3PAR and InfoSight QuickStart guide

[CalvinZito]

I've done a few recent articles on Around the Storage Block showing you HPE InfoSight. The purpose of this article is to share with you a QuickStart guide that the 3PAR on InfoSight team pulled together after they heard several questions from storage people around HPE asking how to get it working. A big thank you to Wiley Thrasher, an engineer on the team doing the work to integrate 3PAR and InfoSight, for this guide. On a personal note, I met Wiley in 1999 when HP acquired Transoft Networks; my son-in-law, who was a summer intern on the 3PAR team a couple of years ago, just joined the team that Wiley is on. He and my daughter are moving to Boise soon, so I'm excited to have them close by!

Ok, let's jump into this.

Get the QuickStart guides

NOTE: The QuickStart guide is updated regularily. The links in this section are the latest as of July 2018. Check back and I'll update the links or check my SlideShare account for the latest. 

I have two ways for you to get the guide. You can download it from my SlideShare.net account. Click on this link to the QuickStart guide and you'll find a "Download" button that will let you get a PDF version. I'll also embed it here but because some of the print is small, I suggest downloading it. 

HPE HPE InfoSight for 3PAR quickstart v1.4 from Calvin Zito

Note that if these have any updates to them, I'll update the links so you can get the latest.  This version is a very complete and detailed guide. Wiley created another guide that is more suited to 3PAR customers that have used the portal before as a user of StoreFront Remote. Here's a link to the shorter QuickStart guide. 

I talked with Wiley and want to call out a few things. 

What is required?

Customers that want to use 3PAR on InfoSight must have a support contract in place. There are a few other things that are "musts" so let me share those.

• For global visibility, you have to have a minimum of 3PAR OS version 2.2.x and Service Processor (SP) version 2.4.2. I'll have a bit more about global visibility in a second. 
• For the cross-stack analytics, there's a bit more you need. Today you have to have 3PAR OS version 3.3.1 and 3PAR SP version of 5.0.3 (aka 5.0 MU3). You must also enable the RDA transport. 

The longer QuickStart guide gives details about what you get with "global visibility" but I'll give a short summary here.  At a high-level, it includes customizable dashboards and PDF reports for HPE Storage (3PAR StoreServ, StoreOnce & RMC). Some of the specifics you'll see include:

• 3PAR Models, OS Versions & Entitlement
• Systems by Country & Region
• Historical, Total & Allocated Capacity
• Capacity Efficiency, Deduplication & Compression Ratios
• Total & Average Front-End Performance
• Device Type Count & Utilization
• Wellness Score & Type

Check out the demo I did showing the cross-stack analytics. Its a short intro to what it is. I've had people ask me how are we getting this VMware information. We have a collector that is running on the 3PAR SP that is making "lightweight" REST API calls about once every one to three hours. The guide talks about how to set this up for your vCenter instances that you want to connect. Note that to get any cross-stack analytics information, the VMs in your vCenter must be running on 3PAR. InfoSight will only provide analytics for VMs running on 3PAR. 

Help, I need somebody!

You've read the guide and you think you followed all the steps but something still isn't working. What now? When you are logged into HPE InfoSight, click on Resources. You'll then see two columns as shown in the image on the right. Under the 3PAR and StoreOnce column, click on HPE InfoSight Portal Support. 

On this page, you'll see an email address that you can email for support with HPE InfoSight. Do not manually enter the email address into your email but click on the link so that an email opens up. It will include information that the L4 engineering team needs to assist you. You should include information about whatever issues you are having and include screenshots if applicable. Also, include your 3PAR serial number as that will make it easier for the team to help you. 

 You can see our articles about InfoSight (include recent demos I've shared) on Around the Storage Block. 

About the Author

I'm Calvin Zito, a 34 year veteran in the IT industry and have worked in storage for over 25 years. I am an eight-time VMware vExpert. As an early adopter of social media and active in communities, I've blogged for 9 years. You can find me on Twitter as @CalvinZito. If you don't follow me on Twitter, do it now! You can also contact me via email.