Mr-1wn-Eismf Elearning Student Guide

Welcome to EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals. Copyright © 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDED “AS IS.” EMC CORPORATION MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION, AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. EMC2, EMC, Data Domain, RSA, EMC Centera, EMC ControlCenter, EMC LifeLine, EMC OnCourse, EMC Proven, EMC Snap, EMC SourceOne, EMC Storage Administrator, Acartus, Access Logix, AdvantEdge, AlphaStor, ApplicationXtender, ArchiveXtender, Atmos, Authentica, Authentic Problems, Automated Resource Manager, AutoStart, AutoSwap, AVALONidm, Avamar, Captiva, Catalog Solution, C-Clip, Celerra, Celerra Replicator, Centera, CenterStage, CentraStar, ClaimPack, ClaimsEditor, CLARiiON, ClientPak, Codebook Correlation Technology, Common Information Model, Configuration Intelligence, Configuresoft, Connectrix, CopyCross, CopyPoint, Dantz, DatabaseXtender, Direct Matrix Architecture, DiskXtender, DiskXtender 2000, Document Sciences, Documentum, elnput, E-Lab, EmailXaminer, EmailXtender, Enginuity, eRoom, Event Explorer, FarPoint, FirstPass, FLARE, FormWare, Geosynchrony, Global File Virtualization, Graphic Visualization, Greenplum, HighRoad, HomeBase, InfoMover, Infoscape, Infra, InputAccel, InputAccel Express, Invista, EMC Smarts, ISIS, Max Retriever, MediaStor, MirrorView, Navisphere, NetWorker, nLayers, OnAlert, OpenScale, PixTools, Powerlink, PowerPath, PowerSnap, QuickScan, Rainfinity, RepliCare, RepliStor, ResourcePak, Retrospect, RSA, the RSA logo, SafeLine, SAN Advisor, SAN Copy, SAN Manager, Smarts, SnapImage, SnapSure, SnapView, SRDF, StorageScope, SupportMate, SymmAPI, SymmEnabler, Symmetrix, Symmetrix DMX, Symmetrix VMAX, TimeFinder, UltraFlex, UltraPoint, UltraScale, Unisphere, VMAX, Vblock, Viewlets, Virtual Matrix, Virtual Matrix Architecture, Virtual Provisioning, VisualSAN, VisualSRM, Voyence, VPLEX, VSAM-Assist, WebXtender, xPression, xPresso, YottaYotta, the EMC logo, and where information lives, are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. © Copyright 2012 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA.

Revision Date: 10/2012 Revision Number: MR-1WN-EISMF.9.0.1.0

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals

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Upon completion of this module, you should be able to describe the functionality of ESM. You will be able to describe how ESM is used to monitor and manage Servers in the data center environment.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals

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EMC Smarts Server Manager simplifies the ongoing management of VMware and Microsoft server environments and solves one of a customer’s biggest virtualization management challenges - identifying the root cause and business impact of infrastructure problems. EMC Smarts Server Manager immediately determines the root cause problems across virtual and physical infrastructures. Users will want to gain the ability to know immediately when virtual machines get created or move. EMC Smarts Server Manager leverages the power of automation to provide—in real time— the relationships that exist among the critical elements of your physical and virtualized server and network infrastructures.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals

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As IT managers know, change happens. And without real-time visibility and control of the environment, IT is forced to spend time finding the source of outages, misconfigurations, and performance degradation, while also having the ability to report on the current state. And with multi-tier applications, virtual, and physical environments, wide ranges of hardware, storage, and network devices that are all co-dependent in today’s data center, it is no longer realistic to rely solely on what people know. In addition, the pervasiveness and rapid deployment of server virtualization, has added to the complexity of IT environments that need to be managed. Although server virtualization has reduced capital expenditures, energy, and facility costs, and increased utilization rates, server abstraction has also added another layer of complexity to IT management. In addition, the extremely rapid pace at which virtual machines can move across the entire shared pool environment, has changed the rules of the game and IT management to such an extent that manual approaches are no longer considered antiquated – they are completely unviable, from a business perspective. Customers need a way to understand these new virtualized environments, keep up with their rapid pace of change, and place information into a proper management context so that the IT environments can be managed more efficiently and holistically. These virtualized environments include VMware, ESX, and Microsoft Hyper-V, as well as different forms of virtualization, including clustered server environments, and server load balancers – both of which also pool server resources to ensure redundancy, availability, and performance, respectively. Finger-pointing across physical IT silos, such as servers, networks, and storage, logical silos, like applications and services — and even the virtualization silo – remains all too common, and hampers IT’s ability to deliver IT services to the business. Although IT organizations typically use dozens of management tools, most lack a multi-domain ,endto-end perspective of availability that extends from the physical infrastructure to virtualized infrastructure and the applications running on those virtual machines.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals

