Demo Lab Guide Active Systems Manager - Amazon S3 Dell Demo Center – | Dell Inc., 2016 Demo Lab Guide – Active Systems Manager Active Systems Manager Deployment Walkthrough Product

1 Dell Demo Center – https://demos.dell.com | Dell Inc., 2016

Demo Lab Guide – Active Systems Manager

Active Systems Manager Deployment Walkthrough

Product Domain: Server

Author: Ian O’Gorman

Version: 1.01 Date: 21/01/2016

https://demos.dell.com/


Table of Contents 1 Product Overview ............................................................................................................................................ 3

1.1 Lab Preparation Considerations and Caveats ................................................................................. 4

2 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................... 5

2.1 Lab Topology and Essential Information .......................................................................................... 5

3 Active System Manager – Infrastructure Automation ............................................................................. 6

3.1.1 Infrastructure Provisioning ................................................................................................................. 6

3.2 Templates ............................................................................................................................................. 13

3.3 Advanced demonstrations ................................................................................................................ 15

3.3.1 Showing back end processes in consoles...................................................................................... 15

3.4 Deploying VMs on top of the initial demo ..................................................................................... 16



1 Product Overview

Dell Active System Manager (ASM) automates delivery of IT services to cut the time, cost and complexity

of data center management. Fast, efficient and flexible, Active System Manager is Dell’s unified

management and open automation solution that enables any IT administrator to provision new

infrastructure and workload services in minutes. ASM simplifies and accelerates the deployment,

provisioning, and lifecycle management of IT services.



1.1 Lab Preparation Considerations and Caveats

It is in your best interests to ensure the demo environment you will be demonstrating is clean & tidy

before you begin. For this reason we would recommend, where possible, you log in to your demo at

least 15 minutes prior to delivery and check the following;

1. Familiarize yourself with the environment during this time and check any specific features you are

expecting to demo.

2. Most importantly, be crystal clear with yourself on what it is you plan to show. A full demo of every

feature described below (with questions) can take several hours. If you only have a short time slot

be sure to focus on the key points that address the customer’s pain points and will drive value home

to them.

3. Ensure that you have scheduled the demo for sufficient time so as not to have the demo end before

you are finished with the customer.

Any other guidance on how the user should prepare for the lab can be added here. If there are

limitation or something the user should be aware of call out also.



2 Introduction

This demonstration is primarily aimed at the CIO/CFO level and IT management staff. It also provides a

useful quick introduction for staff that are not familiar with Dell Active System Manager (ASM). It is highly

recommended to have done an overview of ASM with the audience before you start the demo, as it will

be easier for them to follow if they understand the value proposition and feature set before they see a

demo. You can access the latest ASM presentation a:

http://salesedge.dell.com/doc?id=0901bc82807d5e74&ll=d&pm=111413830

Provisioning any production IT infrastructure from bare-metal to fully-functional infrastructure is a

complex task that typically requires a high-level technical resource operating full-time for an extended

period of time. This environment is a live environment, not simulated. Due to this fact, some processes

take time to complete, so don’t expect to be able to watch a deployment end to end in a quick demo.

2.1 Lab Topology and Essential Information






3 Active System Manager – Infrastructure

Automation

Once the physical installation tasks; installing racks, storage, switches, cabling are done, it still takes a

day (or more) and 575 steps to configure hardware and deploy infrastructure, virtualization, Operating

Systems, and applications to do something such as a 4 node ESXi cluster.

ASM handles all of these tasks, delivering the same end result of this example of a fully configured ESXi

cluster. It automates and standardizes all of the associated tasks, ensuring speed and reliability with

dramatically-reduced hands-on time.

In this case we reduce the workload for an IT administrator or engineer from 575 steps and a whole day

to just a few steps, and a couple of minutes of admin time, making a more efficient process. And I’m

going to walk you through that with this demo.

A Solutions Architect has already defined the tasks and parameters of the installation. Active System

Manager (ASM) translates those tasks into an action where a Junior Administrator can complete the

process using the web console with a few clicks, and doesn’t have to involve other senior administrators

or architects.

All manual tasks are handled automatically, including registering hosts in VCenter, storage provisioning,

setup of cluster settings, IP-addressing, virtual networks, and so on.

This is just an example of how Active System Manager can significantly help by reducing the day-to-day

work for an Administrator.

3.1.1 Infrastructure Provisioning

1. Launch the DSC ASM 7.6 Demo environment by double clicking the Active System Manager shortcut

on the desktop.



2. Log in using the correspondent credentials (user: admin; password: admin).



Note: Once we are in ASM, we are immediately shown the getting started page. This page helps with

initial configuration of ASM, discovering resources, and configuring templates. In this example, those

steps have already been done, so we’re going to move on to provisioning our ESX cluster. To get

started, I’m going to navigate to the dashboard.

3. Select Dashboard tab on the left hand navigation menu

Note: From the dashboard, I can see what deployments are running in my environment, what state

they are in, and some recent activity. As we can see, this environment is not being used at the

moment, so we’re going to go ahead and deploy our ESX Cluster.

4. Select Deploy ESXi Cluster



Note: Once I have selected the service, I’m presented a popup to perform this task. The first thing I

need to do is give this instance a name and a description, so I can tell what it was later

5. Under Service Name and Service Description, enter unique and meaningful information. Not just ESX

cluster, but the customer’s name, company name, a group name, or something else appropriate.



