Runbook automation is critical to

virtualization success.
Solution brief

Overview

With the ability to orchestrate an end-to-end process

across multiple software tools, HP OO helps standardize IT processes, increase quality, resolve incidents
quickly, reduce errors, save costs, and help maintain
auditability and compliance.

Virtualization has clearly arrived. With a 69 percent

growth in revenue from 2006 to 2007,1 virtualization
machine software has matured to the point where,
increasingly, organizations are deploying production and even mission-critical applications on virtual
What is virtualization?
machines (VMs). While this growth is expected to continue due to the promise of virtualization, management Definition
Virtualization is an approach to pooling and sharing
tools have yet to mature to the point where they can
help customers realize the full benefits of virtualization. technology resources that ensures supply can readily
meet business demand. With servers, storage or netHP Operations Orchestration (HP OO) software can
works, virtualization is used to take a single physical
help businesses realize the value of virtualization by
asset and make it operate as if it were many separate,
providing the means to automate processes that include smaller assets. This improves asset utilization and effimanaging and provisioning of virtualized infrastructure. ciency, and decreases costs by reducing the need for
The strength of HP OO lies in that it can trigger virtuphysical assets.
alization tools to perform discrete tasks such as start,
stop, or move VMs; HP OO also integrates with a
1
Source: IDC Worldwide Virtual Machine Software 20082012 Forecast,
wide variety of management tools that are necessary
Doc # 212142, May 2008
to perform the actions before and after the virtualization tasks.

Chart 1
Worldwide virtual machine software year over year revenue

$1.78

$1.80
$1.60

Revenue in
$billions

$1.00

$1.05

7.5

8.3

7.9

8.8

9.3

9.8
Total physical
servers
CAGR = 5.5%

$0.80

Virtualized
physical servers
CAGR = 24.1%

$0.60
$0.40

$0.20
$0.00

12
10

$1.40
$1.20

Chart 2
Worldwide server virtualization shipment forecast (millions)

2006

2007

Source: IDC, Worldwide Virtual Machine Software 20082012 Forecast,

Doc # 212142, May 2008

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

Source: IDC Multiclient Study, Server Virtualization 2007; December 2007, Slide 73

Additionally, with storage or networks, virtualization is

used to aggregate multiple assets and present them to
servers and applications as if they were a single, larger
asset. This dramatically simplifies server and application architecture and reduces costs.
Basic terms
A few common terms related to virtualization are
defined below:
Hypervisor: software layer that hosts virtual
machines and performs virtualization
Host: a computer on which the emulator/hypervisor
software runs
Guest: the system being emulated on the host
computer as a virtual machine

Current state of the industry

Industry overview
On a worldwide basis, the adoption of virtualization
is growing at a tremendous pace. Chart 1 shows that
the virtual machine market is growing at a rate of 69
percent year over year. According to IDC, it is forecast
to grow to $5.3B in 2012 at 24.6 percent compound
annual growth rate (CAGR).2

The factors driving this growth are:

Flat IT hardware spending
Streamlined deployment of new or enhanced
IT services
Reduction of ongoing support and server admini
stration costs
New use cases for the technology and increased
independent software vendor (ISV) support
The United States currently leads virtualization adoption. In emerging economies such as China and Russia,
virtualization is still at a nascent stage. Globally, the
most significant inhibitors to virtualization adoption are
the initial setup and installation process. One of the
key drivers for virtualization adoption is reduction of
the capital expenditure on hardware.
Virtualization forecast
IDCs Server Virtualization forecast (Chart 2) indicates
that the growth of IT investment in virtualized infrastruc
ture is higher than the growth in physical infrastructure.
In addition, growth of IT investment in storage virtualization (Chart 3) is expected to accelerate over the
next few years.
Source: IDC Worldwide Virtual Machine Software 20082012 Forecast
Doc # 212142, May 2008

Chart 3
Worldwide storage virtualization forecast

(EB)

Market revenue ($billions)

$3.0

1.6
1.4

$2.5

1.2

$2.0

1.0

$1.5

0.8
0.6

$1.0

0.4

$0.5
$0.0

Network-based
block-level
virtualization
Open systems
virtual tape
New virtualized
petabytes

0.2
2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

0.0

Source: IDC, Virtualization Across the Enterprise, Doc # TB20070405, April 2007, slide 7

Why do businesses care about

virtualization?
For businesses, virtualization can mean faster time to
market for new services, greater service resiliency, and
lower IT operational costs. For IT, virtualized solutions
are faster to deploy and lead to increased hardware
utilization and lower power and cooling costs. If managed right, virtualization can provide the following
business and IT benefits:
Higher availability, quicker disaster recovery
Efficient and fast provisioning
Power and hardware savings
Consolidation of logical resources
Higher performance
Reduced staffing needs

Challenges in implementing
virtualization
Implementing virtualized infrastructure brings its own
set of challenges.
Proliferation of virtual machines and platformsThis
includes issues related to virtual sprawl and lack of
tools and resources to manage security and compli
ance of virtualized machines. Software license compliance related to virtual infrastructure adds another
layer of complexity. Hardware investments may slow
down, but are not eliminated; adding virtual machines
requires ongoing addition of processing, memory,
storage, and networking infrastructure.