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So, how does server manager help address these challenges? First, it provides much-needed visibility, insight, and instrumentation into virtualized environments. That insight, in turn, reduces the additional management complexity posed by the use of server virtualization in an IT environment. In addition, by leveraging the power of automation, server manager provides IT operations with the ability keep up with the rapid pace of change in virtualized environments. Because it is integrated with IT operations intelligence, server manager also provides the ability to extend core infrastructure monitoring to include virtualized server and application environments. That simplified management in turn improves IT efficiency and reduce costs. If efficient, separate management systems can be done away with, and by streamlining incident management, IT operations teams have the accurate information needed to correct the problem. In turn, better incident and problem management improves IT efficiency and reduces IT costs. In short, IT operations can immediately correct a problem.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals

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By extending Server Manager’s capabilities to include monitoring for server hardware agents, VMware ESX and ESXi servers, Microsoft Hyper-V servers, F5 Load Balancers, Microsoft and Symantec Veritas clusters, and application processes, Server Manager can easily and effectively extend the value of a core EMC Smarts IT Operations management solution. Load balancing is a common way to distribute demand evenly across computing resources, and provides another layer of high availability. A load balancer consists of a virtual server with an IP address and ports, and a number of physical servers with IP addresses and ports. In the event of a failure in the server infrastructure, all servers bound to a virtual server can be reassigned to a backup virtual server (if configured) or optionally redirected to a configured URL. This increases the overall availability of the server resources and the services resident on them. Server Manager monitors and instruments redundancy pairs, monitors status of virtual servers and generates alarms, and monitors the level of pool member failures. It tracks configuration and synchronization between BIG-IP pairs, and integrates BIG-IP events and notifications into EMC Smarts to provide event correlation and automated Root Cause Analysis. These capabilities include the support for correlation and Root Cause Analysis of various failure scenarios between BIG-IP load balancer environments and attached switches.

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Server Manager fits within the overall architecture of EMC Smarts solutions. Server Manager is a module or satellite product to the core EMC Smarts solution. It extends the value of EMC Smarts availability and fault management and root-cause analysis to the IPconnected servers. This includes virtualization server platforms like VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V, as well as the virtual machines running on these virtualization servers. Server manager also can manage server clusters like Exchange, and load balancers like those from F5. In addition, it can present to IT operations intelligence server hardware environmental monitoring data, which can help paint a more complete management picture. As a reminder, the EMC Smarts solution requires IP Manager Manager to manage any IP network. Additional layers of networking such as MPLS, Multicast, and VoIP are managed by additional products, which are separately licensed. Server manager is another product that is licensed separately, as is another related extended infrastructure management product, Application Connectivity Monitor.

These products share information and report upward to Service Assurance Manager & Business Impact Manager for cross-domain correlation. Please note that products for managing Multicast, optical, and VoIP environments, which are also part of the EMC Smarts suite, are not depicted on this slide.

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Until now, we have emphasized the VMware management features of Server Manager – and with good reason: managing VMware environments is a major challenge for customers. However, Server Manager does not only just support VMware environments. It includes support for Microsoft Hyper-V servers and F5 Load Balancers. It integrates with server hardware-monitoring suites from IBM, Dell, and Oracle to help IT Operations identify when physical servers are operating in a degraded state. Just as it performs automated root-cause analysis for VMware environments, Server Manager can do the same thing for Microsoft Hyper-V, Microsoft Cluster Service and Veritas Cluster Server— because clustering is just another form of virtualization. The product also helps IT operations teams identify when key processes are unavailable because it can discover and help manage the availability of application processes that are running on any discovered server. Additionally, an alert can be generated when a critical application is missing a key process or when the number of processes per application exceeds a certain value.

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So, what are some of the benefits of Server Manager? First, it makes it easier to manage a virtualized server and application environment. You always know the status and shape of your virtual environment. You can see which VMs are not running so you can understand the impact on service delivery and application availability. Second, you can also keep up to date with VMotion activity – which is no small task, given that virtual machines can, at almost any time, be moved around the shared resource pool easily, and without interruption to users or business processes. With Server Manager, you can be notified of moving VMs, which in turn allows you to keep up to date with your virtual infrastructure. Last, you also gain the ability to do cross-domain correlation with physical and virtualized servers and applications with the rest of the IT infrastructure – including the network on which these virtualized environments rely for their connectivity. Because any outage in the infrastructure can affect numerous physical and virtual components, you need visibility and insight across both environments. Server Manager delivers that.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals

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Server Manager automatically discovers the cluster as a ingle logical entity composed of the logical physical components. These include Redundancy groups created from the physical components that make up each cluster, and the relationship that the nodes in the cluster have with each other. Server Manager also understands and labels the nodes as active and standbys.

