both imaging and scripting based deployment for Linux and Microsoft® Windows server blades. A distinct differentiator of Control Tower is the easy-to-use interface. Tailored for the specific tasks and operations of blades, Control Tower is optimised for the way Linux administrators deploy and manage servers.

Blade management simplified

Control Tower is particularly suited for smaller or medium-sized organisations that do not have extensive management expertise or existing management processes and tools, and that are beginning to deploy Blades. Within less than 30 minutes, it is possible to configure a management server, including database, monitoring services and management applications.

Also ideal for Linux-centric organisations or those migrating to Linux-hosted applications to the BladeSystem, Control Tower has extensive discovery, health monitoring, alert and control capabilities – all offered via a single console. The solution uses a secure and separate management network for fast discovery, monitoring and full remote management using iLO 2. All blade deployments are served over this management network.

When to implement

Control Tower is hosted on a single Linux server and recommended for departments or organisations where the BladeSystem on Linux is being deployed or in use. The solution is one of the replacements for the discontinued Rapid Deployment Pack – Linux Edition. It is complementary to SIM and the ProLiant Essentials Rapid Deployment Pack (RDP) – Windows Edition.

SIM is recommended if the BladeSystem/Linux environment is part of a larger heterogeneous environment with a mix of platforms (for example, ProLiant, Integrity or StorageWorks or a mix of operating systems). This provides systems management at the larger management domain level. RDP Windows Edition should be implemented in environments deploying a mix of ProLiant DL, ML or BL (HP BladeSystem) servers where administrators want to use one deployment tool across all servers.

Control Tower for HP BladeSystems is available since May 2006. Three licensing options are offered: single-server blade, eight-server blade and a flexible quantity that is available with a single option kit and single license key. Evaluation licenses can be downloaded from the HP website. In addition, HP offers a 90-day getting-started period for telephone support for purchased software.