Staffing and people concernsJust like any other

technologies that purport to provide efficiencies
and cost savings, virtualization faces resistance
from IT staff concerned about downsizing. In addition, virtualization adds yet another complex new
technology for IT professionals to learn and master,
while they struggle to keep up with managing their
existing infrastructure.
Process issuesPlanning to manage physical and
virtual infrastructure in an integrated manner, while
maintaining service performance and quality, is a
challenge that most organizations face. In addition,
compliance of virtualized infrastructure must be managed just like the physical infrastructure requiring
management tools that provide a seamless view of
the entire environment.

How can HP Software help with

virtualization management?
HP Business Service Management solutions link business services to underlying physical and virtual infrastructures to avoid and provide insight into IT service
failures. Understanding these relationships can help
identify performance problems before end users are
affected, optimize the performance of virtual infrastructures, and provide accurate decision support
data for automating changes to the environment.
HP Business Service Automation solutions automate
and orchestrate provisioning and compliance tasks
across physical and virtual service boundaries to
decrease redundant tasks and drive down administration overhead.

 HP IT Service Management solutions provide consis

tent processes for managing and enforcing license
compliance across virtual and physical environments.
These solutions also provide consolidated incident,
problem, and change management for the distributed
enterprise.
HP Quality Management solutions schedule, provision,
and refresh virtual and physical lab environments for
quality assurance (QA) and development. By linking
environment and QA assets, IT can accelerate the
QA phase and also increase the test coverage.

How can HP Operations

Orchestration help with virtualization
management?
HP Operations Orchestration (HP OO) software helps
automate standard IT tasks and integrates critical management systems in the data center. By executing and
reporting on out-of-the-box workflows, HP OO enables
standardization of IT processes, increase in quality,
reduction of errors, and cost savings.

Implementing virtualization involves performing a number of discrete tasks. HP OO can combine these tasks,
and the tasks performed by other products, technologies, and platforms, to implement truly valuable and
powerful capabilities.
HP OO can help perform simple virtualization tasks
such as starting or stopping virtual machines. However, the value of HP OO lies in its ability to perform
a number of tasks before and after the virtualization
tasks that are necessary for the end-to-end process to
be completed successfully. This may include creating
a trouble/change ticket, performing a health check on
a server, or taking a server off monitoring. The following use cases describe how HP OO can help perform
these end-to-end processes.
HP OO + virtualization use case 1simple virtual
machine provisioning
The first use case involves provisioning an a
dditional
Web server along with additional storage in a clustered environment, without service downtime. This is
made possible by VMwares VMotion capabilities, that
allow the production VMs to be moved to a standby
hypervisor while the primary hypervisor undergoes

Figure 1. Virtualization use case illustration (provisioning without service downtime)

Figure 2. Case 2complex VM provisioning across multiple management tools

maintenance and/or provisioning tasks. The depth and 4) Administrator runs a provisioning flow (depicted
breadth of virtualization content provided in HP OO
in Figure 1) that does the following:
allow it to orchestrate these tasks while leveraging the
Prompts user for the VM parameters such as
VMotion capabilities of VMware Virtual Infrastructure.
VM name, hypervisor names, etc.
The following steps occur in the application provision Moves production VM to standby hypervisor
ing scenario:
Orchestrates Storage Essentials (SE) to provision
1) Alert is raised in HP Operations Manager as a
additional storage
result of deteriorating application performance.
Kicks off Server Automation (SA) to create new
2) Administrator runs standard health-check flows.
VM and install/configure Web server software
3) Administrator determines that an additional
Moves production VM to production hypervisor
clustered Web server, along with additional
Configures Web server cluster to accept traffic
storage, needs to be provisioned.
While not explicitly depicted in Figure 1, change
management ticket is created and updated
throughout the provisioning flow.