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Server Manager also tracks the status of the cluster and its components. It identifies whether or not each node is up or down. It knows when a protection switchover occurs and understands the outage that caused it. It ascertains when a cluster is at reduced redundancy and determines when it is at risk of total failure, when there is only one server left operational. Finally, ESM identifies when all components, and therefore the cluster and your critical service, are down.

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For F5 BIG-IP load balancers, ESM allows you to manage the virtual IPs & virtual servers. ESM also monitors the availability and utilization of each load balancer interface, as the status of load balancer failover pairs. Performance statistics, such as utilization or error rates, are also monitored for each port.

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Environmental factors such as power supply status, CPU temperature, chassis temperature and fan speed, available disc drive space, and partitions on the Load Balancer are also monitored. Disk drive space and partitions on the load balancer are monitored. Finally, the redundant pairs are monitored to make sure each one is available and that they are synchronized.

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Server manager also can monitor status Virtual Servers and Pools. Virtual Servers consist of a Virtual IP and Port Pair. Virtual Servers are assigned to a Load Balancer Pool. The pool consists of pool members which consist of real IP and TCP Port Pairs.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 14

Server manager tracks virtual statuses and provides notifications for failures. Examples include the Virtual Server being Down or degraded, or Load Balancer Software Service being Out of Synch, having its Failover Status Changed, or simply being unavailable.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 15

Finally, this table shows the server hardware-related support and notifications provided by server manager. By leveraging this server instrumentation information, Server Manager helps paint a more complete picture of the IT environment being managed.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 16

This module covered an overview of the EMC Smarts solution, as well as an overview for EMC Smarts Server Manager. We reviewed Server Manager’s capabilities and the IT domains it manages.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 17

This module provides an overview of EMC Smarts Server Manager, or ESM. It describes ESM’s key features and components, and illustrates how it fits into the Smarts solution. It also identifies what parts of the network infrastructure are managed by ESM.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 18

This lesson is a high-level overview of how ESM manages the OS and Hardware domain and provides insight on the topology discovered and the events generated.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 19

The IP Server Performance Manager monitors the performance of Layer 2 and Layer 3 network objects in switched and routed networks, and automates the analysis of faults using performance thresholds. Faults can occur in systems (switches, routers, hubs, bridges, hosts) and in network adapters (ports, interfaces). When a performance threshold is exceeded, the IP Performance Manager generates a system-level exception notification. The IP Server Performance Manager is an enhanced version of the IP Performance Manager and is available through a feature license. In addition to the standard capabilities of the IP Performance Manager, the IP Server Performance Manager can also discover and monitor host disks, host file systems, and additional information about host processors and memory.

The Server Performance Manager functionality has been replicated in ESM. This gives the customer the choice of monitoring these elements by either application.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 20

IP network performance issues can occur in switches, routers, hubs, bridges, hosts, and in these network ports and interfaces. The EMC Smarts solution uses two domain manager types to monitor for these events - EMC IP Performance Manager and EMC Smarts Server Manager.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 21

The EMC IP Manager can perform both availability and performance management in the IP domain. Licensing determines which type of management is done. The two performancerelated IP licenses are Performance Manager and Server Performance Manager. Performance Manager monitors the performance of Layer 2 and Layer 3 network objects in switched and routed networks, and automates the analysis of faults using performance thresholds. Performance Manager polls for its information using SNMP requests to both private and public MIBs. The IP Server Performance discovers and monitors host disks, host file systems, and additional information about host processors and memory. Server Performance Manager uses SNMP to poll the Host Resource MIB.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 22

The Server Manager can use both SNMP and WMI to manage the servers. Using SNMP, the Server Manager polls the MIBs of Dell OpenManager, Sun Management Center, IBM Director, and HP Systems Insight Manager to discover and monitor additional key hardware performance data. Some systems may not have SNMP agents enabled. For Microsoft Windows servers that were discovered by IP manager using only ICMP pinging, with WMI, the Server Manager can use WMI to obtain operating system data, such as CPU utilization, memory utilization, file system utilization, fan, and temperature.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 23

The ESM model contains classes to represent the environmental and host resource objects. The environmental classes represent the fans that provide cooling to the systems, power supplies that provide power, and temperature and voltage sensors, which provide the instrumentation to monitor the performance of the two. The host resource classes represent the disk, memory file system, and processor objects of the host. These object can be monitored by IP Manager using SNMP, or by ESM using WMI.

