HP Insight Control Integrations

The Microsoft System Center family of integrated solutions enables data center managers to optimize resources, improve visibility of IT assets and issues, meet service levels, and increase efficiencies - all while decreasing costs. HP has been delivering core management packs for the Microsoft System Center ecosystem for many years now, however, with the 2009 announcement of HP Insight Control for Microsoft System Center, HP and Microsoft customers can now take advantage of in-depth infrastructure monitoring and management directly from the Microsoft System Center consoles.

HP Insight Control for Microsoft System Center provides seamless integration of the unique ProLiant and BladeSystem manageability features into the Microsoft System Center consoles. : Licensed as part of HP Insight Control, these extensions deliver comprehensive system health and alerting, configuration management, remote control, and proactive virtual machine management in a flexible, easy to install package. Backed by HP service and support, HP Insight Control for Microsoft System Center delivers the best hardware management experience for customers who have standardized on a Microsoft System Center management platform.

By integrating the server management features of HP ProLiant and HP BladeSystem into Microsoft System Center consoles, administrators can gain greater control of their technology environments. This provides consistency for software deployment and updates and enables a faster response in the event of server failure, reducing the risk of downtime.

Key HP Insight Control for Microsoft System Center features include:

• The Operating System Deployment (OSD) module tightly integrates with System Center Configuration Manager to automatically deploy bare metal servers. This includes support for pre-deployment hardware and BIOS configuration, and post-OS driver and agent installation.
• The ProLiant and BladeSystem Management Packs integrate with System Center Operations Manager to expose the native capabilities of ProLiant and Blade System servers and enclosures. This provides greater visibility of ProLiant and BladeSystems using Operations Manager Diagram, System, State, and Alert Views, enabling quick root cause analysis with graphical characterization down to the server and blade subsystem level and c-Class enclosures to the component level.
• The ProLiant Hardware inventory tool uses native System Center Software Distribution to provide detailed component level inventory of every managed server.
• The ProLiant Server Update Catalog uses System Center Configuration Manager to install and update ProLiant drivers and firmware using a rules based model.
• HP Performance Resource Optimization (PRO) module works in conjunction with System Center Operations Manager and System Center Virtual Machine Manager to proactively guide and automate movement of virtual machines based upon host hardware alerts.

A core component of HP Insight Control, the Microsoft System Center extensions are included with HP Insight Control, which can be purchased as a single license, in bulk quantities, or bundled with HP ProLiant and BladeSystem hardware. Existing Insight Control customers who are under a current Technical Support and Software Updates contract can even download the extensions free of charge!