1 Overview

This guide is intended for system administrators who use the HP BladeSystem Management Pack and other HP applications and tools to manage HP BladeSystem enclosures in a Microsoft System Center environment.

You must be familiar with the configuration and operation of Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager, HP Insight Management WBEM Providers, and HP Insight Management Agents. Because of the potential risk of data loss, only individuals who are experienced with using this software should implement the procedures described in this guide.

This guide supplements the Microsoft System Center user documentation. Complete information on supported hardware and software is included in “HP BladeSystem Management Pack (v 1.x) for Microsoft System Center Support Information” (page 57). For links to other product documentation, see “Related information” (page 54).

Introduction

The HP BladeSystem Management Pack complements and extends Operations Manager by adding alert processing, state monitoring, and hardware resource lifecycle management for HP BladeSystem enclosures. The management pack provides user discovery of HP BladeSystem enclosures, predefined views, monitors, event processing rules, and tasks. These features enable administrators to streamline IT operations and ensure increased systems availability by monitoring HP BladeSystem enclosure hardware platforms through a common management console.

The HP BladeSystem Management Pack features include user configuration, monitoring, and automatic grouping of the HP BladeSystem enclosures into a common view. Default monitoring highlights the state of HP BladeSystem hardware subsystems and components, and presents a consolidated view of the enclosure status.

For advanced hardware lifecycle management and remote administration of HP BladeSystem enclosures, the HP BladeSystem Management Pack includes tasks that launch HP Onboard Administrator (OA) and HP Integrated Lights-Out Web consoles for advanced remote enclosure and server administration.

The HP BladeSystem Management Pack manages only enclosures. HP BladeSystem servers are managed by the HP ProLiant Server Management Pack (for servers running Windows).

Product operation

The HP BladeSystem Management Pack performs the following tasks:

Identifies, groups, and displays HP BladeSystem enclosures in the management console

Populates Operations Manager with HP BladeSystem enclosure attributes and configuration data for HP BladeSystem enclosure hardware and the associated management services

Monitors and displays the state of HP BladeSystem enclosure hardware and associated management services

Identifies, translates, and displays HP BladeSystem enclosure hardware events written to the Windows Event Log as Operations Manager alerts

Provides links to HP management tools for hardware resource management and advanced remote administration from Operations Manager

The monitor service uses the information entered through the monitor manager to connect to and monitor enclosures. If the connection succeeds, the monitor service continues to monitor the enclosure for inventory, health state, and events.

After the HP BladeSystem Management Pack is installed, the Operations Manager server transfers the management pack to the Operations Manager Agent managed by the Operations Manager

6Overview