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An important descriptive attribute of the Fan class is Device ID. Its value contains an address or other identifying string that is supplied by the Host’s SNMP agent. It is used to uniquely identify and create a unique name for each fan. fanStatus is used to track the operational status of each fan. Its value is determined by periodic SNMP polling. UNKNOWN indicates that the system that contains the fan has yet to be polled. OK indicates that the fan is operating normally. WARNING, or CRITICAL, indicates that the SNMP agent has reported that the fan is not performing normally, but is not shut down. SHUTDOWN indicates that the fan is no longer operational. OTHER indicates that the state of the fan is not OK, WARNING, CRITICAL, or SHUTDOWN. ESM diagnoses one fan problem. The Fan StateNotNormal notification indicates that, during polling, ESM has found that the fan is not being reported as NORMAL.

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The PowerSupply attibute Device ID is identical in its use as the Fan DeviceID. It is used to uniquely identify and create a unique name for each fan. The attribute psStatus is used to track the operational status of each PowerSupply. Its value is determined by periodic SNMP polling. UNKNOWN indicates that the system that contains the power supply has yet to be polled. OK indicates that the power supply is operating normally. WARNING, or CRITICAL, indicates that the SNMP agent has reported that the PowerSupply is not performing normally.

SHUTDOWN indicates that the PowerSupply has been turned off. OTHER indicates that the state of the fan is not OK, WARNING, CRITICAL, or SHUTDOWN. ESM diagnoses one powersupply problem. The PowerSupply StateNotNormal notification indicates that, during polling, ESM has found that the power supply is not being reported as NORMAL or SHUTDOWN.

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Class VoltageSensor has the following attributes: The DeviceID is an index to differentiate between multiple sensors within a system. CurrentValue is used to track the volts reported by the sensor. VoltStatus tracks the current state of the sensor. One event is defined for VoltageSensor. It indicates when the sensor is reporting a reading that is not in the normal range.

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Class TemperatureSensor has the following attributes: The DeviceID is an index to differentiate between multiple sensors within a system. CurrentValue is used to track the temperature reported by the sensor. TemperatureStatus tracks the current state of the sensor. Two events are defined for TemperatureSensor. The StateNotNormal event is generated when the sensor’s status is not normal or shutdown. OutOfRange indicates when the sensor is reporting a reading that is not in the normal range.

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The class Disk has the following attributes: Access indicates if the desk is read/write or read only. Capacity provides the size of the disk in bytes. DeviceID is an index to differentiate between multiple disks within a system. Removable is a Boolean attribute indicating of the disk can be removed. Status provides the state of the disk as reported by the system’s SNMP or WMI agent.

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The Media attribute provides the type of media of the disk. The one event defined for the Disk class reports when the disk is operationally down.

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The class FileSystem has the following attributes: AvailableSpace provides the disks free space in kilobytes. DeviceID is an index to differentiate between multiple file systems within a system. Mounted specifies if the file system is mounted. Root provides the pathname of where this file system is mounted. StorageSize specifies the total size in kilobytes of the file system. UtilizationPct provides the percentage of the file system that is used. Two events are defined for the FileSystem class. HighUtilization specifies that the utilization of the file system is higher than the threshold set by the administrator. LowAvailableSpace specifies that the available space of the file system is lower than the threshold set by the administrator.

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The class Processor has the following attributes: CurrentUtilization tracks the utilization of the processor. DeviceID is an index to differentiate between multiple processors within a system. HighUtilization specifies that the utilization of the processor is higher than the threshold set by the administrator.

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The functionality of the management agents provided by each vendor differs slightly. HP’s Insight Manager agent provides information of the processors , physical and virtual memory, and file systems from the Compaq MIB. Disk information is collected from the host resource MIB.

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Dell’s OpenManager agent provides information of the physical and virtual memory from the Dell-10982 MIB. Processor, Disk, and File System information is collected from the host resource MIB.

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IBM’s Net Director agent provides Processor, Disk, and File System and Physical Memory information from the host resource MIB.

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Sun’s Sun Management Centers agent provides information of memory real and memory swap from the UC Davis MIB. File System information is collected from the host resource MIB.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 36

This lesson a high-level overview of how ESM manages the application process domain and provides insight on the topology discovered and the events generated.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 37

Server Manager monitors the availability of applications by monitoring the applications processes. ESM will generate a notification if a process is not running or, in the case of an application that relies on multiple processes, if the number of process exceeds the minimum or maximum number of processes required.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 38

The processes running on a system are discovered using either SNMP or WMI. This information can be used to identify and specify which application processes should be managed. The Application processes that are to managed are given a name as well as minimum and maximum thresholds. The example shows processes that will be monitored that provide virus checking on the host.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 39

Each configured application will appear as instances of the Application class.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 40

Applications can be grouped together as an Application Service Group. If any Application within the Application Service Group fails, it will impact the Application Service Group as well.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 41

In this example, an Application Service Group has been created that consists of the four Applications.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 42

The ESM model contains classes to represent the environmental and host resource objects. The environmental classes represent the fans that provide cooling to the systems, power supplies that provide power, and temperature and voltage sensors, which provide the instrumentation to monitor the performance of the two. The host resource classes represent the disk, memory file system, and processor objects of the host. These objects can be monitored by IP Manager using SNMP, or by ESM using WMI.

