Insight Remote Support - HP Powerful Server and Storage Management Tool

    Many small and large companies around the world periodically experience a decrease in the productivity of their business-critical applications and a drop in the quality of IT services, which may be caused by the malfunction of one of the components of their IT infrastructure. To minimize possible losses, companies need to ensure quick detection of the root cause of such failures and prompt adoption of measures to eliminate them, automating these operations as much as possible.

    Back in the 1990s, HP offered various remote monitoring tools for different product lines. Perhaps one of the experienced administrators still remembers such tools as PRS, HAO and HPFN, Predictive. In 2001, the company introduced the new HP Instant Support Enterprise Edition (ISEE) product, which provides event and configuration management for servers and storage devices. ISEE technology was launched in 2007 by the HP Service Essentials Remote Support Pack (RSP), which allows you to integrate monitoring tools into a single infrastructure management console for HP Systems Insight Manager. The first release had version number 05.00. In the spring of 2009, when the version number 05.20 was released, the products were merged into the HP Insight Software portfolio and RSP was renamed to HP Insight Remote Support (IRS). Thus, this product has a long history and is developing very actively, for example, from 2007 to the present, eight releases of this product have already been released.

    The HP Insight Remote provides easy, reliable 24/7 monitoring with advanced fault detection and alerts, and automatically generates service requests at the HP support center. According to HP itself, the use of IRS on average accelerates the resolution of problems by 20% and gives almost 100 percent accuracy in diagnosing them.


    Event (fan failure on the basket) with automatically generated information about the location of the broken part, part number of the replacement part and a link to a video describing the procedure for replacing the part (for CSR)

    The IRS solution is available in two editions:
    • HP Insight Remote Support Standard, designed for small and medium-sized companies and supports up to 50 monitored devices (servers, disk arrays, tape libraries and switches). This software solution implements all the basic functions of remote monitoring and diagnostics. To deploy it, you need an HP ProLiant server running on Windows, which can run other Windows applications. HP Insight Remote Support Standard supports all of the HP server line-ups (with the exception of NonStop fault-tolerant servers) and HP StorageWorks storage systems (except XP and P9000 disk arrays).
    • For large enterprises, HP Insight Remote Support Advanced is designed. This solution is capable of servicing almost all HP equipment, as well as some models of Dell and IBM standard architecture servers. As the name implies, it implements advanced remote monitoring and diagnostic functions, including report generation and integration with such a powerful system management tool as HP System Insight Management (SIM). HP Insight Remote Support Advanced deploys on a dedicated HP ProLiant server.


    Proliant Server Page in SIM


    Perform system identification in SIM

    Although other leading server vendors offer similar remote support tools, only HP delivers it for free, provided that the customer has a valid warranty for the company's equipment or has purchased the HP Care Pack or has entered into a support agreement with HP. Moreover, if the customer has a contract or wants to connect the equipment to monitoring during the installation, then HP will carry out the installation and configuration of IRS on its own for free for the customer.

    The North-West branch of the MegaFon mobile operator, which has more than a hundred HP servers and storage systems in four data centers, has signed a contract to support the HP Mission Critical Partnership. After the introduction of HP Insight Remote Support Advanced, this customer’s number of calls by system administrators to HP support fell five-fold, there were fewer complaints about the quality of IT services from users and company management, and the average time to resolve problems was reduced by a quarter.


    Simplified IRS Advanced Chart

    HP IRS Advanced automatically monitors all changes in system configurations, and based on the analysis of the data collected by it, HP support center experts assess the status of systems and the likelihood of equipment malfunctions, quickly and accurately diagnose a malfunction, and for customers with a contract, based on this data, they can automatically various reports are compiled. In addition, HP Services, based on data from HP IRS Advanced, automated the installation of software patches on the servers and storage systems of the north-west Megafon. Prior to the implementation of this solution, several employees of the customer’s IT department spent the whole day only analyzing system logs, now they are transferred to more creative work on planning the deployment of new systems,

    The English-language description of the implementation of HP IRS Advanced in the northwest Megafon can be found here .

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