HP Insight Control for vCenter
November 5, 2012I recently tried out the HP Insight Control plugin for vCenter and was very pleased about the added functionality that was provided in my vSphere client.
http://h18013.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/integration.html
This plugin gives you additional control of your HP servers and storage that are being used by your vSphere environment. Like other storage vendors, the install will configure your VASA plugin, and will also allow you to do things such as create datastores and snapshots on the storage array from the vSphere Client.
The best feature that is added with this plugin is end to end mapping of the networking. From portgroup to physical switch, including the HP Virtual Connect Modules if they exist. One of the biggest questions I hear from customers is how the virtual NIC’s map to a physical upstream switch using Virtual Connect Modules. This plugin does a nice job of mapping that information.
In addition, you can update firmware and get a full picture of what your ESXi host looks like.
You’ll also see that the number of sensors that are displayed dramatically increases. You should see details about all the little pieces of your hosts.
The overview page, will have little blue buttons at the bottom of the page that will allow you to connect directly to the iLO port of the host, the HP System Insight Management server, Onboard Administrator and any other services you may have.
You just have to ignore the fact that it displays “VMWare” instead of “VMware”. If that’s not a deal breaker for you, then check it out.