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The class Application has the following attributes: CountThresholdsViolated specifies the processes of the application that have crossed the minimum or maximum thresholds set by the administrator. IsCountThresholdViolated identifies if the minimum or maximum threshold has been crossed. IsMissingProcess indicates that the process defined for the application has failed. Three events have been defined for the Application class:

MissingProcess notifies that the process of the application has failed. CountThreshold notifies when either threshold is crossed. ApplicationDown is the root cause problem associated with the MissingProcces event.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 44

The class ApplicationServiceGroup has the following attributes: AtRiskThreshold, IsAnyComponentDown, IsEveryComponentDown indicates the status of the applications that compose the Application Service Group. The IsGroupPartof SingleUnresponsiveytstem indicates if the applications that compose the group are hosted by a single system. This will cause the cross domain correlation of the failure of the Application Group to be tied to the Host Unresponsive event.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 45

There are three events defined for the ApplicationServiceGroup: AllComponents Down specifies that all of the Group’s applications are down. ReducedRedundancy specifies that at least one appilcation has failed, but the threshold has not been reached. AtRisk specifies that the number of operational processes in the application group is less than or equal to the threshold value, set to 1 by default, but is not zero.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 46

This lesson a high-level overview of how ESM manages the VMware domain, and provides insight on the topology discovered and the events generated.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 47

Server Manager discovers the VMware domain in one or more vCenters. It then continuously monitors the domain for availability and performance. In addition, ESM monitors and analyzes VM event information received from VCenter, such as when a VM has been added, deleted, or moved from one ESX Server to another. ESM assures IT service delivery and availability across the Virtual Data Center. It is instrumental in rapidly resolving problems when they occur, whether the problem is in the physical infrastructure, virtual infrastructure, or both, by immediately identifying the root cause of those problems.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 48

ESM uses VSphereCenter (VC) based discovery using the VMware API. This greatly simplifies the discovery process used by ESM’s earlier versions. Since ESM discovers everything through the VC, the customer will only have to supply those credentials. In the past, they have had to supply credentials for both VC and ESX servers.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 49

The Server Manager discovers and monitors VMware ESX and ESXi servers and the clusters and virtual machines they manage. The Server Manager imports VMware ESX host objects from the IP Availability Manager. It uses a combination of SNMP and VMware API to discover the VMware components and virtual machine properties such as IP address and VM clusters. For each virtual machine, the Server Manager creates a VirtualMachine instance and associates it with the VMwareESX instance of the appropriate host system.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 50

To monitor the virtual machines, the Server Manager subscribes to events from the Availability Manager that are related to the host system, for example, Host “Down.” The Server Manager uses these events to perform impact analysis, relating problems with the host systems to problems with the virtual machines running on them. In addition, the Server Manager monitors the virtual machines directly using SNMP. The VirtualCenter is the VMware element management system. It is capable of managing ESX servers, clusters, and individual virtual machines. A VirtualCenter discovery provides the Server Manager with additional capabilities such as VirtualCenter containment and VMware cluster discovery. The Server Manager discovers and monitors a VirtualCenter when it is part of a VMware deployment. Since, VirtualCenter does not support SNMP, the Server Manager uses the VMware API for discovery.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 51

The Server Manager builds a topology of the managed VMware entities it has discovered. The topology objects represent the managed VMware elements in the network, including their relationships and their connections. Server Manager includes several VMware topology objects. One is the ESX server, which is used to run VMware hypervisor software that in turn runs the virtual machines. The VirtualCenter class represents the VMware management system. VirtualMachines represent the VMs and the VMDataCenter represents folders created in VCenter used for partitioning logical and physical elements.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 52

As stated in the previous slide, the Server Manager builds a topology of the managed VMware entities. The available ESX attributes are self-explanatory.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 53

Server Manager generates two Notifications for VMware virtual machine events:

NotManagedbyVC identifies an ESX Server that has been discovered by the EMC Smarts IP Manager, but is not being managed by any VCenter in the ESM topology. ESXNotHosted identifies and ESX Server that is being managed by a VCenter, is in the ESM topology, but is not in the EMC Smarts IP Manager topology.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 54

