HP Managing E OneView Appliance Availability and Best Practices

22 Managing the appliance

22.1 Managing appliance availability

Managing and maintaining appliance availability starts with configuring the appliance virtual machine for high availability as described in “Planning for high availability” (page 83), and following the best practices described in “Best practices for managing a VM appliance” (page 153).

In the event of an appliance shutdown, your managed resources continue to operate. For more information about how the appliance handles an unexpected shutdown, and what you can do to recover, see:

•“How the appliance handles an unexpected shutdown” (page 153)

•“What to do when an appliance restarts” (page 154)

For information about how to shut down or restart the appliance, see:

•“Shut down the appliance” (page 154)

•“Restart the appliance” (page 154)

22.1.1Best practices for managing a VM appliance

HP recommends the following guidelines for managing your VM appliance from the virtual console:

Do

•Use thick provisioning.

•Use shares and reservations to ensure adequate CPU performance.

Do not

•Use thin provisioning.

•Update the VMware tools. If VMware Tools show Out of Date or Unmanaged, they are running correctly. These status messages are not a problem, because the tools are available and running. VMware tools are updated with each HP OneView software update.

•Revert to a VM snapshot (unless under specific circumstances, as instructed by your authorized support representative).

•Set the Synchronize guest time with host option in the vSphere client when the HP OneView appliance is configured to use NTP. HP OneView automatically sets the appropriate Synchronize guest time with host setting during network configuration. When HP OneView is configured to use NTP servers, the Synchronize guest time with host option is disabled. If HP OneView is not configured to use NTP servers, it synchronizes to the host VM clock and the Synchronize guest time with host option is enabled. In this case, configure the VM host to use NTP.

•Reduce the amount of memory assigned to the VM.

22.1.2 How the appliance handles an unexpected shutdown

The appliance has features to enable it to automatically recover from an unexpected shutdown, and managed resources continue to operate while the appliance is offline. However, HP recommends that you use the appliance backup features to ensure that the appliance is backed up daily, and when you make significant configuration changes, such as adding or deleting a network.

22.1 Managing appliance availability 153