TechVirtuoso

Insight Online: Where have you been all my life?

May 10th, 2012 at 11:10 AM  5 Comments

I am used to additional software and functionality for server management to cost money, especially when it comes in the form of a cloud hosted service.  I was surprised to hear at HP’s recent Gen8 Blogger Tech Tour that HP rolled out a free online version of the Insight software focused on making administrators duties less painful, take less time, and provide proactive support.  This new service is called HP Insight Online and can benefit everyone from the SMB, to the Enterprise and even VARs.  It is completely free to anyone who purchases a Proliant Gen8 server, because according to Doug Haskell, “You were a smart guy…you bought a Proliant!”.  After your server is out of contract, some functionality will be reduced, but you still have access to the base features of the product.

Privacy Concerns

The participation of Insight Online is opt-in, so it doesn’t automatically just start sending information from your servers to HP.  Insight Online has also been certified through the TRUSTed Cloud certification program to ensure sound data management practices.  In order to keep this certification HP has to work with TRUSTe to get re-certified annually and have to go through a strict listing of requirements for the program.

Interface

The interface of HP Insight Online is a breath of fresh air.  It goes along HP’s new design scheme where pages without a lot of text has a black background (which @mattvogt doesn’t like) but I think it was easy to read and to follow.  Very simplistic but it allows you to drill down on each server to gain more information. You can also add users to specific servers so they only have access to the servers that they need to manage.

 

Hardware Fails

It happens, even to the market leaders.  Hardware, especially the pieces that have moving parts, fail.  In the past, your monitoring system would send you an alert and you would investigate and then call support.  Then you would spend at least 30 minutes (if not hours, especially if they want logs) going through prompts and giving the technician the information.  Why can’t this be easier?  Well, with HP Insight Online it is.  If you opt in, your new Gen8 HP Proliant will communicate failures to your local CSM server that pushes the information out to HP (they are working on a direct connection for those instances where you do not have a CSM server).  It gathers the needed data, automatically opens up a ticket, emails you the information, and (depending on the problem) earmarks a shipment out to your location.  If you need to contact a technician about the issue, you already have an open case and HP has all of your information.

Not only will they detect problems, they can also detect trends with hardware failures.  If they see a lot of a specific type of hardware failing in mass they can cross check that hardware to see if it all came in on the same batch.  If they find a pattern they will automatically send out a replacement part to the clients that haven’t reported any issues before the part fails.

Warranty Tracking

This is a feature I am sure many HP fans will love.  In the same interface with your server status you can also see which service contracts you have and when they expire.  No more spreadsheets!  Something small, but it is a feature that is low overdue.

VAR Access

HP is very VAR friendly, and their Insight Online product is no different.  You can give your VAR permission to have a lot of the same information that you see in your portal.  They will see a similar interface but have all of their clients grouped in the main dash board.  This allows var’s to show their clients more valueadd as well as strengthen their relationship with the client.

Wrapup

You can tell HP put a lot of thought into this product before it was launched and went through the scenario’s from the system admins viewpoint.  This is a win-win for both the customer and HP.  The customer gets better service from HP and HP can take the information they get and use it to improve their products. This is one of the many solutions that came with Gen8 that is adding value to the Proliant line to differentiate the product from the competition of commodity based server providers.  I believe it is a welcome addition to any IT toolbox and will benefit you if you have 1 or 500 servers in your organization.

 Jeffrey Powers from Geekazine recorded the presentation by Jeff Carlat.  It is located below.

Disclaimer:  HP invited me to the Gen8 Blogger Tech Tour and paid for all accommodations while I was there.  I received some swag and a 32GB thumb drive but I was not required to blog anything good or bad about this trip.  My opinions are my own and cannot be bought.

HP Gen8: More then just a Pretty Face..plate

May 7th, 2012 at 3:07 PM  Comments Off

Day 1 of the HP Gen8 Blogger Tech Tour is over and there was a lot of information I need to digest.  One thing is for sure, the face plate wasn’t the only major change that HP made to this generation of servers!  I will be going more in depth about some of this items but I wanted to quickly share what I thought was most important from the presentations and demos today.

Less Headache for the Customer

One of the biggest transformations was the focus on making things easier for the client and less time spent fixing the server when there is an issue.  When there is a hardware failure instead of your monitoring software notifying you, you investigate and then contact HP Support and answer questions/gather logs to send the server can (not a requirement, but the functionality is there) notify HP with all the pertinent information.  HP can already start processing the RMA for the failed part and getting your replacement into your hand.  This, to me is a must have.