There are several attributes of note for the VirtualMachine class:

vmIFPhysicalAddress provides the MAC address for this Virtual Machine. VMotionDescription provides the reason the last Vmotion event for this VM was issued. vmIPAddress provides the IP address of this VM. The DisableEvents attribute provides a way to disable all the events that may be generated for a VM. This can be done by setting this attribute to TRUE.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 55

VMToolsInstalled and VMToolsUpToDate attributes identify if VMTools are installed on a VM and updated to the latest version. Any events specific to VMTools for a VM can be disabled by setting DisableVMToolsEvents to TRUE.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 56

Server Manager generates a number of Notifications for VMware virtual machine events.:

PoweredOff identifies when the virtual machine power is turned off. GuestOSNotRunning identifies when the virtual machine operating system is not running. It is either down or loading. VMAdded identifies when the virtual machine was added to the ESX server. VMDeleted identifies when the virtual machine was deleted from the ESX server. VMToolsNotInstalled identifies when the virtual machine does not have VM tools installed. This event can be disabled by setting DisableVMToolsEvents to FALSE. VMToolsNotUpToDate identifies when the virtual machine has VM tools installed, but they are not up to date. This event can be disabled by setting DisableVMToolsEvents to FALSE. IncompleteNetworkConfiguration identifies when the virtual Machine does not have IP connectivity configured. NetworkReconfiguration identifies when the virtual networking configuration for the VM has changed.

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EMC Smarts Server Manager Fundamentals 57

This lesson a high-level overview of how ESM manages the Hyper-V domain, and provides insight on the topology discovered and the events generated.

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The Server Manager initially discovers virtual machines and parent partition running on a physical Hyper-V server. It displays the relationship of virtual machines and the parent partition to the Hyper-V server. In monitoring the Hyper-V infrastructure, ESM notifies when a virtual machine is down, loading, or has been turned off. ESM will also provide impact analysis and diagnosis when a Hyper-V server is down, for example, it diagnoses when a Hyper-V Host Down notification impacts a virtual machine Down event. Service Assurance Manager displays maps of the physical Hyper-V server and its virtual machines in the Global Console.

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The Server Manager provides the performance monitoring Hyper-V server, as well as monitoring its virtual machines for resource utilization. ESM notifies when a virtual machine has passed a performance utilization threshold or when the Hyper-V server's resources are underutilized.

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ESM also monitors the Hyper-V Highly Available Virtual Machine infrastructure. It notifies when a virtual machine moves from one machine to another machine. In addition, it will create the relationships for Hyper-V servers that are part of a Highly Available Virtual Machine cluster. ESM changes the relationships between Hyper-V servers and virtual machines when the virtual machine moves from one Hyper-V server to another.

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Similar to VMware, the Server Manager builds a topology of the managed Hyper-V entities. The topology objects represent the managed Hyper-V elements in the network, their relationships, and their connections. Server Manager builds The three types of topology objects for Hyper-V: The HyperV_Host represents an instance of the Microsoft hypervisor software running on a physical Windows server. The HyperV_VM represents any virtual machine that runs on a Hyper-V server.

The HVParentPartition represents the administration virtual machine of a Microsoft Hyper-V server.

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The attributes of the Hyper-V Host are used in the discovery process of the Hyper-V architecture. They are used to keep track of VM’s that are added and deleted between periodic discoveries.

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The HyperV_VM has five attributes of note: Three attributes, MovedAttribute, DeletedAttribute, and AddedThreshold, control the behavior of when certain notifications about the VM will clear. EnabledState is used to store the enabled status of the VM. HealthState tracks the Health Status.

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The Hyper-V Administration Virtual Machine object has only 2 attributes which are identical to attributes on the Hyper_VM object.

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The Server Manager generates notifications for a number of Hyper-V Events: Disabled, Paused, Suspended, Starting, and Stopping report on the state of the VM. CriticalFailure notifies us that the VM is not functional and recovery may not be possible.

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The IncompleteDiscovery notification indicates that the VM cannot be associated with a Host that is managed by the EMC Smarts IP Manager. VMDeleted, VMAdded, and VMMigrated are self-explanatory.

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The Notifications for a HVParentPartition are identical to the notifications of the HyperV_VM.

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This lesson a high-level overview of how ESM manages the server cluster domain, and provides insight on the topology discovered and the events generated.

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Microsoft and Veritas cluster services are used to provide redundancy (protection groups) for IP-enabled client/server applications such as Microsoft Exchange, Oracle, and DNS. In a cluster configuration, a group of physical and virtual servers (nodes) provide application protection with one active server and additional servers in standby mode. The active node associates one of its interfaces with a virtual IP address for that application service. Clients connect to an application by using the virtual IP address for the cluster. The Server Manager supports discovery and monitoring of Microsoft Cluster Services and the Veritas Cluster Server, associating the IP address for the virtual cluster with the active physical host system device and the protection group.

