Dell Server Pro Management Pack 2.1 User Manual

Dell Server PRO Management

Pack 2.1 for Microsoft

System Center

Virtual Machine Manager

User’s Guide

Notes and Cautions

NOTE: A NOTE indicates important information that helps you make better use of

your computer.

CAUTION: A CAUTION indicates potential damage to hardware or loss of data if

instructions are not followed.

____________________

Reproduction of these materials in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of Dell Inc. is strictly forbidden.

Trademarks used in this text: Dell™, the DELL logo, PowerEdge™, and OpenManage™ are trademarks of Dell Inc. Hyper-V trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell Inc. disclaims any proprietary interest in trademarks and trade names other than its own.

2011 – 10

, Microsoft®, Windows®, and Windows Server® are either

Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

What’s New . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Overview

Related Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

What is a PRO Tip?

Features and Functionalities

Understanding PRO Tip Management . . . . . . . . . . 9

Supported Operating Systems

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2 Using Dell Performance Resource

Optimization Pack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Monitoring Using SCVMM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Implementing Recovery Actions

Migration of Virtual Machines . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Monitoring Using PRO Specific Alerts on SCOM/SCE

Using Health Explorer to Reset Alerts

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

. . . . . . . . . . 14

. . . . . . . . . 17

Overriding Recovery Actions

Alerts and Recovery Actions

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Contents 3

3 Related Documentation and

Resources 37

Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Introduction

This document is intended for system administrators who use the Dell Server PRO Management Pack (Dell PRO Pack) to monitor Dell systems and take remedial action when an inefficient system is identified.

The Dell PRO Pack integrates with the following:

• Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007 SP1

• SCOM 2007 R2

• System Center Essentials (SCE) 2007 with SP1

• SCE 2010

• System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008

• SCVMM 2008 R2

• SCVMM 2008 R2 with SP1

This integration enables you to proactively manage virtual environments and ensure high availability of your Dell systems.

To implement PRO Pack, see the Dell Server PRO Management Pack 2.1 for Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Installation guide.

Also, see

Features and Functionalities

CAUTION: Due to the possibility of data corruption and/ or data loss, it is

recommended that the procedures in this document should be performed only by personnel with knowledge and experience of using the Microsoft Windows operating system and Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1/ 2010, or System Center Essentials 2007 SP1/2010.

NOTE: The readme file, DellMPv21_PROPack_Readme.txt, contains information

about the software and management station requirements, and known issues. It is also available at support.dell.com/manuals. The readme file is also packaged in the self-extracting executable Dell_PROPack_v2.1.0_A00.exe.

Introduction 5

What’s New

This release of PRO Pack supports the following:

• SCE 2010

• SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1

• New hardware support

• Additional Dell OpenManage alerts and Network Interface Card (NIC) alerts

• Improvements on the resolutions of some old alerts

For more information on the alerts and their resolutions, see Alerts and

Recovery Actions.

Overview

SCOM/SCE uses PRO-enabled Management Pack to collect and store information on Dell hardware along with a description of their health status. Dell PRO Pack works with SCOM/SCE (henceforth, referred to as Operations Manager) and SCVMM 2008 R2 /SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1 to manage Dell physical devices and their hosted virtual machines (VMs) using this available health information. Dell PRO Pack recommends remedial actions when monitored objects transition to an unhealthy state (for example, virtual disk failure or predictive drive error), by leveraging the monitoring and alerting capabilities of Operations Manager and remediation capabilities of SCVMM.

Also see:

Features and Functionalities

Understanding PRO Tip Management

6 Introduction

Related Terms

•

A managed system

Administrator (OMSA), which is monitored and managed using Operations Manager and SCVMM. It can be managed locally or remotely using supported tools.

•

A management station

Dell system that has the Operations Manager and SCVMM installed to manage virtual workloads.

is a Dell system running the Dell OpenManage Server

managing station

is a Microsoft Windows -based

What is a PRO Tip?

PRO (Performance and Resource Optimization) Tip is a feature that monitors your virtual infrastructure and provide alerts when there is an opportunity to optimize the usage of these resources. A PRO Tip window contains the description of the event that generated the PRO Tip and the suggested remedial action. This feature allows you to perform a load-balance of VMs between physical hosts, when specific threshold values are reached. Alternatively, you can migrate VMs when a hardware failure is detected.

