In this article I would like to pass on some initial observations that I have made about using HP SmartStart, Installing HP Drivers and making use of the HP Management Web page on Windows 2008 RTM, although not strictly related to Exchange Server, it does provide some insight into preparing a Windows 2008 installation on HP hardware in preparation for Exchange server.

Like a number of people (although not all) I make very heavy use of HP Proliant Servers – in particular the DL 36x and 38x generations.

Now if you are a user of HP Proliant servers you will know that the latest release of SmartStart (at this stage 7.91) does not (yet) support Windows 2008 (SmartStart is HP’s server provisioning software which is supplied with new HP’s servers).

For those of you whom have never used or seen SmartStart; It is used the first time that you turn on your new HP server. Essentially you boot from the SmartStart CD, which will then take you through the process of Partitioning Disks, Configuring Hardware, Selecting an Operating System Configuration (not Windows 2008 at the moment), and asks you to provide your Windows product key.

It will then install Windows (from a generated answers file) and at the end of the process install the Product Support Pack (also known as the Proliant Support Pack).

However as mentioned before at this stage it is not worth using SmartStart 7.91 to install Windows 2008 as 2008 is not a supported O/S for automated deployment and even more frustratingly SmartStart does not appear to let you select another version of Windows to “pretend” to be Windows 2008.

Ok, where does this leave us if we wish to use Windows 2008 on our spanky new HP server?

By not being able to use SmartStart the following actions will need to be done manually on your server:

• If you have purchased a Proliant server with a RAID controller built in (typically 5i or P400) you will need to use the ROM based ACU (Arrays Configuration Utility) – this option is presented to you during the servers boot sequence, just after the RAID controller has spun up and scanned the disks (Pressing F8)
• When your Disks are partitioned at the RAID level you will need to boot from the Windows 2008 server media to install the O/S (this obviously means a manual O/S install, where you will need to enter the product key and activate at the end.
• You will need to manually download and configure the Proliant Support Pack (PSP) – this is a collection of drivers which have been especially produced to function with your model of server with a specific Operating System (in this case Windows 2008) – below are the current locations of the PSP’s for the most popular DL Series of Server for Windows 2008 x64:
  • HP Proliant DL365 G1
  • HP Proliant DL360 G5
  • HP Proliant DL380 G5

 

Installing the PSP:

Create a folder on your server where you can download the HP PSP to (for example c:\PSP) – when the PSP has been downloaded double click on the Icon which looks like the following:

You will be presented with the “Extract Files” dialog box – see below

Click on the “Extract” Button which will bring up the “Browse” location to extract the files to (the default will be the folder in which the PSP was executed from – therefore you can click on “OK” – see below:

The PSP package will then extract its contents to the location that you specified.

At this point open a Windows 2008 server command prompt and type in the following command:

serverManagerCMD -i snmp-services

The output from the above command should look like the following:

If you do not follow this procedure BEFORE executing the PSP setup, you will be prevented from installing all components and you will be presented with the following “Failed Dependencies” errors:

Which when clicked on reveal the following Information:

When you have installed SNMP – find the “Setup.exe” file which is located in the directory where you extracted the PSP which will open the following screen:

Ensure that the “Local Host <Server Name>” option is selected and the click on the “Next” button:

The PSP will then check your server for existing versions of any Drivers/Software contained within the PSP (which considering that this is a new server build there should not be any) when done the following screen will be displayed:

Nothing on this screen needs modification under a normal install therefore you can click on the “OK” button:

The screen will change to look like the above, you will notice that under the “Optional Actions” column for the “System Management Home-page”,  and the  “Insight Management Agents for Windows 2003/2008” there is an entry entitled “Configure Now”.

Configuring the System Management Home-page;

Click on the “Configure Now” entry which will open up the following screen:

Click on the “Next” button which will present the HP System Management permissions screen:

In order to get started, in the section entitled “Group Name” I would recommend adding in the “Administrators” group with “Administrator” operating level and then click on the “Add” button – at this stage this should suffice. When done click on the “Next” button:

This screen defines the type of access to the System Management Home page granted locally – here I would choose “Administrator – Grant Full Access…” – ensure however that the “Anonymous Access” option is NOT ticked – when done click on the “Next” button:

The HP Management Home page has for many years used a Self Signed / Generated SSL certificate to secure access to its features – HP recommends that you choose the “Trust by Certificate” option (which is selected by default) – however that requires you to have a Certificate Ready to import – I recommend that you use the “Trust All” option (if your companies Information Security Policy allows) then click on the “Next” button:

The screen above allows you to configure a range of IP addresses which can connect to the HP Systems Management Home page remotely on port 2381 – here you can provide a range, or, tick the IP binding tick box which will make the Systems Management pages only available from the local host and click “Next”:

The next page allows you to configure IP addresses which are restricted from connecting to the HP Management Home page, I would suggest that if you have configured IP binding then you can skip this page by clicking “Finish”.

Configuring the Insight Management Agents for Windows 2003/2008;

From the PSP Window Click on the “Configure Now” entry which will open up the following screen:

Set the “Data Collection Interval” to 10 minutes and tick the box entitled “Enable SNMP Sets” then click on the “Save” button.

When all of the “Configurable” options have been set and verified within the PSP click on the “Install” button – see below:

The Installer will then proceed to place the required drivers and utilities onto your system – see below:

When the installation has completed you will need to reboot your server.

OK the server has rebooted and I have opened the HP Management Home Page – it’s broken!

When your server has rebooted on the Desktop (or via [ Start -> Programs -> HP Management Agents -> HP System Management Home-page ] ) open the HP Management Utility by clicking on this icon:

Initially you will be presented with an Internet Explorer web page which looks like the following:

Click on the “Continue to this web-site (not recommended)” option which will display the something similar to the following screen:

As you can see, the screen does not show any meaningful information about your server whatsoever. Essentially this is down to the SNMP configuration on your Windows 2008 server. By default SNMP is not installed, and indeed when you do install it NO communities are created by default. The HP System Management tool (and many of the agents) function via configured SNMP communities.

In order to fix this problem go to [ Start -> RUN ] and type in “Services.msc” – this will display the Services MMC.

Navigate to the SNMP service – see below:

Right click on the SNMP service and from the context menu that appears choose “Properties”:

From the dialog that appears choose the “Security” tab – then from the “Accepted community names” click on the “Add” button:

From the dialog box that appears ensure that the “Community rights” setting is “READ ONLY” – then in the “Community Name” area type in a name that is unique and secure to your organisation (this is to protect against a number of SNMP vulnerabilities that have been found) and then click on the “Add” button – this will return you to the main dialog screen which should now look like the following:

Under the “Accepted community names” area click on the “Add” button:

From the dialog box that appears ensure that the “Community rights” setting is “READ WRITE” – then in the “Community Name” area enter in a name that is again unique to your organisation and then click on the “Add” button.

This will return you again to the main dialog box – here click on the “OK” button then close the “Services.msc”.

Open the HP System Management Home Page – this time however it should look a little more like this:

I hope that his helps someone along the way.