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After the IP Availability Manager has completed its discovery of the physical host servers, the Server Manager dynamically discovers virtual IP addresses related to the following elements: Cluster nodes are the physical host servers within the cluster. Protection groups are sets of servers that comprise each cluster and provide application protection. Dependent resources are resources such as a NIC cards that are used by an application, cluster node, or protection group.

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When discovering and monitoring cluster services, the Server Manager associates the virtual IP address with the active host. The Server Manager takes the following steps: First, ESM discovers the cluster. ESM then identifies the virtual IP addresses that are associated with the host and the protection groups within the cluster. The virtual IP addresses are then removed from the Hosts’ HostsAccessPoints in the IP Manager, in the IP Availability Manager, as well as from the AgentAddressList attribute of the SNMPAgent. Thus, when the IP Manager determines that a system that hosts a cluster is down or unresponsive, the Server Manager diagnoses that a cluster has been impacted. The Server Manager generates events when a cluster node fails, when a node switches over, and when a protection group completely fails. In addition, it performs root-cause analysis to determine why the group failed.

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Microsoft Cluster Services provide redundancy for IP-enabled client/server applications, such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and DNS. On Windows 2003 hosts, the Server Manager uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) for discovery and monitoring of the Microsoft Cluster Services. WMI is a proprietary Microsoft technology for modeling, querying, and managing configuration of Windows hosts. The Server Manager accesses this data using a WMI Cluster Namespace, which is a streamlined method of data access.

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A Veritas Cluster provides redundancy for IP-enabled client/server applications, such as SQL, SAP, and Microsoft Exchange. The Server Manager supports Veritas clustering on both Windows and Solaris operating systems. The Server Manager uses the Veritas CLI to discover Veritas clusters and the Veritas SNMP traps, Cluster System Faulted and Cluster Resource Faulted, to monitor clusters.

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The Server Manager builds a topology of the managed Microsoft and Veritas cluster entities. The topology objects represent the managed cluster elements in the network, their relationships, and their connections. There are four classes within Server Manager for cluster management: ProtectedAppGroup is a group of applications of the same type being protected within the Node cluster. NodeCluster is a collection of all of the nodes in a cluster that together provide a redundancy service. ProtectionNode is a logical entity that provides for redundancy in a cluster that runs on a host. DependentResource is a resource that is used by an application, node, or node cluster.

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There are three attributes of note for the ProtectedAppGroup class: ProtectedGrpAddress is the virtual IP address by which the application group is reachable. Status is used to track the state of the application group. WMIAgantStatus provides the state of the WMI agent that provides us status of the application group.

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There is only 1 attribute for NodeCluster - Status. This attribute tracks the state of the Node Cluster: Up signifies that all members of the cluster are up. Down signifies that the cluster service is down. Unknown typically signifies that polling of the node members has not occurred yet. ReducedRedundancy means one or more nodes are down. AtRisk means only one node is up. AllComponentsDown is self-explanatory.

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There are two root-cause problems that impact clusters. The first, Host Down, is diagnosed by the IP Manager. ProtectionNode ClusterService isDown signifies that the cluster service on the node has been shut down.

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There are several events that are defined for the Cluster Class: AtRisk occurs when there is at least one node in the cluster that is down. IncompleteDiscovery notifies us when there has been a problem in the discovery of one or more nodes within the cluster. This problem could occur for one of two reasons. First, the host entity was never discovered by the IP Availability Manager. Second, the host entity was discovered by the IP Availability Manager with a different hostname from the hostname known by the Microsoft cluster. ReducedRedundancy occurs when at least one node has failed, but the AtRisk threshold has yet to be reached. IsDown identifies when the Cluster Service itself is down. Down identifies when the whole cluster is down.

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The Server Manager generates three ProtectionAppGrp Events: OnlinePending signifies that the application group is in the process of starting. WMIUnresponsive signifies that the group’s WMI instrumentation is not responding to polls. ImpactedBy_ClusterDown signifies that the application group is unresponsive due to the cluster being down. ESM generates three ProtectionNode Events:

Down means the node is unresponsive and no other problem could be found. StateChanged means the node has transitioned between ACTIVE and STANDBY. OnlinePending signifies that the cluster is in the process of bringing the node online.

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This lesson a high-level overview of how ESM manages the F5 Big-IP domain, and provides insight on the topology discovered and the events generated.