Smarter Hardware

HP added “intelligence” to many components on the servers to allow each component to save logs about possible issues or operating conditions to each piece of hardware, instead of on each specific controller.  If a RAM chip starts failing, the Insight software doesn’t just show that the RAM slot has a bad chip but saves this information onto the RAM stick itself. This way if the stick is accidently placed in another machine it will show immediately as a failed chip instead of running and possibly causing problems.

This same functionality is also built into the new hard drives.  However, instead of just making the hardware “smart”, they also helped the end user from being dumb.   I have never pulled the wrong hard drive out of a working server, but I have pulled the wrong card out of a working PBX, and I am sure that is almost as fun (as in not).  This seems to happen a lot, afterall the majority of us are human and we make mistakes.  With Gen8 HP has put a “dummy” LED that gives the user a little reminder that bad things may happen if you pull this drive.  This to me is something small that makes a big impact.

HP has also re-designed the way the processesers are installed to the servers.  They even called it a “Smart Socket”.  This new socket allows for you to slip in a Intel CPU and install it without worrying about bending the pins on the system board.  This will not only help out for customer installed upgrades, but also with pins that get bent in the factory.

Firmware Upgrades

I am sure the majority of small to medium sized shops have probably never upgraded the firmware on their hardware.  When you are short staffed, don’t have the expertise and things are working properly you usually don’t want to mess with things.  This can cause problems down the road as well as security concerns.  With HP’s new Smart Update Manager, they make this a fairly pain free automated process.  It will download the updates, check dependencies, apply them in order and if one of them fails, roll back to the previous versions.  Instead of taking hours or even days to patch a few racks of servers, this can be done painlessly in minutes.

Mobile iLO

HP released a mobile iLO application back in Feburary for iOS/Android phones and tablets.  This brings iLO functionality to the mobile sysadmin.  Gone are the days of lugging that laptop bag with you everywhere and trying to find a corner and wifi to check on an alert you received from Solarwinds on one of your servers.  You can now perform these same duties from a very mobile friendly app and can be done on your portable tablet or phone.

I am looking forward to what HP has in store for us tomorrow.  We will be going more in depth with HP’s Automated monitoring and management, power and cooling ideas and also CloudSystem Matrix.

Disclaimer:  HP paid all expenses for my trip to Houston to experience the HP Gen8 Blogger Tech Tour.  I was not required in any way to write anything about the trip, good or bad.  I was given a reusable HP branded grocery store bag, a nice water bottle, a polo shirt and a Gen8 DL380 server (if you really think they gave me a server, then you must be drinking).  My opinions are my own and if I cannot be bought by a iPad2 I for sure can’t be bought by a re-usable grocery bag.

A few days with a dead tablet

August 28th, 2011 at 9:12 AM  404 Comments

Like many others the announcement that HP would discontinue all current WebOS devices surprised me. I knew it wasn’t selling as well as HP expected (especially with the Rumors about Best Buy wanting to return a huge chunk of their stock) but I didn’t think they would give up this easily.

I went on the hunt to get one after the $99/$149 fire sale started. Since I was traveling that Saturday I didn’t get my hands on one until this past Wednesday. I am not a complete newb to WebOS. My wife used the original Pre on Sprint for a year and after she upgraded to the Evo I swapped it to my account as my primary device a couple of times. I really like WebOS but the Pre’s hardware killed the experience for me. I was exited to see how WebOS had evolved since version 1 as well as the experience on a piece of quality hardware.

Overall the WebOS interface hasn’t changed much, but it seemed much more polished over version 1.45. The hardware seemed solid but I was surprised to experience a little lag when doing some basic tasks. I would think the Dual Core Snapdragon system wouldn’t have small performance issues like this. Even with the performance shortcomings I didn’t use my laptop for three days after bringing the tablet home which surprised me.

The HP Touchpad had potential to be a great device, but with the previous price point I can understand why it wasn’t selling as well as it’s competitors. VPN Functionality and LAN Printing are great features but without apps like Remote Desktop, no support to access network files (CIFS Support is available in a Homebrew kernal, but no file manager supports it yet) and the crazy limitation to only be able to print to HP Printers it almost renders these features useless. There were also a number of applications in the HP Market that I was surprised not to see.  No Google Voice (there was an app to send SMS messages through your Google Voice account), no LogMeIn and no Dropbox just to name a few.