HP OO + virtualization use case 2complex virtual

machine provisioning across multiple management tools
Use case 2 involves the complex task of provisioning a
virtual machine through server (HP Server Automation)
and storage (HP Storage Essentials) management tools.
While the task of provisioning the virtual machine
and installing software is performed by HP Server
Automation (SA), and the storage provisioning is done
by HP Storage Essentials (SE), HP OO provides value
by orchestrating the end-to-end process.
Once users enter all the parameters for their application provisioning request, HP OO takes over and
sequences these tasks together and triggers the appropriate tools to perform the process in a standard, predictable, and error-free manner. All tasks and results
are logged in HP Service Manager and the need for
human intervention is removed, thus freeing expensive
IT personnel to perform value-added tasks rather than
repetitive and manual tasks. In addition, use of HP SA
and HP SE enables software and storage provisioning
to be performed in compliance with corporate and/or
regulatory policies.
The detailed steps for this use case are as follows:
1) User wishes to replicate a production application
instance in a test environment. Due to the large size
of the application, this replication will require provisioning of additional server and storage.
User enters the provisioning request on the
self-service portal.
User is prompted to enter information such as
guest operating system, ports, data stores, and
other virtual machine parameters.
The request submittal triggers opening of a change
request ticket in HP Service Manager. The ticket
includes details of the submitted request.
2) The change request ticket is approved by the change
manager or the change advisory board (CAB).
3) Once the ticket is approved, the storage administra
tor queries data store capacity and, if necessary,
provisions extra virtual storage volumes from the
storage pool, creates a SAN zone, and activates
the virtual storage.

c. Remediate the VM to comply with the software

policy. The software policy includes all applica
tions that must be installed and all files that must
be copied to the server to replicate the production
environment.
d. Change ticket is updated with details about the
completed request.
5) Server administrator closes the change request ticket,
with details about the status of the completed request.
The steps listed above can be represented in an HP
Operations Orchestration workflow as shown in
Figure 2. The workflow below is kicked off when the
developer submits the request on the self-service portal
to provision a new test environment.

Benefits of using HP Operations

Orchestration for virtualization
management
Integrated manageability of infrastructure assets
With comprehensive out-of-the-box content, HP OO
provides the capability to create workflows that
seamlessly manage and track physical as well as
virtual infrastructure. Integration with other HP and
third-party tools enables HP OO to orchestrate tasks
across multiple management tools in the IT e
nvironment.
Cost savingsBy eliminating manual steps, HP OO
helps significantly reduce the amount of time it takes
to perform provisioning, monitoring, update, and management tasks for a virtualized infrastructure. These
cost savings result from streamlining information
flow and handoffs between each of the steps while
performing a workflow.
Improved customer satisfactionA quick turnaround
on provisioning and management of critical v irtual
infrastructure implies better responsiveness to end
customers, thus resulting in more satisfied customers.
System of record for runbooksUse of HP Operations Orchestration forces the experts to build tribal
knowledge into the workflows, thereby creating a
central repository for knowledge related to virtual
infrastructure. This eliminates risks from an absent
or new employee when the need arises.

4) The job is then handed over to the server administrator who uses a server provisioning tool (HP Server
Elimination of errorsOnce knowledge has been
Automation), which performs the following tasks:
translated into workflows inside HP OO, errors are
less likely to occur. Human errors related to stress,
a. Provision the virtual machine.
distractions, coffee breaks, lost post-it notes, etc. are
b. Attach the software policy to the VM.
largely eliminated by institutionalizing the information
in HP OO.

HP OO features and content that

support virtualization

Features
HP OO provides a powerful visual workflow authoring
tool with an enhanced debugger that allows creation
of brand-new workflows or modification of the out-ofHP Operations Orchestration includes a comprehensive set of features that has enabled customers to man- the-box workflows. HP OO also provides the ability
age virtualization in their environment. Most important, to leverage existing scripts written in Perl, JavaScript,
and VBScript to create workflows. Powerful multiHP OO provides out-of-the-box capabilities to orchesauthoring capabilities allow multiple users to collabotrate provisioning, configuration, and management
rate while writing and testing flows.
of IT infrastructure using HP Server Automation (for
servers), HP Network Automation (for network devices),
HP Client Automation (for desktops), and HP Storage
Essentials (for storage devices).

Table 1. HP Operations Orchestration tasks

Author
Drag-and-drop workflow design
tool
Out-of-the-box flow templates
Out-of-the-box integration
adapters
Built-in debugger
Direct script import

Deploy
Publish and deploy

Run
Visually guided mode

Report
Automatic audit trails

Workflow sharing import and

export

Fully automated mode

Out-of-the-box dashboard
reports

Document generator
Enterprise security model
Single sign-on integration

Scheduled mode
Gated transitions
Browse and search in browser
user interface

Mean time to repair (MTTR)

trending reports
Built-in return on investment
(ROI) calculator
Dynamic drill-down
Out-of-the-box ITIL reports
Custom reporting

HP OO has been architected to support high availability and failover requirements of large enterprise
data centers that may process millions of incidents
and alerts daily. HP OO also supports a wide v ariety
of deployment architectures based on factors such as
number of users, number of flows, number of concurrent flow runs, and number of flow runs anticipated
per second, hour, and day.
HP OO allows flows to be executed completely automatically, to be scheduled, or to be run in a guided
mode with input prompts, if necessary. This provides
flexibility while planning and writing workflows. HP
OO also includes automatic audit trails of workflows
executed in the environment. The ability to use out-ofthe-box dashboard reports, or create new ones, is a
unique capability.
Table 1 provides a list of the typical tasks performed
using HP OO and the features that support these tasks.