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Overview of the F5 BIG-IP load balancer The F5 BIG-IP load balancer manages and balances the traffic load across a group or cloud of physical host servers, creating a virtual server with a single virtual IP address. The load balancer acts as an aggregation point for multiple client requests from different types of applications and services. Based on its evaluation of availability, the BIG-IP load balancer distributes these requests to the servers and their applications in the cloud. The F5 Corporation refers to physical servers as members in the BIG-IP. The load balancer monitors the availability of these members and uses that information to decide where to send the next request for a specific service. To provide high availability, load balancers are deployed in either active/standby or active/active pairs. In the F5 BIG-IP implementation, F5 deploys the load balancers CPUs and associated memory sets. One CPU and memory set supports basic functionality and device configuration. The second management subsystem CPU and memory set are dedicated to traffic processing. The F5 BIG-IP load balancer creates Trunks that relate logical connections between the BIG-IP and other devices.

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The F5 BIG-IP load balancer manages and balances the traffic load across a group or cloud of physical host servers by creating a virtual server with a single virtual IP address. The load balancer acts as an aggregation point for multiple client requests from different types of applications and services. Based on its evaluation of availability, the BIG-IP load balancer distributes these requests to the servers and their applications in the cloud. To provide high availability, load balancers are deployed in either active/standby pairs. In the F5 BIG-IP implementation, F5 deploys the load balancers CPUs and associated memory sets. One CPU and memory set supports basic functionality and device configuration. The second management subsystem CPU and memory set are dedicated to traffic processing. The F5 BIG-IP load balancer creates Channel Ports that relate logical connections between the BIGIP and other devices. Server Manager monitors the F5 Big-IP components for availability and performance using SNMP polling.

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For the F5 BIG-IP load balancer, the Server Manager discovers the following topology elements. The load balancer’s components are represented by instances of the interface, port, processor, memory, power supply, fan, file system, and temperature sensor classes. Its addresses are represented by instances of, virtual IP, MAC, and VLAN classes. Instances of virtual server, service, failover pair, and trunk classes are also created.

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In addition, the Server Manager handles BIG-IP traps and correlates events. The Server Manager generates notifications to the Global Manager when it detects failures, high utilization of ports, and other activity as measured against thresholds. It generates a notification when one element in a load balancer pair failsover, when the virtual servers are down or degraded, and when a virtual IP is found to be running on an inactive load balancer.

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The Server Manager builds a topology of the managed F5 BIG-IP load balancer entities. The topology objects represent the managed load balancer elements in the network, their relationships, and their connections. The Monitored load balancer topology objects are the: VirtualServer, VirtualIP, LoadBalancerService, and Trunk.

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A virtual server with its virtual address is the visible, routable entity through which nodes in a load balancing pool are made available to a client. There are three attributes of note for the VirtualServer class: Address signifies the IP address of the virtual server. PortNumber signifies the TCP port of the virtual server. IsSystemActive reflects the status of the load balance on which this VirtualServer is running.

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A VirtualIP is an IP address that is shared between a pair of load balancers for the purpose of high availability. In an active/standby case, only the active load balancer responds to the virtual request. When a failover occurs, the newly active load balancer takes over the virtual IP. There are three attributes of note for the VirtualIP class: SystemUnitID tracks the ID number of the associated load balancer. SyncStatus indicates whether that load balancer is active or standby.

HasPeer signifies if the load balancer is peered with another load balancer for fault tolerance.

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A Trunk represents a logical grouping of two or more Ports in order to provide higher bandwidth. The Trunk attributes are used to track the overall status of all the ports within the trunk. AtRiskThreshold indicates the lower bound for number of redundancy group elements before AtRisk notification is generated. NumberOfComponents is the number of Ports that comprise this Trunk. IsAnyComponentDown indicates if any Port is down on this Trunk.

IsEveryComponentDown indicates if all Ports are down on this Trunk.

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The Server Manager issues the following notifications for the load balancers being monitored. The VirtualServers can be found to be Down, Degraded, or Informational - meaning that is not being monitored. The LoadBalancer events notify that one or both peer load balancers are out of sync, failover status has changed, or that the load balancers have more than one, or no, masters.

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One Virtual IP event signifies that the IP is running in an inactive load balancer. The Trunk events signify the overall state of the trunk’s components. The load balancer also has an event that signifies that the balancer’s fan is slowing down below the necessary speed to cool the balancer.

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This module covered the fundamentals of managing Hardware and OS, processes, VMware and Hyper-V infrastructure, clusters and F5 BIG-IP environments with EMC Smarts Server Manager.

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This course covered the fundamentals of EMC Smarts Server Manager. It discussed how ESM manages the physical environment of servers by managing the server’s hardware, OS, and processes. It also discussed how ESM manages the virtual environment by managing the VMware and Hyper-V architectures, clusters, and F5 BIG-IP environments.

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