Provisioning and allocation issues

Limitations with ESX 3i—Size of data disks and concurrent number of virtual machine provisioning operations. When deploying virtual servers on ESX 3i, you must limit the size of the data disks attached to virtual server groups in your Insight Orchestration template to 10 GB or less. After creating the virtual machines, you can increase the size of the data disks using the VMWare VI3 application by selecting each virtual machine, editing the settings, and changing the size of each data disk. In addition, when using ESX 3i, limit the number of concurrent virtual machine provisioning operations to two. To limit virtual machine provisioning operations, do one of the following:
- Configure Insight Orchestration to restrict the number of concurrent virtual machine provisioning operations to two by setting virtual.max.concurrent.requests = 2 in the hpio.properties file. This setting applies to all virtual machine provisioning operations across all Hypervisors.
- Manually manage the number of virtual machines deployed to ESX 3i servers by delaying approvals when ESX 3i provisioning occurs.
- Limit any Insight Orchestration templates used for ESX 3i provisioning to utilize one or two virtual machines only.
These limitations only exist when using ESX 3i, and do not apply to ESX 3.5. HP is working to provide full support for ESXi on Insight Orchestration and will provide updates in the HP Insight Orchestration Release Notes. Check the HP Insight Orchestration website periodically for updates.
Limitations with Hyper-V—Concurrent number of virtual machine provisioning operations. When using Hyper-V, limit the number of concurrent virtual machine provisioning operations to one, using one of the following options:
- Configure Insight Orchestration to restrict the number of concurrent virtual machine provisioning operations to one by setting virtual.max.concurrent.requests = 1 in the hpio.properties file. This setting applies to all virtual machine provisioning operations across all Hypervisors.
- Manually manage the number of virtual machines deployed to Hyper-V servers by delaying approvals when Hyper-V provisioning occurs.
- Limit any Insight Orchestration templates used for Hyper-V provisioning to utilize one virtual machine only.
HP and Microsoft are working to provide full support for Hyper-V on Insight Orchestration and will provide updates in the HP Insight Orchestration Release Notes. Check the HP Insight Orchestration website periodically for an HP update or Microsoft patch.
Setting up sysprep for customized Windows virtual machines—HP Insight Orchestration User Guide correction.
Insight Orchestration customizes the Windows operating system for each Windows virtual machine it provisions. Windows virtual machine customization is supported by combining two sources of information and passing them to VMM. VMM passes the information to ESX and Hyper-V for customization. This information includes:
- Specific attributes from the service template such as hostname.
- Contents of the Insight Orchestration sysprep.inf file, located at C:\Program Files\HP\InsightOrchestration\conf\Sysprep.inf. An Insight Orchestration administrator can edit this file to specify additional customizations for Windows virtual machines.
To enable customization on:
- VMware VirtualCenter 2.0, install the Microsoft Sysprep tools on the Virtual Center management server in the sysprep folder: C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware
- VMware VirtualCenter 2.5, install the Microsoft Sysprep tools on the Virtual Center management server in the sysprep folder: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\ApplicationData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\sysprep\1.1. For 2.5 this is incorrect. The correct folder is: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\ApplicationData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\sysprep\svr≶OS>. Where <OS> is the Windows guest operating system and can be 2003, 2003-64, 2008, or 2008-64. For example C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\ApplicationData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\sysprep\svr2003.
- Microsoft Hyper-V, install the Microsoft Sysprep tools on the HP central management server in the HP VMM sysprep folder:
  Windows 2003: Virtual Machine Management Pack Install Location\sysprep\2003
  Windows 2008: No installation required. Handled by the Hyper-V server
If sysprep is not installed, the sysprep folder does not exist and is required for Windows virtual machines. For more information, see the VMware VirtualCenter and the Installing the Microsoft Sysprep Tools article in the VMware Infrastructure 3 Online Library.
A provisioning request remains paused during a manual storage allocation (approximately 5%), and I cannot create a storage pool on VSE because the VCDG is not listed on the Storage Pools screen. VSE and Insight Orchestration do not support VCDG with factory default MAC/WWN settings. Logical servers require portable WWNs and MAC addresses that can be moved from blade server to blade server. When creating a VC Domain Group in Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager (VCEM), the user must select the HP Pre-Defined option to enable portable WWNs and MAC Addresses. For more information, see the VCEM documentation. To avoid this issue, make sure the servers from a VCDG not configure for portable addresses are not included in Insight Orchestration server pools. To resolve an existing issue, cancel the request and resubmit the request using a target Insight Orchestration Pool that contains servers from a VCDG with portable addresses.
When deprovisioning, you must use the exact job name to complete the process. For Insight Orchestration to correctly erase the disk content when deprovisioning physical servers using a non-English Rapid Deployment Pack version, you must create an English Erase ProLiant ML/DL/BL Array Configuration {LinuxPE} job under the Server Deployment Toolbox\1 – Hardware Configuration\Array\ Rapid Deployment Pack folder. You can copy and paste the equivalent non-English Rapid Deployment Pack job within the same folder, and then modify the Erase ProLiant ML/DL/BL Array Configuration {LinuxPE} job. For more information on modifying the job, see "Physical provisioning" in the HP Insight Orchestration User Guide.
If a provisioning failure occurs, manually cleanup virtual machines. If virtual machine provisioning fails, Insight Orchestration might not be able to automatically clean-up failed virtual machine guests. If this occurs, use the VMware Virtual Center or Microsoft Hyper-V interface to manually clean up the virtual machines.

Provisioning and allocation issues

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