Overall I am happy with my purchase.  Would I have paid $499+ for the device?  Absolutely not but I don’t think I would pay that much for an iPad even with it’s ever mounting list of applications. Will my Touchpad force me to leave my trusty Thinkpad on the charger? I am not sure, but after using the Touchpad I do know some tablet (not sure which at this point) will.

One of these tablets is not like the other, one you can buy right now

February 9th, 2011 at 8:06 PM  286 Comments

Today was an interesting day in the tablet world. We learned that what was left of Palm has now officially been smashed into HP, and that HP is serious about really building on the momentum that Palm had started to build with webOS. HP announced a plethora of new things today (which you can read more about over at Engadget, who I stole/borrowed the wonderful chart above from) but the most interesting today was their new tablet, the HP TouchPad.

I have been getting a lot of crap from people for talking a lot about Apple on this site recently. If you’re bothered by this, feel free to stop reading now, or write your own articles. Fact of the matter is, they’re key to a lot of the technology I’m interested in right now and they execute it better than anyone else.

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HP releases new commercial featuring Palm Pre 2

October 25th, 2010 at 10:25 PM  207 Comments

Due to hit Verizon any day now, and possibly AT&T later, the Palm Pre 2 is starring in it’s own little video trailer showing off some of the new features of WebOS 2.0.

Sporting a 1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM, it’s the most powerful smartphone Palm/HP has ever produced. Although it’s specs are becoming more and more common and are being quickly outranked by many of the new Android phones and almost all of the new Windows Phone 7 handsets.

And oh yeah, it has Angry Birds.

Dude, I hope you didn’t get a Dell

July 1st, 2010 at 2:03 AM  199 Comments

Until the last few years I was a big Dell supporter. I recommended Dell to the majority of my business clients as well as anyone looking for a home machine. At the time I had no problems with the brand and they were usually one of the low price leaders in their class. I had clients buy Servers, Monitors and Desktops without blinking an eye.

I have noticed over the years the same customers I gave my recommendation to were complaining about increased problems but I just shrugged it off. I then was given 30 machines from around 1999 – 2001 to build a temporary training class with, half HP, Half Dell. I had problems with almost each one of the Dell’s. Everything from not posting to the heat sink clip being broken. The HP’s also had a couple of issues but not near as many as the Dell’s.

I thought at the time it might have been a coincidence, until my company decided to buy 500 off lease Dell GX260′s for a fresh build out. I was horrified, not because they were Dell’s but because they were old and ratty. We made due with what we were given and put them out to production and have seen nothing but issues. Everything from BIOS batteries going out to smoke coming out of the power supply. We have between 4 – 6 of these off lease Dell’s go bad every month and at least 2 of them have “caught fire” from the power supply.

Now I hear that Dell knowingly covered up that they sold faulty motherboards? Not just one or two, but 11.8 million!  How can I recommend for anyone to get a Dell product when they try to sweep this under the rug? How am I to know that they didn’t cover up a faulty power supply design in the GX260′s that we have so many issues with and they just haven’t been caught yet?

If you are looking for a new build out of any type I would steer clear of Dell, I know I will be for quite some time.

The Calm Before the Storm – HP Tech Forum 2010

June 21st, 2010 at 11:36 AM  275 Comments

I am on the ground in Las Vegas at the HP Tech Forum 2010 at the Mandalay Bay.  This event will show HP and their partners newest technolgoy and how they plan on making the “Converged Infastrucure” that we have been hearing about fall in line.

I will be attending keynotes, hands on sessions as well as trolling the floor and talking to the many HP Partners that will be presenting at the expo.  I will be tweeting about anything I hear and see that I find interesting and snapping shots and uploading them to Flickr as the day goes by.

If you have anything you would like to see or if you want to get answers about specific technology from HP Execs let me know!

Disclaimer:  HP has provided my flight and accomidations for this event.  However they have no control over the content I produce.  My opinions, tweets and blog posts are my own.

