Copyright 2011 Illuminata, Inc.

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HP CloudSystem Matrix: Managing at a Higher Level

Spotlight
The effort to make IT more manageable has been going on for decades. The tools, techniques, and strategies introduced over the years have helped us scale from when we could count our computers on our fingers to today, where we count them by the thousands, if not hundred-thousands. But its a constant race. As ITs economic and social importance ratchets up every year, so do the scale points and service levels required. We have to keep upping the bar. One of the key problems over the years is that manageability has been thought of, designed, and acquired as an add-on. We buy and deploy tools to monitor and coordinate. But theyre installed after the fact, rather than part of the system. For years, its been clear that to make systems fundamentally more manageable, you have to build manageability in from the get-go. Its also been clear that no amount of hardware sensing or firmware updating is enough. We must move to a higher level of managementone focused on business applications and delivered service levels, and on the processes that IT and business users participate in. Thats where HPs CloudSystem Matrix comes in. Matrix builds on HPs BladeSystem, storage, and supporting management tools, but combines them in a service-oriented, shared-infrastructure way that changes the nature of IT management. Rather than BladeSystem plus some management tools, CloudSystem Matrix is a coordinated system for setting up pools of modular resources and flexibly deploying IT services across those pools. Matrix provides a higher level of abstractionone in which IT services are first-class citizens, and which is specifically designed to avoid some assembly required.

Jonathan Eunice 17 June 2011

Infrastructure by the Pound

The history of IT has been a long march from roll-your-own to buy-not-build. Most enterprises would today no more build their own systems than theyd perform do-it-yourself dentistry. Even aerospace, finance, and telecommunications industries once famous for idiosyncratic homebrews have long since recognized the economic virtues of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions. Beyond building less, theres a major trend toward assemble and configure less. Every system used to ship in numerous boxes; local admins would then unpack, assemble, load software onto, cable up, connect the storage and test the systema substantial on-site labor cost and delay. One-at-a-time, slow, labor-intensive processes are no longer tenable.

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CloudSystem Matrix is the next stage of ready-torun. It combines HPs BladeSystem servers, storage, networking, and management software into a single packaged infrastructure or infrastructure as a service offering. 1We say offering not product because its not just the gear. Its also the supply chain, mode of purchase, factory configuration, management software stack, testing/qualification as a whole, and on-site installation services. You could potentially buy any Matrix component in the conventional waywell, except for the fancy CloudSystem rack bezel. But that would miss the point: escaping the old buy-it-piecemeal, assembleit-yourself approach so that you get the full readyto-run infrastructure in one fell swoop. Five years ago, Matrix would have been interesting to only a handful of businesses. At the time, most companies were simply not ready. But in an era characterized by a move to virtualization, cloud computing, and the shared service model, Matrix fits right in. Many IT departments would now be quite happy to buy datacenters by the pound. Businesses most want their applications run, their services served, and their cost, risk, and service level objectives met. Every year, companies are less obsessive about minutely controlling the precise details of how those things are accomplished. IT now wants and needs to be the architects and enablers of business services, not computer engineers per se. Matrixs virtualized, networkoptimized, wire-once, highly-managed, automated, scale-out architecture needed isnt just a specialty requirement any moreits how and where IT wants to run more and more of its workloads. Many organizations are considering cloud computing to further increase flexibility and efficiency. CloudSystem Matrix is a solid foundation for private clouds. CloudSystem Enterprise goes even further, creating a full-scale private or hybrid cloud solution that orchestrates services across a broad set of resource pools.
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The Right Stuff

Its nice to say you dont have to worry about whats inside, but of course IT professionals will. Thats been their job, after all. But, like buying a car, you dont need to select individual nuts, bolts, and pieces so much as arrive at a level of trust that whats inside is going to be right, then make reasonable selections among the available options. Matrix makes this easy. Its based on HPs popular BladeSystem modular infrastructure, including its Virtual Connect (networking), Thermal Logic (power and thermal efficiency), Insight Management (systems management), and Cloud Service Automation for Matrix (basic provisioning) innovations. Matrix can also be upgraded to CloudSystem Enterprise, which adds HPs full Cloud Service Automation software (for full application provisioning) and other components to power full-scale private and hybrid cloud environments. HP Integrity servers running HP-UX can also be used to provide extra resiliency and security for mission-critical cloud workloads. CloudSystem integrates directly with HP Storage and HP Networking. Take for instance HPs 3PAR Utility Storage platform, known for its multitenant storage, thin storage, and automated tiering. 3PAR supports automated reporting and management through the same CloudSystem service catalog used by server administrators. A common approach to resource pool management reduces the time required to provision IT services. Moreover, all these parts are thoroughly integrated and overseen by a single organization. Top-notch vertical integration contributes directly to a no worries outcome.

