Dell Active System Manager
Active System Manager is a workload-centric converged infrastructure manager that streamlines infrastructure configuration and on-going management. Active System Manager is a member of the Active Infrastructure Family and supports Active System compliant environments, which may be pre-integrated, based on a reference architecture or custom built using the Active System Matrix.
The latest release is Active System Manager 1.0 and it launched on November 30, 2012. Below is a list of technical capabilities that customers can expect:
- Template-based provisioning and automated configuration to easily encapsulate infrastructure requirements and then predictably apply those requirements based on workload needs
- Management of the entire lifecycle of infrastructure, from discovery and on-boarding through provisioning, on-going management and decommissioning
- Workload failover, enabling rapid and easy migration of workload to desired infrastructure resources
- Wizard-driven interface, with feature-guided, step-by-step workflows
- Graphical logical network topology view and extended views of NIC partitions
Essential Features
Getting Started with Active System Manager
Using Active System Manager is simple with three easy-to-follow steps as outlined in the console’s "Getting Started" tab:
- Discover chassis: discover and inventory the chassis and the blade servers and I/O modules within the chassis.
- Configure chassis:
- Create management templates that define network, security and monitoring policies within the chassis.
- Configure the chassis using the management templates. The chassis is also upgraded to the minimum required firmware to enable manageability of the infrastructure.
- Deploy servers:
- Create a deployment template that configures the networking and boot configuration for the server.
- Use the deployment template to deploy one or more servers.
Management Template
A management template establishes a framework for ongoing infrastructure management and encapsulates the following key configuration attributes of a modular chassis and the components within it:
- Device access: IP address and credential configuration
- Security: Chassis Management Controller (CMC) and Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) login credentials for administrators
- Monitoring: Traps, e-mail, syslog, and other attributes
- Time: Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers and time zone
- Networking: Services such as Telnet, Secure Shell (SSH), and Domain Name System (DNS) registration
- Power policies and configuration: Redundancy policies
Deployment Template
A deployment template simplifies workload centric configuration of compute and I/O resources within the chassis. The deployment template encapsulates the following significant configuration elements that set the foundation for hosting an OS or application:
- Minimum processor and memory requirements for the deployment template
- BIOS settings administrators can use to configure key attributes such as enabling virtualization technology or setting up the system profile for optimal power or performance characteristics
- RAID settings that enable configuring internal drives for hosting an OS or secondary disks
- Boot sequence that administrators can use to set up the desired device order for booting the server
- Boot information that enables administrators to configure the server to boot to an OS logical unit (LUN) image on shared storage, to internal Secure Digital (SD) drives, or from the network for OS provisioning or stateless deployments
- I/O connectivity that allows for configuring the logical network interface cards (NICs) for Ethernet, Internet SCSI (iSCSI), or Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) access and assign bandwidth characteristics to meet application service needs
Multi-level I/O Topology
Active System Manager offers many graphical views, particularly of the I/O topology, that provide extensive data in the easy to use and understand form. Some of the graphical views include:
- Logical network topology
- Expanded views of NIC partitions
- Bandwidth allocated
- Health status information
Chassis Topology
Resources
Whitepapers
- Dell Active System Manager Architecture Overview
- [[wiki:http:/en.community.dell.com/techcenter/extras/m/white_papers/20240678.aspx|Configuring
- Configuring Networking Architecture for Dell Active System Manager]]Manager
- Dell Active System Manager Network Configuration for Deployment Templates Updated
- Deploying a Hypervisor using the Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter in a Dell Active System Manager Environment
Videos
Initial Setup
[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xK3GS5LV44&feature=youtu.be]
Creating a Deployment Template
[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQI2EnqNWnQ&feature=youtu.be]
Creating a Management Template
[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXRVyGHfnxk&feature=youtu.be]
Creating Deployments
[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqK8QU-bCkc&feature=youtu.be]
Discovering a Chassis
[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrp74BvYy6A&feature=youtu.be]
Configuring a Chassis
[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRO0546yJ8U&feature=youtu.be]
Networking Management
[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw-cQtxxPkw&feature=youtu.be]