TV Guide for May 3

May 3rd, 2010 at 3:21 PM  164 Comments

Microsoft will be adding a plethora of interesting features to Hotmail this summer. Chief among them is support for Exchange ActiveSync. This will allow users of any mobile device with ActiveSync support to receive push email, as well as synchronize calendar and contact information. Previously this feature was only available on Windows Mobile phones, and only in a limited fashion. Also coming soon is full SSL encryption on the Hotmail website, instead of just the Live authentication process. Microsoft is also expected to add conversation view, think Exchange/Outlook 2010, but in Hotmail. All of these features are things that Google has offered on Gmail for a while now and that Microsoft needs to play catchup with power users.

Microsoft has also announced that it will be providing full support for HTML5 video in Internet Explorer 9, and will be doing so using the H.264 protocol. Recently Apple has also been throwing support behind H.264 as the HTML5 video codec of choice for Safari. Apple has somewhat famously taken on Adobe in recent weeks saying Flash video is no longer the preferred option for Internet users going forward. Awkwardly, Microsoft agreed.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS was released on April 29. The latest version is a long term support release, meaning updates will be published for 3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server versions, compared to only 18 months with standard Ubuntu releases. This makes LTS a great platform for business deployments where doing full release upgrades every 6 to 12 months can be a major hassle. The latest version is lighter on features than normal Ubuntu releases are, but still sports the latest stable and public versions of GNOME, X.org and the Linux kernel. It also features a refreshed theme, ditching the brown and orange for a purple and black theme. There is also a new optional “lighter” theme that has a hint of brown instead of the standard Ubuntu color scheme. Boot times, especially on SSD drives have also been dramatically improved.

Palm is dead. Well, actually, HP purchased Palm for $1.2 billion.  The only hope for the WebOS platform now rests with HP and their commitment to “double down” and release new and improved hardware. Pending regulatory approvals, the deal is expected to close rather quickly in July of this year. Hopefully we’ll start seeing some HP branded WebOS devices starting this fall or winter.

HP Blades Tech Day 2010: The Beginning

February 24th, 2010 at 1:29 PM  136 Comments

I am heading to Houston today for HP Blades Tech Day 2010.  It will be two action packed days of information and interaction about HP’s blade solutions and their infrastructure software.  This will be the second HP Tech Day that I have attended and if this one is anything like the first it will be a incredible event.

I will be blogging and tweeting about anything that catches my eye.  Here is a list of the other Expert Bloggers who will be attending the event.

Kevin Houston - @kevin_houston – http://bladesmadesimple.com
Greg Knieriemen - @Knieriemen – http://www.storagemonkeys.com
Chris M Evans – @chrismevans – http://www.thestoragearchitect.com
King John Obeto – @JohnObeto – http://absolutelywindows.com
Rich Brambley - @rbrambley – http://vmetc.com
Simon Seagrave - @kiwi_Si – http://www.techhead.co.uk
Martin McLeod - @martinmacleod – http://www.bladewatch.com
Devang Panchigar – @StorageNerve – http://www.storagenerve.com
Stephen Foskett – @sfoskett – http://blog.fosketts.net

Calvin Zito from HP will also be attending with us.  His blog link is below.

http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/datastorage/default.aspx

You can follow all the action by searching for the Twitter hastag #hpbladesday.  Greg Knieriemen has also put together a Twitter list of all attendees.

Updated: Added more info and someone I missed to the list!

This trip was sponsored by HP.  HP paid for the travel arrangements and most meals for 10 bloggers to visit the HP Houston campus.

Microsoft CES keynote fails to excite

January 7th, 2010 at 8:28 AM  194 Comments

If you couldn’t get a chance to watch the Microsoft CES pre-show keynote last night, you didn’t miss much. If you were actually at the event, I feel sorry for you, it must have been hard to stay awake.

After starting late due to power issues (which fried one of the Microsoft demo units on stage) the keynote got off to a rather boring start with Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, giving various statistics about how well recently released products like Windows 7 and Bing are doing. For the first half hour, the audio stream for the webcast was so bad, it kept cutting out and then required constant volume adjustment. Note to Microsoft, hire a decent sound engineer next time.

If you’d like to watch the keynote for yourself, you can see the saved version on the Microsoft website.

It was all pretty much downhill from there. The much discussed “Courier” tablet that many in the tech press was excited they would announce never came, and there were no details about Windows Mobile 7… at all. Only “we’ll have more about mobile at Mobile World Congress.” So overall, the keynote failed to deliver much of anything that we didn’t know or have not seen already. But, here is a breakdown of what was covered, after the break.

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