Note: We see that once we select a template, information is populated for that template. The storage

information is already populated based on the values in the template, but it allows me to override the

name and credentials of the LUN that will be provisioned if I need to. Also, I need to specify the host

names for the ESX hosts we will be deploying.

6. Enter a Host Name for each ESX host

Note: Now that I have filled that out, I am done with my manual tasks and ASM takes over with

automation to fulfill my request.

7. Click Deploy Now in the bottom right corner

Note: Once I have clicked the button, ASM takes me over to a Service Details page, that lets me know

what it is doing, and where it is in the process. This is a live environment, so the steps aren’t going to

happen immediately, but as ASM completes each task (storage, server, cluster configuration), we will

see them show up on the right hand side under Recent Activity.



8. In the center of the screen, we see a graphical representation of what is being deployed. The bottom

image is the storage volume, which is connected to the two R720 servers, and those are connected

to the cluster in vCenter.



9. If you click the details link at the top of the screen, we see the physical resources that ASM pulled

from our resource pool. In this case, we see two R720 servers, an EqualLogic array, and the vCenter

instance that we will be creating the cluster on. We didn’t have to specify any of this, because this

was included in the template that we selected.

10. And on the top right, we see the current state of the deployment. In this case, it is in progress, and

will take around an hour to complete all of the tasks that are needed. These tasks include

a. Configure Server facing switch ports with appropriate VLANs

b. Provision volume on EqualLogic array with appropriate credentials

c. Configure Server BIOS

d. Configure Server RAID

e. Partition Server CNA

f. Deploy ESXi 5.1 to the two servers

g. Configure ESXi instances with appropriate vmNICs, vSwitches, Port Groups.

h. Create Data Center and Cluster in vCenter

i. Add ESXi hosts to cluster

j. Configure Data Stores on shared storage



This concludes a short, introductory demo of a regular use case of ASM. After seeing this, the audience

should understand how ASM can deliver value through time savings, simplification of process, and

standardization. It is not important to show all aspects of the product in the initial demo, but to

demonstrate these values and allow for a deeper dive into the product and its capabilities. The

deployment will not complete during this demo, but if the meeting will continue on, the deployment

will move along the process on the screen.

3.2 Templates

Now that we have a deployment in process, let’s go back to the template that we deployed and see

what was included in it.

1. Click on templates tab in the left hand navigation

2. Select the Demo template category

3. Select the Deploy ESXi Cluster template that was deployed earlier

4. Click View Details



Note: Here we see the same topology that we saw earlier when the template was deploying. But

here, we can drill into the underlying components and their details.

5. Click the storage icon at the bottom of the diagram, and then select View

6. In the popup, we see the details for that component, such as the storage size and attributes.



This can be repeated for the servers as well as the cluster. This topology and attributes are what

defines the function of the template, and what we configure with ASM. In this instance, we are

deploying a single storage volume of 500 GB, 2 ESX hosts installed on SD cards with NPAR partitions

configured for multiple networks, and adding them to an ESX cluster in the environment.

Note: To avoid User Interface issues, always wait for the “Loading Content” popup to go away before

clicking the next thing you wish to do in the User Interface.

3.3 Advanced demonstrations

3.3.1 Showing back end processes in consoles If this is a longer demonstration, or a second presentation, you can optionally open consoles to the

storage, servers, and even switches to demonstrate what is happening behind the scenes. There are

shortcuts to the iDRAC consoles on the desktop, from which you can launch virtual consoles to watch

the servers boot. Also, there is a link to the EqualLogic group manager, to see storage provisioning, and

Putty to log in to the switch. The order that will be followed is switch configuration, then storage

configuration, then server configuration/deployment, then vCenter configuration.



Console Username Password Notes

iDRAC console root calvin Launch virtual console

EqualLogic group manager grpadmin grpadmin Watch volumes tab

S4810 (Putty) demouser demouser Ports 0/5-8 are server ports

vCenter root vmware Watch for DC, Cluster, Hosts

3.4 Deploying VMs on top of the initial demo

For a next level demo, you can also optionally deploy one of a number of VM templates onto this cluster

after the deployment is complete. You may even wish to pre-provision the ESX cluster before your demo

time, so you have a completed deployment, and can showcase the VM provisioning capability. The

templates are available following the same procedures outlined before, but select the appropriate

template. The templates available are

Deploy Windows VMs to ESX Cluster

- Deploys 2 Basic Windows 2012 R2 VMs

Deploy Linux VMs to ESX Cluster

- Deploys 2 Basic CentOS Linux VMs

Deploy SQL 2012 to VM

- Deploys a Single VM with SQL installed

Deploy Citrix XenDesktop Application

- Deploys 5 VMs with various components of XenDesktop 7.5 deployed on them

Linux templates takes 10-15 minutes, and Windows template takes 25-30, with workload based

templates taking longer than basic OS deployments. The login information for each VM is below, once

deployment is completed.

Windows VM administrator Dell1234

Linux VM root Dell1234


Documents

Demo Lab Guide Active Systems Manager - Amazon S3 Dell Demo Center – | Dell Inc., 2016 Demo Lab Guide – Active Systems Manager Active Systems Manager Deployment Walkthrough Product