The PRO Tip window in the SCVMM Administrator console enables you to view active PRO Tips for the host groups. The Operations Manager console displays the corresponding alerts as well, to ensure a consistent monitoring experience.

You can manually implement the recommended action mentioned in the PRO Tip. You can also configure the PRO tip to automatically implement the recommended action.

Introduction 7

Features and Functionalities

Dell PRO Pack:

• Performs PRO-management of Dell PowerEdge systems running Microsoft Hyper-V platforms, by continually monitoring the health of your physical and virtual infrastructure.

• Works with Operations Manager and SCVMM to detect events such as loss of power supply redundancy, higher temperature than threshold values, system storage battery error, virtual disk failure, and so on. For more information on events supported by Dell PRO Pack, see Alerts and

Recovery Actions.

• Generates PRO Tip when the monitored hardware moves to an unhealthy state.

• Performs VM live migration with no downtime. For more information, see

VM Live Migration.

• Overrides Dell PRO Pack default recovery actions. For more information, see Overriding Recovery Actions.

• Minimizes downtime by implementing the remedial action provided on PRO Tips. The two remedial actions are:

•

Restrict:

temporarily unavailable for placing new VMs till the maintenance tasks are complete.

•

Restrict and migrate:

running VMs are migrated from an unhealthy server to a healthy server to prevent loss of service. For more information, see Implementing

Recovery Actions.

In this mode, it is recommended that servers are made

In this mode, it is recommended that all

8 Introduction

Understanding PRO Tip Management

Managed System 1 Managed System 2

Management StationManagement Station

Dell PowerEdge

Hyper-V Hypervisor

Management Agents

(SCOM/SCE & SCVMM)

Dell OMSA

VM VM

Dell PowerEdge

Hyper-V Hypervisor

Dell OMSA

Dell PowerEdge

SCE 2007 SP1/2010 SCOM 2007 SP1/R2

Dell PowerEdge

SCVMM 2008/R2, R2 SP1

Notifies

Alerts

Dell

PRO Pack

Management Agents

(SCOM/SCE & SCVMM)

This section explains a typical Dell PRO Pack setup and the sequence of events involved in PRO tip management.

Figure 1-1. Interaction of Components

In the figure, a group of PowerEdge systems act as the managed systems and two PowerEdge systems act as management stations hosting the Operations Manager and SCVMM. OMSA generates alerts with corresponding severity when there is a transition to an unhealthy state. The same alerts are monitored by Dell PRO Pack for PRO. Dell PRO Pack maps the OMSA alerts with its remedial action.

Introduction 9

Table 1-1describes the sequence of events that occur in PRO Tip management.

Table 1-1. Sequence of events with description

Sequence Number Event

1 Operations Manager agents on the host are enabled to

detect the warning, error, or failure alerts that are generated by OMSA.

2 Alert is sent to Operations Manager.

3 Operations Manager console displays active PRO

alerts.

4 Operations Manager notifies the alert and the

associated PRO Tip ID to SCVMM.

5 SCVMM displays a corresponding entry in the

PRO Tip window with remedial action.

6 Implement the PRO Tip to enable recovery action on

the managed system by placing the managed system in the Restrict mode, or Restrict and Migrate mode. system.

7 SCVMM notifies Operations Manager about the

successful completion of the recovery action.

8 The SCVMM console displays the status of the PRO

Tip as Resolved after it is successfully implemented.

9 PRO Tip disappears from SCVMM PRO Tip window.

10 PRO Active alert disappears from SCOM.

For more information on the type of events and the associated remedial actions, see

Alerts and Recovery Actions

10 Introduction

Supported Operating Systems

The Dell PRO Pack supported operating systems on the managed system and management station are as follows:

Managed system:

The managed system for PRO Pack is a Virtual Machine Manager Server. For more information, see technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc764213.aspx

Management station:

For the list of supported configurations of SCOM, SCE, and SCVMM, see the following:

• SCOM 2007 R2 -

• SCOM 2007 SP1 -

• SCE 2007 SP1 -

• SCE 2010 -

• SCVMM 2008/R2/R2 with SP1 -

us/library/cc764231.aspx

technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb309428.aspx

technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd819933.aspx

technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff741762.aspx

technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb422876.aspx

technet.microsoft.com/en-

Introduction 11

12 Introduction

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