Dell Active System Manager Version 8.1 Manual

Active System Manager Version 8.1 Installation Guide

Notes, cautions, and warnings

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2015 - 04

Rev. A00

Contents

1 Overview.................................................................................................................5

About this Document............................................................................................................................5

What is New in this Release.................................................................................................................. 5

Accessing Online Help.......................................................................................................................... 6

Other Documents You May Need........................................................................................................ 6

Licensing................................................................................................................................................6

Important Note...................................................................................................................................... 7

ASM Port and Protocol Information..................................................................................................... 7

2 Installation and Quick Start................................................................................ 9

Information Prerequisites......................................................................................................................9

Installing Active System Manager......................................................................................................... 9

Deployment Prerequisites ............................................................................................................10

Prerequisites for M1000e (with MXL), S5000, and Compellent...................................................14

Prerequisites for Rack Server, S5000, and Compellent............................................................... 16

Prerequisites for M1000e (with MXL), S5000, Brocade, and Compellent...................................16

Prerequisites for Rack Server, S5000, Brocade and Compellent................................................ 18

Prerequisites for M1000e (with MXL), Cisco Nexus, and Compellent.........................................19

Prerequisites for Rack Server, Cisco Nexus, and Compellent..................................................... 21

Prerequisites for M1000e (with MXL), Cisco Nexus, Brocade, and Dell Compellent................. 22

Prerequisites for Rack Server, Cisco Nexus, Brocade, and Dell Compellent..............................25

Prerequisites for M1000e (with MXL and FC FlexIOM), Brocade, and Dell Compellent............ 26

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) Prerequisites...............................................27

Deploying ASM from VMware vSphere Client..............................................................................27

Deploying ASM using SCVMM...................................................................................................... 28

Deploying ASM on Hyper-V host................................................................................................. 29

Rectifying mounting errors during Hyper–V deployment.......................................................... 30

3 Configuring ASM Virtual Appliance.................................................................31

Changing Dell Administrator Password..............................................................................................31

Configuring Static IP Address in the Virtual Appliance...................................................................... 31

Configuring Virtual Appliance with Two NICS...................................................................................32

Configuring ASM Virtual Appliance as PXE Boot Responder.............................................................32

4 Customizing Virtual Machine Templates for VMware and Hyper-V.........33

Customizing Virtual Machine Templates or Virtual Machines for VMware or Hyper-V...................33

Customizing Linux Template..............................................................................................................35

Customizing Windows Template....................................................................................................... 36

5 Configuring ASM Virtual Appliance for NetApp Storage Support.............38

Adding NetApp Ruby SDK...................................................................................................................38

Enable HTTP or HTTPs for NFS share................................................................................................ 39

Configuring NetApp Storage Component.........................................................................................39

6 Completing Initial Configuration.................................................................... 41

A Installing Windows ADK 8.1 for OS Prep for Windows............................... 43

Creating WinPE Image and Updating Install Media for Windows 2008 R2, Windows 2012 and

Windows 2012 R2................................................................................................................................43

Adding OS Image Repositories.....................................................................................................44

B Configuring DHCP or PXE on External Servers.............................................47

Configure DHCP on Windows 2012 DHCP Server............................................................................ 47

Create the DHCP User Class.........................................................................................................47

Create the DHCP Policy................................................................................................................48

Create the Boot File Scope Option.............................................................................................. 48

Configure DHCP on Windows 2008 DHCP Server..................................................................... 48

Configuring DHCP for Linux.........................................................................................................50

Overview

Active System Manager (ASM) is Dell’s unified management product that provides a comprehensive infrastructure and workload automation solution for IT administrators and teams. ASM simplifies and automates the management of heterogeneous environments, enabling IT to respond more rapidly to dynamic business needs.

IT organizations today are often burdened by complex data centers that contain a mix of technologies from different vendors and cumbersome operational tasks for delivering services while managing the underlying infrastructure. These tasks are typically performed through multiple management consoles for different physical and virtual resources, which can dramatically slow down service deployment.