Content
HP OO includes over 3,000 out-of-the-box operations,
workflows, and integration adapters. The included
operations and workflows offer tremendous flexibility
in being able to run flows on many different platforms
and products. The comprehensive coverage of integration adapters for management products offers
the freedom to use existing products without major
tweaks or reprogramming. Table 2 provides a list of
the important accelerator packs and integrations in
HP OO.
In addition, HP OO also contains numerous out-of-thebox operations, workflows, and integration adapters
to manage virtualization platforms such as VMware
Server and VMware Virtual Infrastructure, Microsoft
Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer. New content to c reate
snapshots and migrate hot VMs leverages the V
Motion
capabilities of VMware Virtual Infrastructure and
provides incredible power and flexibility to manage
virtual platforms. A list of virtualization-related operations and flows is included in Table 3.

Table 2. Accelerator packs (workflow templates) and integrations

Out-of-the-box workflow templates
Operating systems: Microsoft Windows, Red Hat/SUSE Linux,
Solaris, FreeBSD

Out-of-the-box integration adapters

Service Desk: HP Service Desk, HP Service Manager, BMC Remedy,
HP Peregrine Service Center, CA Service Desk

Application servers: BEA WebLogic, Citrix Presentation Server, JBOSS,

Tomcat, IBM Websphere

Monitoring: HP Openview Operations, HP Operations Manager, HP

Network Node Manager, BMC Patrol, IBM Netcool, CA Network and
Systems Management, IBM Tivoli, MOM, SCOM 2007

Network: Cisco
Databases: Oracle, MS SQL Server, Sybase
Virtualization: VMware Server, VMware Virtual Infrastructure,
Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, Citrix Presentation Server
Others: Microsoft Exchange, F5, Active Directory, IIS

Configure and Change: HP Server Automation, HP Network

Automation, HP Client Automation, HP Storage Essentials, Microsoft
SMS, Symantec Altiris
CMDB: HP UCMDB, BMC Atrium

Table 3. Out-of-the-box virtualization operations and workflows

VMware Virtual Infrastructure
VM operations such as Clone/Create/Get/Migrate/Relocate
Snapshot-related operations to Create/Delete/Get/Revert To Snapshot
Guest operations such as Mount/Upgrade tools, Reboot/Shutdown/
Standby Guest
Network operations for Port Groups, Virtual NICs, and Virtual Switches
Workflows such as Get Freespace on Datastores, Get List of Powered
On VMs, Quick Migrate
Citrix XenServer
Basic VM operations such as Pause/Resume/Suspend/Unpause/
Reboot/Shutdown/Start VMs

Microsoft Hyper-V
Basic VM operations such as Create/Delete/Export/Import/Pause/
Rename/Reset/Save/Shutdown/Start/Stop VMs
Server operations such as Enumerate VMs, List Long Running VMs, List
Old VMs
Snapshot related operations to Apply/Create/Delete/Enumerate/
Rename Snapshots
Virtual Harddisk Operations to Attach/Compact/Convert/Create/
Expand/Validate Virtual Harddisk
VM Configuration operations to get or set VM parameters
Virtual Network operations related to NICs, Legacy NICs and VPNs

Advanced operations such as Migrate/Clone/Copy/Destroy/Find/

Install VMs

Generic Virtualization
Workflows that apply generically to all virtualization platforms such as:

Create VM Snapshot

Get All Snapshots

Operations to Create/Destroy/Find Virtual Networks

Get All Virtual Machines

Storage operations related to Storage Repositories, Virtual Block

Devices and Virtual Disk Images

Power Off Virtual Machine

Workflows to Check for Task Success, Create VM from Configured

Template, Find List of VMs, Setup Network Devices for VM

Power On Virtual Machine

Revert to Snapshot
Suspend Virtual Machine
Take Virtual Machine Snapshot
VMware Server
Get Virtual Machine Info such as Display Name/IP/Address/Memory/
OS Name /State
Reset/Start/Stop/Suspend/Register/Unregister VM
Enumerate VMs
VMware command
Get VM Status

Technology for better business outcomes

To learn more, visit www.hp.com/go/bsa
Copyright 2008 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject
to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express
warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as
constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions
contained herein.
Solaris and JavaScript are U.S. trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Linux is a U.S. registered trademark of
Linus Torvalds. Microsoft and Windows are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Oracle is
a registered U.S. trademark of Oracle Corporation, Redwood City, California.
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