HP vPv installation

HP Virtual Performance Viewer - installation & configuration

It's been a while since I looked at vPv, so now that a new version has been released (2.20) I thought I'd capture the install into my Lab below and go through some of the features you can check out. You can download the Product from here:

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/software-solutions/vpv-server-virtualization-management/try-now.html

Once installed it goes into a community edition mode but you can switch to a 60 day premium edition to try out the more advanced features. The OVF is about 1.26GB so not too bad.

Go to the vSphere Web Client and deploy the OVF - right click the VM Folder you want to deploy to and click Deploy OVF Template

Browse to the location of the OVA file and Click Next

Click Next

Click Accept and Click Next

Enter a Name for the vPv VM and Click Next

Choose an appropriate configuration size, there are three choices, small above and medium and large below with different virtual hardware requirements

Select an ESXi Host and Click Next

Select a Datastore and Click Next

Select a Network and Click Next

Enter in the appliance network configuration appropriate to your environment, Click Next

Click Finish and the OVA will be deployed

 

The VM then powers on with the following hardware for a small deployment in my case

 

Go to the following URL to connect to your new appliance (no logon required)
https://192.168.10.21:8444/PV/
(Change the IP / Hostname as appropriate)

Click Add Datasource and you can see there are a good few options, more than just VMware!

If you have all these environments you'll love this tool! I'll just add in my vCenter Server

Click Test Connection, than Add if successful. Note: I tried using administrator, lab\administrator, administrator@lab.local but it doesn't appear to like AD credentials, the Test Connection fails each time. The SSO logon is fine however.

You are currently using a community license but you can change this to get at more interesting features

Click Start Evaluation License

Click Ok

Check the license options, you're now running in Premium Mode (I don't think you can just test Express but you may as well try ALL the options in Premium!!). There are Server and OSI licensing models but speak to your HP account contact for pricing.
The trending and forecasting can take a few days to load sufficient data to start giving you accurate reports and trending.

There is also an agent you can install on the guest VMs to get more accurate information. You can then start to see the relationship between applications (Business View) was the Infrastructure View.

The monitoring agents for different operating systems are available

Copy the MSI or installer file to the VM and execute it, a windows install is given as an example here

Click Next

Click Next

Click Install

Wait for the install to finish

Click Finish

Now, I'm not sure about the next section - you can get Guest OS Drilldown for the vPv box but I've not got it working with two VMs as yet. The settings below may not work / be the right approach:

Now tell the monitor agent where the vPv server is - edit the hpcs.conf file in the path above with values similar to below - don't forget to take out the ";" at the start of the line!

[hpcs.hbp]
; Use the following line to push HBP events to a target hpcs acting as
; a registry.
http://192.168.10.21:8081/hbphandler=/lwiregistry/up
; HBP interval in seconds. Default value is 90.
interval=90

Update the contents with the IP Address of the vPv appliance and restart the service listed above.

Now I can tell you where you find the resulting Guest OS Drilldown as it took me a few minutes!
Capacity, Overview, and either View VMs by CPU Sizing or View VMs by Memory Sizing

Next Click the icon above across from the VM you want to examine, this is what I'm missing currently but the one for the vPv server should be available.

Enjoy the stats - click on a brown word to get more detailed stats!

You can also change the interval on the top right.


Next configure CSA integration



I used the following CSA URL:

https://hpcsa.lab.local:8444

You can apparently expose a tenants performance information with vPv so you could have a link in their marketplace that provides an add on value add service to give them insight into how their VMs are performing.

You can also integrate OneView to get an Infrastructure View

An Alert Message example is shown above

The Capacity View is shown above. There is a lot of good information to help right size.

Some Forecasting information is shown above.

Some Modelling information is shown above. I think I need to upgrade!

Some Heat Maps (Top: VMs - Compute, Middle: Data Stores, Bottom: VMs - Storage)

There is a Message Board that covers enhancements and FAQs worth checking out:
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/forums/tagdetailpage/tag-cloud-grouping/message/tag-cloud-style/recent/message-scope/all/user-scope/all/tag-scope/single/tag-id/38871/timerange/all/tag-visibility-scope/public

There's plenty more to explore but that should be enough to whet your appetite for now! Worth a look?!

Simple Openstack Distro

Openstack Distros

I was searching for a simple Openstack Distribution to get my head around how it operates. Many of them require a server with 64GB Ram and multiple VMs or....serveral Physical Hosts to install it on. I was hoping there was a simpler light distribution that could sit on a single VM and it seems there is. The first one I found was from the following site:

www.rdoproject.org

They have a quickstart page you can use to get up and running once you deploy the Linux O/S. Their system requirements are quite light and after getting the RHEL 7.1 trial installed I proceeded to get Openstack up and running thanks to their hard work!

Some Tips: found the C# ViClient wouldn't display the Console after hitting Enter on the RHEL install menu. Switched to web client and it worked ok. I used the vanilla "Server with GUI" option during the install.

Next you may need to disable NetworkManager but I think the issue is now fixed if you pull down the latest RedHat subscription updates. Follow RDO Projects quickstart guide here for the rest:

https://www.rdoproject.org/Quickstart

Some commands I needed to use are listed below

subscription-manager repos --list | more
sudo yum update -y
subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-7-server-optional-rpms
subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-7-server-extras-rpms
yum install -y python-werkzeug
sudo yum install -y https://rdoproject.org/repos/rdo-release.rpm
sudo yum install -y openstack-packstack
packstack --allinone

I found I needed to enable some extra Repositories. Before doing so I had errors regarding missing dependencies of Python. The steps above should get you through it. Once the install completes successfully, open the web page http:// <ip address of vm> /dashboard
Username : admin
Password: in your home directory file keystonerc_admin

My one is:
http://192.168.10.22/dashboard/admin/
The view is below:

Now, Set up a keypair to play with the default cirrus instance or it will fail to deploy and you won't be allowed to delete it! You can install virt-manager to see more info. If you're getting stuck reboot the VM and check all the service are started, clean down any stuck instances and try again:
Admin/System Information/Compute Services etc

Now to run the Openstack commands go to where that password file is and copy it:

cp keystonerc_admin admin-openrc.sh

And now execute the command below:

source admin-openrc.sh

You should now be able to use Openstack commands for instance:

glance image-list
neutron net-list / port-list / subnet-list
nova hypervisor-list
keystone user-list

Note: My install seemed to fail shortly after installing, might be just my environment but play around and see how you get on. Just giving fair warning!