ASM features an enhanced user interface that provides an intuitive, end-to-end infrastructure and workload automation experience through a unified console. This speeds up workload delivery and streamlines infrastructure management, enabling IT organizations to accelerate service delivery and time to value for customers.

This document contains information about virtual appliance and software requirements of ASM, and the resources supported by ASM such as chassis, servers, storage, network switches, and adapters.

About this Document

This document version is updated for ASM, version 8.1.

What is New in this Release

• FX2 Support

• Template based flexible BIOS and RAID configuration

• File upload for MXL configuration

• RHEL and Centos 7.0 support

• I/O Aggregator, Uplink, and VLT Configuration

• 13G server performance data report

• Seamless upgrade for the appliance, templates and services

• Import and Export ASM templates

• Add workload vLANs to running services

• Custom firmware bundles including updating the repository baseline

• Deployment improvements including the ability to assign a specific hostname to IP address and pick a specific server for a deployment

Accessing Online Help

ASM online help system provides context-sensitive help available from every page in ASM user interface.

After you log in to ASM user interface, you can access the online help in any of the following ways:

• To open context-sensitive online help for the active page, click ?, and then click Help.

• To open context-sensitive online help for a dialog box, click ? in the dialog box.

Additionally, in the online help, use the Enter search items option in the Table of Contents to search for a specific topic or keyword.

Licensing

ASM licensing is based on the total number of managed resources, except for the VMware vCenter and Windows SCVMM instances

ASM 8.1 supports following license types:

• Trial License — A Trial license can be procured through the account team and it supports up to 25 resources for 90 days.

• Standard License — A Standard license grants full access.

You will receive an e-mail from customer service with the instructions for downloading ASM. The license file is attached to that email.

If you are using ASM for the first time, you must upload the license file through the Initial Setup wizard. To upload and activate subsequent licenses, click Settings → Virtual Appliance Management.

1. On the Virtual Appliance Management page, under the License Management section, click Add.

License Management window is displayed.

2. Click Browse button beside Upload License and select an Evaluation license file, and then click

Open.

You will get information regarding license type, number of resources and expiration date of the uploaded license. on License Management window.

3. Click Save to apply the evaluation license.

4. After uploading the license file, the following information about the license is displayed:

• License Type

• Number of Resources

• Number of Used Resources

• Number of Available Resources

• Expiration Date

5. To replace the Evaluation license with standard license click the same Add button under License

Management section, click Browse button beside Upload License and select a regular standard

license file, and then click Open. You will get information regarding license type, number of resources and expiration date of the

uploaded license. on License Management window.:

6. Click Save to apply the standard license, It replace the evaluation license with standard license.

After uploading the license file, the following information about the license is displayed:

• License Type

• Number of Resources

• Number of Used Resources

• Number of Available Resources

You can add multiple standard licenses. After uploading multiple licenses, all the licenses are aggregated together and displayed as one under License Management section

NOTE: If you try to upload the same standard license second time, you will get an error message stating that License has already been used.

Important Note

Engaging support requires that all prerequisites are fulfilled by customer or deployment team. Third party hardware support is not provided by Dell services. Discovery, inventory and usage of third party hardware must be in the expected state as described in the prerequisites and configuring sections of this guide.

ASM Port and Protocol Information

The following ports and communication protocols used by ASM to transfer and receive data.

