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Automated provisioning of software-defined workloads with HPE Synergy Image Streamer

โ€Ž05-13-2019 02:25 PM

 

HPE Synergy Image Streamer overview.jpgHPE Synergy Image Streamer is an application appliance that provides for on-demand orchestration of workload deployments to bare-metal servers. This is accomplished by using HPE Synergy Composer to compose the required bare-metal servers and infrastructure and then using Image Streamer to provision the OS and workloads. Image Streamer functions as an extension to the HPE Synergy Composer, a.k.a. HPE OneView, application appliance. HPE OneView is a server-centric IT management platform for your datacenter that takes a software-defined approach to managing your HPE servers, storage, networks, and to a lesser degree racks, power, cooling, and hypervisors. HPE Image Streamer extends these HPE OneView management and HPE Synergy composing capabilities to the server OS and workload level. This blog explains HPE Image Streamer concepts and provides links to a collection of reference material resources.

Foundational Concepts

To fully understand HPE Synergy Image Streamer, you must first understand HPE OneView and HPE Synergy Composable concepts.

HPE OneView, at its core, monitors HPE infrastructure โ€“ servers, storage, and networks โ€“ to provide a consolidated view of the infrastructure. This is accomplished with the HPE OneView standard license that is provided at no charge for HPE supported server hardware. With the HPE OneView advanced license, management capabilities are added that include maintaining infrastructure firmware, drivers, and patches.  These management capabilities are automated with software-defined abstraction of physical hardware to virtual constructs, grouped according to common attributes. HPE Synergy takes this automated management capability to the next level by enabling bare-metal composing of physical servers with their associated storage and networks automatically configured via the software-defined abstracts.

The following diagram illustrates HPE OneView monitoring and management of its supported infrastructure.  An HPE OneView extension, called HPE OneView Global Dashboard, consolidates multiple HPE OneView instances, along with some additional hardware monitoring, into a unified global monitoring dashboard. HPE Synergy Image Streamer, not shown in this illustration, enhances HPE Synergy Composer capabilities.

HPE OneView and HPE Synergy.PNG

HPE Synergy Image Streamer

With HPE Synergy Composerโ€™s ability to compose bare-metal servers on-demand with their required storage and networking infrastructure, the next logical request is to compose the servers with a configured OS, drivers, applets, and even workloads. HPE Synergy Image Streamer provides that capability as an HPE Synergy appliance comprised of a server with storage and the Image Streamer software. HPE Image Steamer works with the Composer for bare-metal server composing with a fully configured OS and even workloads ready to perform tasks on-demand. This allows the same server resources to be able to switch between workloads as needed to meet the demands of the business.

The process required to orchestrate workload composing on-demand is more complex than what was required to just compose servers and infrastructure. HPE strives to make the concepts and process simple. The on-demand workload composing process, at its simplest level, looks like this:

  1. A server Golden Image, in a required state that includes the OS, is created and stored in the Image Streamer appliance.
  2. A Deployment Plan, that includes orchestration scripts for deploying the Golden Image, is created and stored in the Image Streamer appliance.
  3. A Server Profile software-defined abstract, that references the Deployment Plan, is created in the Synergy Composer for a physical server.
  4. When an action initiates the deployment of the Server Profile to the server, the Deployment Plan is initiated and the Golden Image is automatically configured and deployed to the server.

The definitive guide for Image Streamer, including the concepts and process, is the HPE Synergy Image Streamer User Guide. If you donโ€™t want to read and comprehend this 100-page manual, then the following video series, which takes a little over 30-minutes, will take you through the Image Streamer concepts, process, and provide a live demo. The video series shows creating a Windows Server 2016 Golden Image, a Deployment Plan, a Server Profile, and then performs an on-demand deployment. It is intended to be watched in the order listed.

You may find the following additional HPE Synergy Image Streamer resources useful:

In addition, the following resources will help enhance your knowledge of HPE OneView and HPE Synergy:

 

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