Manage the Service

To substantially improve ITs manageability, we have to think in terms of IT services and service levels, not the individual components used. This isnt to say that managing IT components is wrong indeed, until computer systems are made of fairy dust, some of that will always be required. But there are so many component-level concerns especially when you branch out from servers to

CloudSystem Matrix evolved from BladeSystem Matrix, which HP launched in early 2009. It adds enhanced application provisioning and monitoring, becoming the entry-level offering in the CloudSystem portfolio.

include virtualization, storage, networking, security, availability, and so onthat if you start with the components, youll be working to get those under perfect management essentially forever. There wont ever be a moment when you think weve done enough herelets move on to monitor and manage higher level services.2 If you want to have the discussion about business services and service levels, you have to start there. You have to think about service lifecycleshow services are deployed or provisioned, how theyre orchestrated, and how theyre measured. Ideally, those service-oriented approaches wont be just talk they will be reflected directly in the management tools, policies, and procedures that you put in place. Thats the approach taken by HPs CloudSystem Matrix. It inherits all of HPs standard componentlevel management features and tools, but services are the crux of its management. Service templates are the fundamental way workloads managed in a Matrix deployment. The goal is to identify and state the requirements up front, then let automated mechanisms handle moment-to-moment operation. Thats a big change from the status quo in many shops. But moving to automation is why Matrix is an engine for IT services, not just another rack of equipment. You can fire up applications by hand if you like, but ideally you shift into a services management mindset and let Matrix fire them up for you. Matrix is a services engine.

been working their way into IT thinking and practice for about 15 years. Its a gradual shift, but its been in the works for some time. As IT has scaled, and as businesses have had to deal with more regulation, the need for appropriate meta structures and governance has been increasingly clear. Management by policy, complex event processing (CEP), and the last five years drive toward virtualization are further supporting elements in ITs service-oriented maturation. Virtualization, while just an enabling technology, is perhaps the strongest driver. It has led IT professionals to think of flexible infrastructure and high-level workload containers as a normal part of their day. Theyve also come think in more general, architect-level ways about the entire IT estate. So while the lowest-level trend pushing services-led IT along, virtualization also the most broad-based.

Organizing the Services

This is probably not the place for a full rundown on ITSM, but the concept of service descriptions and a service catalog bears noting. Instead of executable files and scripts, the primary executable in a CloudSystem is a service. Services are descriptions of business applications and their associated requirements for servers, storage, LANs, SANs, and other infrastructure elements. Descriptions can be built from scratch by a local IT architect using a Visio-like drag and drop interface, but many will be customizations of templates provided by HP and partners. They might also come through Cloud Maps for CloudSystem Matrix, an HP resource that helps customers create their own service catalog through step by step guides including modifiable templates, workload sizers, installation scripts and workflows. Cloud Maps help Matrix customers provision infrastructure and deploy applications more quickly, and in a repeatable fashion. Each service description portrays a desired state of the running application components and the environment in which they need to run. Once defined, services are registered in a service cataloga library of available services.

Services-Led IT
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. Leo Tolstoy Now comes the harder part: Changing ourselves. We easily think about changing the technologies we use. Its harder to change the way we work. But theres no point in buying a services engine like CloudSystem unless youll operate your workloads in a services-led wayno more than youd buy an airplane if you dont intend to fly. The good news is, many organizations have already begun the shift. ITIL and IT service management (ITSM) have
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Forty-someodd years of computing proves this.

undertake substantial updates, at any rate, and that may not be worth it. So they buy new equipment as their virtualization workhorse, then move workloads to that next generation infrastructure. But not everyone wants or needs to start from scratch. Those with existing BladeSystems can upgrade them in-place. HP CloudSystem Matrix Conversion Services is three-step process. HP inventories the customers existing BladeSystem assets; then plans an upgrade of hardware, firmware, and software components required to meet Matrix standards. Finally, HP performs the conversion. BladeSystem is in effect rebuilt on-site into full CloudSystem deployments. The decision to buy new or upgrade in place becomes a local one. All the benefits of the out of the box Matrix can be had by leveraging existing investments.

When a service is desired, the Matrix Operating Environment provisions the required resources and orchestrates application startup. The dozen or so steps that used to be done manually are all automated. Within minutes, a complete application can be up and running, serving customers. CloudSystem Matrix continues to orchestrate the service over its entire lifetime, including scaling scaling up or down the allocated resources, depending on business policy and current user load. When a service is no longer needed, its components will be gracefully shut down, and all its resources returned to Matrixs pool of free resources. Crisply defining services before they are run means IT professionals are not necessarily needed to run them. Matrix provides a self-service portal through which authorized3 consumerstest and quality assurance engineers, for example, or application owners in the business unitscan initiate services themselves. Services also have associated costs, for enterprises that wish to pay-for-use or chargeback systems for their internal clients.

Conclusion
We want IT to be easier, more automated, less labor-intensive, less expensive, more reliable, and more flexible. Its a long list! If were serious about such thorough-going improvements, we have to think about IT infrastructure in a systematic, holistic wayhow we source it, how we use it, how we manage it. It takes a full lifecycle approach, not just a tweak here and there. Thats what CloudSystem Matrix does. It re-thinks the process by which IT resources are acquired and allocated. It takes a very different view of managementnot one focused on the bit and nits, but on the things businesses really care about: IT services and service levels. It shifts responsibility for the infrastructure from the customer to HP. Whats beneath the hood is laudable, but once thats established, the ideal is to no longer talk about those pieces. IT services are where its at. Not everyone is ready for Matrixs level of integrationnot everyone has moved from ITs traditional fiddling with nuts and bolts toward a higher-level focus on services, resources, processes, and efficiency. But for those who are ready to shift toward the fundamentally more sustainable service-oriented, shared services approach, CloudSystem Matrix is a great way forward.
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Upgrading to CloudSystem Matrix

When starting with a new style of management, there are good reasons to start from scratch with new infrastructure. Its fresh, up-to-date, and wellconfigured for the new approach. We see this in virtualization all the time. While its possible to add virtualization software to existing gear, many decide their existing equipmentespecially if its already a few years olddoesnt have the optimal CPU horsepower, memory capacity, I/O resources, or power/thermal efficiency. Theyd have to
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