Table 1. ASM Port and Protocol Information

Ports Protocols Port Type Direction Use

22 SSH TCP Inbound /

I/O Module

Outbound

23 Telnet TCP Outbound I/O Module

53 DNS TCP Outbound DNS Server

67, 68 DHCP UDP Outbound DHCP Server

69 TFTP UDP Inbound Firmware Updates

80, 8080 HTTP TCP Inbound /

HTTP Communication

Outbound

123 NTP UDP Outbound Time Synchronization

162, 11620 SNMP UDP Inbound SNMP Synchronization

443 HTTPS TCP Inbound /

Secure HTTP Communication

Outbound

443, 4433 WS-MAN TCP Outbound iDRAC and CMC Communication

129, 445 CIFS TCP Inbound /

Back up program date to CIFS share

Outbound

2049 NFS TCP Inbound /

Back up program data to NIFS share

Outbound

Installation and Quick Start

The following sections provide installation and quick start information, including step-by-step instructions for deploying and configuring ASM in VMware vSphere or Microsoft virtualization environment. Only one instance of ASM should be installed within a network environment. Exceeding this limit can cause conflicts in device communication.

Information Prerequisites

Before you begin the installation process:

• Gather TCP/IP address information to assign to the virtual appliance.

• Deploying the ASM virtual appliance to a VMware vSphere environment requires that both VMware vCenter Server and VMware vSphere Client be running.

• Deploying the ASM virtual appliance to a Microsoft Windows virtualization environment requires that the hyper-v host on which ASM will be deployed is installed on a running instance of SCVMM..

• Download ASM appliance file, which contains either the virtual appliance .ovf file for (VMware) or the virtual appliance virtual hard drive .vhd (Hyper-V).

• Determine the host on which the ASM virtual appliance will be installed. You can use any host managed by VMware vCenter or Hyper-V manager that has network connectivity with your out-ofband (OOB), management, and potentially iSCSI networks. This is required for discovery to complete successfully.

CAUTION: ASM virtual appliance functions as a regular virtual machine. Therefore, any interruptions or shut downs affects the overall functionality.

Installing Active System Manager

Before you begin, make sure that systems are connected and VMware vCenter Server, VMware vSphere Client, and SCVMM are running.

Deployment Prerequisites

Specification Prerequisite

Connection Requirements

• The virtual appliance is able to communicate with the out-of-band management network and any other networks from which you want to discover the resources.

• The virtual appliance is able to communicate with the PXE network in which the appliance is deployed. It is recommended to configure the virtual appliance directly on the PXE network, and not on the external network.

• The virtual appliance is able to communicate with the hypervisor management network.

• The DHCP server is fully functional with appropriate PXE settings to PXE boot images from ASM in your deployment network.

Dell PowerEdge Servers

• Dell PowerEdge Servers are configured and have the management IP address and login credentials assigned.

NOTE: The user name (root) and password required.

• Any device being used in the boot order, such as C: Drive or NICs, must already be enabled in the boot order. This applies when booting to SD Card, Hard Disk, or FC, which are listed as C: in boot order or PXE and iSCSI, which are listed as NICs in the boot order. ASM will enable the supporting device connectivity and adjust the boot order, but cannot enable/disable device names in the boot order.

• Before performing Fibre Channel boot from SAN, a server must be configured with the QLogic fiber channel card, which is configured with the appropriate scan selection. To verify this in the BIOS and QLogic device settings, press F2 for System Setup, and then go to Device Settings → <Target QLogic Fibre

Channel adapter name> Target Configuration → Boot Scan, and then

select "First LUN".

NOTE: For all servers prior to ASM discovery,make sure the RAID controller is enabled if it is available, and any unsupported 1Gb NICs are disabled.

After updating these devices setting, you should restart the server to ensure that Lifecycle Controller system inventory is updated.

→ Fibre Channel

Specification Prerequisite

C-Series Server

• Network and BIOS configuration cannot be done using appliance. You need to do it manually.

• Hard disk should be available for server to install OS.

• You need to set single NIC to PXE boot..This should be set as first boot device and hard disk should be set as second boot device.

• network must be configured on top of rack switch which are connected to C-Series server

• Necessary VLAN must be configured on the service facing port of that top of rack switch.

