Thursday, April 26, 2012

HP Storage MP v 2.1: The story continues…

It turned out that my previous posting about the HP Storage MP stirred some emotions. Got quite a few comments, most of them were accepted by me and are attached to the same posting. Some of them I deleted since they were a bit too emotional if you get my drift :).

However all comments concur on these issues with the HP Storage MP:

  1. Everything is put into a single MP
    No matter when you only run a 3PAR SAN or a P4500, you get to see EVERYTHING in your SCOM Console. Perhaps HP Marketing thinks this will boost sales (Oh, look a 3PAR SAN! Even though we have a P4500 SAN now, let’s buy an additional 3PAR SAN as well!).

  2. Discoveries running every 60 SECONDS
    This is really sad. Many Discoveries run every 60 seconds! Perhaps HP Marketing is at play here as well. In their ideal world customers add multiple SANs per day…

  3. Almost everything for monitoring is switched ON by default
    The MP itself doesn’t have that many Monitors. But Rules are really present and most of them are enabled by default. Of course, a Rule/Monitor will only run when the Discovered Object is in place. But still it isn’t as it should be.

  4. Many PowerShell instances are run simultaneously on the RMS (up to 30 or more)
    This is bad for performance of the RMS. Noticed the same behavior on the RMS of a customer of mine. Haven’t found the cause for this one yet, still investigating.

Even though I am anything but a MP author, I know to differentiate between a good MP and a bad one. And the HP Storage MP is really awful! Therefore I have exported the HP Storage MP to XML format and edited it in the MP Authoring Console in order to keep only the stuff which is important for my customer who runs a P4x00 type of SAN.

Since I don’t want to get in troubles with HP (for changing their IP and sharing it) I won’t share this MP with the community. But this is what I did:

  1. Exported the MP to XML-format;
  2. Edited the MP in the MP Authoring Console;
  3. Removed the Views which aren’t related to the P4x00 type of SAN;
  4. Disabled all Discoveries which aren’t related to the P4x00 type of SAN nor targeted at SNMP;
  5. Disabled all Rules and Monitors which aren’t related to the P4x00 type of SAN nor targeted at SNMP;
  6. Changed the version number and added additional comments in the Description field;
  7. Saved the results, tested it a test environment;
  8. Sealed the MP;
  9. Deleted the unsealed version of the MP and imported the sealed version.

These are the results:

The Views BEFORE the modifications:
image

The Views AFTER the modifications:
image

The Rules and their status BEFORE the modifications:
image

The Rules and their status AFTER the modifications:
image

The modified MP and it’s description:
image

Since I didn’t want to break the functionality of the MP I didn’t delete any Discovery, Monitor, Rule, Class or whatever. Just tried to keep the MP in tact as much as possible. Next week I’ll be at the customers location and import the MP.

3 comments:

Blake said...

Ah..gotta love mp's from IBM and HP. We have an older storage MP imported for EVA 8000's. Mostly we just have the MP installed so that we can get alerts from the webes service. I think there is one or two alert rules, everything is composed by the webes xml feed. Anyway, I wasn't that thrilled about the HP EVA Storage MP, but then I got to try out the IBM XIV mp. Oh man...talk about no added value. In regards to the views, did you delete them Marnix, or did you just change their visibility? I would think changing if they are visible or not would be a better option in case a customer added more HP storage options. Just a thought.

Marnix Wolf said...

Hi Blake.

Normally the Views can be disabled. However, this customer won't add another SAN for the time to come, so I decided to remove the Views.

Cheers,
Marnix

Vinod Bhat said...

Hi Marnix,

I am Product Manager for HP Storage Management Pack for SCOM. It is great to get feedback regarding MP. I did brainstorm what users want to see in MP and SCVMM during BOF02 in MMS. I gave my business cards to provide feedback.
I am working with engineering team regarding issues, you have found. I will get back to you with response soon.
Meanwhile if you have want to see any enhancement or changes in product don’t hesitate to contact me @ vbhat at hp dot com.

Thanks,
-Vinod Bhat