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Re: Guest VM for the HP SIM 5.1 Server (CMS and SQL) hosted on ESX 3.x?

 
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Dana Swanson
Regular Advisor

Guest VM for the HP SIM 5.1 Server (CMS and SQL) hosted on ESX 3.x?

Is there a number of managed servers that would exclude HP SIM 5.1 (CMS and SQL Server/Database) being placed on a Guest VM?

Has anyone had good or bad experiences running the CMS and SQL Server Application/Database on a Guest VM hosted on a High End ESX 3.x Server?

I guess besides the ESX Server going down and losing HP SIM.

Thanks!

Dana
13 REPLIES 13
Rob Buxton
Honored Contributor

Re: Guest VM for the HP SIM 5.1 Server (CMS and SQL) hosted on ESX 3.x?

I've not yet tried on a VM but it is now supported by HP.
Some of the new functionality as regards remote support does not work on VMs.

If you're going the ESX route you may also be looking at the HA and DRS functionality. With those any risks of loading and even the failure of the ESX host are mitigated.

How many servers are you expecting to manage?

Dana Swanson
Regular Advisor

Re: Guest VM for the HP SIM 5.1 Server (CMS and SQL) hosted on ESX 3.x?

Hi Rob,

We plan to use VMotion technology for HA and DRS once we have everything in place. We just finished a migration of 141 Guest VM's from ESX 2.x to ESX 3.x. Our other site will be upgrading to ESX 3.x in the near future.

We have 2 sites to build production HPSIM 5.1 Servers at.

Site A has 221 Physical Servers and 141 VM Guest Servers running under ESX 3.x. As far as future expansion we choose VM Servers would be expected to increase to 500. Physical Servers are expected to increase to 350.

Site B has 76 Physical Servers and 58 VM Servers running under ESX 2.x. Future VM Host Servers would be expected to increase to 200. Physical servers are expected to increase to 150.

Would you know if HP SIM 5.1 running on a ESX 2.x Guest VM is supported by HP?

I'm wondering how CPU loads will be when we fully utilize the features of HP SIM. The sizer gave us the following server configuration for Site A:

ProLiant DL360 G5
1P/2C x DC Intel Xeon 5060 Processor (3.20 GHz, 1066 FSB) Base Model (Standard)
1P/2C x DC Intel Xeon 5060 Processor (3.20 GHz, 1066 FSB) Base Model (Recommended)
Estimated memory required:├В 2048 MB
Embedded Dual NC373i Multifunction Gigabit NICs

Base DB Size 40MB

Database Size after discovery of 850 nodes (excluding events) 47500 MB

Status polling packet size 512 Bytes

Event Size 3.8 KB per event used in database

Additional database size per device for historical data 200 kb per Task Execution

PMP Logging Data
1 GB of database for 25 servers (all logging) used up in 3 months

Number of Managed Device 365
Status Polling 63.07Mb/Day
Identification 14.60Mb/Day

Let me know if you would like to see the other site's sizing configuration from the online tool.

Thanks!

Dana
Rob Buxton
Honored Contributor

Re: Guest VM for the HP SIM 5.1 Server (CMS and SQL) hosted on ESX 3.x?

Dana,
I'm not an expert at capacity planning HPSIM.

I would suggest going for two virtual servers, one for the HPSIM installation and one for a backend database server. Unless you're already planning on using a separate physical DB server.
That spreads the load a bit.

I'm in the process of having VMware do a capacity plan for the remainder of our environment now. Our HPSIM manages around 100 HP clients with a number of other virtual and non-HP clients. Be interesting to see what the final configuration would look like.

The new remote support stuff in HPSIM looks quite interesting and so, for the moment, I'm keeping HPSIM on a physical server.
Ole Thomsen_1
Trusted Contributor

Re: Guest VM for the HP SIM 5.1 Server (CMS and SQL) hosted on ESX 3.x?

We have been running HPSIM in a vm for years, previously with the backend SQL on a physical cluster. The last couple of months the database has also been running in a (separate) vm, HPSIM being just one of several databases. Both vm's has 2 virtual processors.

Our configuration is ESX 3.01 on HP BL25p with EVA4000. ESX cluster is configured for HA and DRS.

We monitor around 200 systems, of which around 60 are Proliants and vm's. No problem.

Ole Thomsen
Dana Swanson
Regular Advisor

Re: Guest VM for the HP SIM 5.1 Server (CMS and SQL) hosted on ESX 3.x?

Thanks Rob,

Is the remote support your speaking of the remote console to the Guest VM? I have not had time to read over the VM features of HPSIM 5.1 yet. I'm trying to deploy the first production server asap but need to think about these issues as well so they don't become problems in the future.

Has hp documented the features that are lost when the product itself is running on a VM?

Thanks Again!

Dana
Dana Swanson
Regular Advisor

Re: Guest VM for the HP SIM 5.1 Server (CMS and SQL) hosted on ESX 3.x?

Thanks Ole,

I'm glad to hear your setup is running well on your VM Guest Servers.

Have you ever checked to see how the CPU's and Memory tax the VM's you use on average and peak?

I have no idea what to expect when we use much more functionality of HPSIM than we did before.

Thanks!
Rob Buxton
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: Guest VM for the HP SIM 5.1 Server (CMS and SQL) hosted on ESX 3.x?

No, the Remote support is under "Service Essentials Remote Support Pack" and is part of HPSIM 5.1
The pre-requisites are that HPSIM sits on a physical server.
If you look at chapter 9 of the HP User Guide you'll see some info. about it.

I'm not too sure of what value it will add here as yet.
Dana Swanson
Regular Advisor

Re: Guest VM for the HP SIM 5.1 Server (CMS and SQL) hosted on ESX 3.x?

Hi Rob,

I'll look over the Service Essentials Remote Support Pack manual today. Thanks for pointing me to the document and chapter. There must by 50+ manuals on HPSIM 5.1, subcomponents and plug in's. It can be difficult to make decisions like to vm or not to vm with so much research involved. These posts have helped me out greatly.

Thanks!
Jesus Malena
Occasional Advisor

Re: Guest VM for the HP SIM 5.1 Server (CMS and SQL) hosted on ESX 3.x?

Hi Dana,

We recently decided to deploy HP SIM 5.1 on a VM running under ESX 3.01 due to its ease of use and high availability.

We are running ESX 3.01 on an ML 370 G3 with 12 GB of RAM and 2 x Dual Core CPUs @ 2.66GHz each. We have seen relatively no impact on the VM running HP SIM and we are runnning both the Database server and the SIM on the same VM with WSUS as a tag along. In the initial boot of the VM for about 10 minutes the CPU will be pegged to the max. Since we only give these VMs one CPU to use it taxes this CPU hard for the first 10 minutes, but after that the system normalizes to pegging the CPU at 200 to 300 Mhz. You will also see a performance spike on your HP SIM VM if you are recreating your datastore by using the Discovery option for the first time as HP SIM will access all of your servers with the WBEM accounts provided in the first time wizard when you first log into HP SIM.

The Memory is the real bottleneck in HP SIM as it eats up close to 1GB of RAM. I wouldn't worry too much about this if you have plenty of memory on your ESX boxes to accomidate for the bottleneck in memory.

The attachments are pics from my VC3 box looking into the performance of both my ESX box as a whole and my HP SIM box by itself. This is of course after HP SIM is configured and running properly.

As for the Remote Support Pack is concern HP states that you can not get the Remote Support Pack running on a Virtual PC VM. It is recommended that you run your VM in an ESX 3.01 server so that you can get full functionality. I have the Remote Support Software Manager installed on my VM and its working properly.

Jesus