NOTE: You need to place PXE VLAN-untagged for any kind of OS deployment. If it’s Windows and Linux bare metal OS installation, you need to set worklaod network and you need to set Hypervisor management network for ESXi deployment.

Dell PowerConnect 7024 switches

Cisco Servers

Dell Force10 S4810 switches (Top-of-Rack [ToR])

N-Series Switches

• The management IP address is configured for the switches.

• ASM creates the virtual machine (VM) traffic VLANs dynamically.

• You have access to the switches with passwords enabled..

• Switches have SSH connectivity enabled.

• Network and BIOS configuration cannot be done using appliance. You need to do it manually.

• The management IP address is configured for the ToR switches.

• Any VLAN which is dynamically provisioned by ASM must exist on the ToR switch.

• Server facing ports must be in hybrid mode.

• Server facing ports must be in switchport mode.

• Server facing ports must be configured for spanning tree portfast.

• If DCB settings are used, it must be properly configured on the switch for converged traffic.

• The management IP address is configured for the switches.

• ASM creates the virtual machine (VM) traffic VLANs dynamically.

• You have access to the switches with passwords enabled.

• Switches have SSH connectivity enabled.

Specification Prerequisite

• Server facing ports must be in hybrid mode.

• Server facing ports must be in switch port mode.

• Server facing ports must be configured for spanning tree portfast.

• If DCB settings are used, it must be properly configured on the switch for converged traffic.

Dell PowerEdge M I/O Aggregator

Dell Networking MXL 10/40GbE blade switch

• Server facing ports must be in hybrid mode.

• Server facing ports must be in switchport mode.

• Server facing ports must be configured for spanning tree portfast.

• If ASM is used to do the initial configuration of credentials and IPs on the IOM in the blade chassis, you need to make sure, no enabled password is configured on the switches.

• Any VLAN which is dynamically provisioned by ASM must exist on the switch.

• Server facing ports must be in hybrid mode..

• Server facing ports must be configured for spanning tree portfast.

• Make sure DCB settings are configured on each port.

• If ASM is used to do the initial configuration of credentials and IPs on the IOM in the blade chassis, you need to make sure, no enabled password is configured on the switches.

Dell 8 | 4 I/O modules

EqualLogic Storage Array

• The management IP address is configured for the Brocade switches.

Brocade switch should be only in Access Gateway Mode.

• The management and group IP addresses are configured for Storage Array.

• All storage array members are added to the group.

NOTE: The Equallogic management interface must be configured to enable dedicated management network.

• EqualLogic array must have a SNMP community name set to "public".

Specification Prerequisite

Compellent Storage Array

• The management IP address is configured for Storage Array

• All storage array members are added to the group.

• Virtual ports must be enabled on compellent.

• Follow Compellent best-practices for storage configuration.

VMware vCenter 5.1 or 5.5

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM)

PXE Setup

Dell PowerEdge M1000e chassis

• VMware vCenter 5.1 or 5.5 is configured and accessible through the management and hypervisor management network.

• Appropriate licenses are deployed on the VMware vCenter.

• See System Center Virtual Machine Manager

(SCVMM) Prerequisites.

• Either use Active System Manager as the PXE responder by configuring through ASM user interface, by Getting Started page or follow instructions in Configuring ASM Virtual Appliance as PXE Responder.

• Server facing ports must be in hybrid mode.

• Server facing ports must be in switchport mode.

NOTE: Prior to deployment of M1000e server, you need to disable FlexAddress every server in the chassis.

To disable FlexAddress, follow the path:CMC > Server Overview > Setup > FlexAddress.

You need to turn off server to disable FlexAddress. Ideally this should be done prior discovering the server.

Dell PowerEdge FX2 chassis

This setting applies to the chassis and the servers in the chassis, not to the IOM switches such as MXL or IOA.

• Server facing ports must be configured for spanning tree portfast.

• Server facing ports must be in hybrid mode.

• Server facing ports must be in switchport mode.

Specification Prerequisite

NOTE: Prior to deployment of FX2 server, you need to disable FlexAddress every server in the chassis.

To disable FlexAddress, follow the path:CMC > Server Overview > Setup > FlexAddress.

You need to turn off server to disable FlexAddress. Ideally this should be done prior discovering the server.

This setting applies to the chassis and the servers in the chassis, not to the IOM switches such as MXL or IOA.

• Server facing ports must be configured for spanning tree portfast.

Prerequisites for M1000e (with MXL), S5000, and Compellent

The following table describes the prerequisites for the FCoE solution offered using M1000e (with MXL), S5000, and Compellent. For more information, see http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/extras/m/ white_papers/20387203

Resource Prerequisites

MXL • DCB needs to be enabled.

• VLT needs to be disabled.

• FIP Snooping feature needs to be enabled on the MXL.

Conf Feature fip-snooping

• Port-channel member interfaces needs to have below configuration.

interface range tengigabitethernet 0/33 – 36 port-channel-protocol lacp port-channel 128 mode active exit

protocol lldp no advertise dcbx-tlv ets-reco dcbx port-role auto-upstream no shut exit

• Port-channel connecting S5000 switch needs to have following configuration.

interface port-channel 128 portmode hybrid switchport fip-snooping port-mode fcf

Resource Prerequisites

• Server facing ports need to have following configuration..

portmode hybrid switchport protocol lldp dcbx port-role auto-downstream no shut exit

S5000

Following is the prerequisite for S5000.

• Enable Fibre Channel capability and Full Fabric mode.

feature fc fc switch-mode fabric-services

• Enable FC ports connecting to Compellent storage array and FC ports connecting to other S5000 switch via ISL links.

interface range fi 0/0 - 7 no shut

• Create DCB Map.

dcb-map SAN_DCB_MAP priority-group 0 bandwidth 60 pfc off priority-group 1 bandwidth 40 pfc on priority-pgid 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 exit

• Create a FCoE VLAN.

fcoe-map default_full_fabric fabricid <FCoE VLAN ID> vlan <FCoE VLAN Id> fc-map <FC MAP> exit

NOTE: Following is the process of generating the FC MAP.

For generating the fc-map use below ruby code.

Compellent

Here VLAN ID is FCoE VLAN ID.

fc_map = vlanid.to_i.to_s(16).upcase[0..1] fc_map.length == 1 ? fc_map = "0EFC0#{fc_map}" : fc_map = "0EFC#{fc_map}"

Fault domain need to be created as per Compellent best practices.

Prerequisites for Rack Server, S5000, and Compellent

The following table describes the prerequisites for the FCoE solution offered using Rack Server, S5000, and Compellent. For more information, see http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/extras/m/ white_papers/20387203

Resource Prerequisites

S5000 • DCB needs to be enabled.

• VLT needs to be disabled.

• Enable Fibre Channel capability and Full Fabric mode.

feature fc fc switch-mode fabric-services

• Enable FC ports connecting to Compellent storage array and FC ports connecting to other S5000 switch via ISL links.

interface range fi 0/0 - 7 no shut

• Create DCB Map.

dcb-map SAN_DCB_MAP priority-group 0 bandwidth 60 pfc off priority-group 1 bandwidth 40 pfc on priority-pgid 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 exit

• Create a FCoE VLAN.

interface vlan <VLAN ID> [Create VLAN for FCoE] exit

• Create FCoE Map.

fcoe-map default_full_fabric fabric-id <FCoE VLAN ID> vlan <FCoE VLAN Id> fc-map <FC MAP> exit

Compellent

Fault domain need to be created as per Compellent best practices.

Prerequisites for M1000e (with MXL), S5000, Brocade, and Compellent

The following table describes the prerequisites for the FCoE solution offered using M1000e (with MXL), S5000, Brocade, and Compellent. For more information, see http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/ extras/m/white_papers/20387203

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