HPE Synergy Image Streamer 5.2 User manual

HPE Synergy Image Streamer 5.2 User Guide
Part Number: P01617-007
Published: May 2020
Edition: 1
Abstract
This guide describes the Image Streamer architecture, features, interfaces, and working environment. It describes the
server deployment process using Image Streamer, the purpose, and life cycle of Image Streamer artifacts and the actions
you can perform using them. It also includes information about recommendations for using Image Streamer resources,
authentication, authorization and troubleshooting information for Image Streamer.

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Contents
Introduction to Image Streamer..................................................................................... 7
Image Streamer overview........................................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Image Streamer architecture.....................................................................................................................................................................................7
Image Streamer stateless architecture .............................................................................................................................................................. 9
Image Streamer appliance terminology...........................................................................................................................................................10
User roles for Image Streamer.............................................................................................................................................................................. 11
Deployment using Image Streamer....................................................................................................................................................................11
Getting started with Image Streamer......................................................................... 15
Initial configuration of Image Streamer........................................................................................................................................................... 15
Prepare Image Streamer for use..........................................................................................................................................................................15
About adding Image Streamer devices to an existing Synergy configuration......................................................................... 16
Confirm Image Streamer discovery in HPE OneView............................................................................................................ 16
About reclaiming the Image Streamer appliance..................................................................................................................... 16
When to create a management network for Image Streamer...........................................................................................17
Add Image Streamer to a logical enclosure................................................................................................................................. 17
Accessing Image Streamer documentation and help............................................... 18
Using Image Streamer user interface or REST API scripts...................................... 19
Artifacts............................................................................................................................ 20
About Plan Scripts........................................................................................................................................................................................................20
About custom attributes.........................................................................................................................................................................20
Types of custom attributes................................................................................................................................................................... 21
Rules for custom attributes...................................................................................................................................................................26
System attributes........................................................................................................................................................................................27
About OS Build Plans................................................................................................................................................................................................. 28
About Golden Images.................................................................................................................................................................................................28
Recommendations...................................................................................................................................................................................... 30
About Deployment Plans......................................................................................................................................................................................... 30
About artifact bundles...............................................................................................................................................................................................30
Downloading artifacts from github...................................................................................................................................................31
Factory-provided artifact bundles.................................................................................................................................................... 31
Best Practices for using Artifacts........................................................................................................................................................................32
Use existing artifacts as templates...................................................................................................................................................32
Use Hewlett Packard Enterprise naming convention............................................................................................................ 32
Deployment......................................................................................................................33
About deployment....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 33
Image Streamer for OS deployment.................................................................................................................................................33
OS volumes and Image Streamer deployment............................................................................................................................................ 33
Deployment Groups.................................................................................................................................................................................................... 34
3

Deployment Appliances............................................................................................................................................................................................34
Primary deployment appliance........................................................................................................................................................... 34
Features............................................................................................................................ 35
Stateless Experience...................................................................................................................................................................................................35
High Availability............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 35
High availability for OS volumes........................................................................................................................................................ 35
High availability for appliance and artifact management................................................................................................... 35
Capture............................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 36
Capture using the Image Streamer appliance............................................................................................................................ 36
Application installation on stateless servers............................................................. 37
Considerations for application installation.................................................................................................................................................... 37
Option 1: As part of Image Streamer Golden Image................................................................................................................................ 37
Option 2: As part of Image Streamer OS volume.......................................................................................................................................38
Option 3: Compute module local storage....................................................................................................................................................... 38
Option 4: External storage...................................................................................................................................................................................... 39
Appliance management................................................................................................. 40
Reimaging Image Streamer.....................................................................................................................................................................................40
Preparing a USB flash drive.................................................................................................................................................................. 40
Reimaging the appliance module with the preloaded USB drive....................................................................................41
Reinserting Image Streamer...................................................................................................................................................................................44
Guidelines for removing an Image Streamer ............................................................................................................................. 44
Guidelines for inserting an Image Streamer appliance......................................................................................................... 46
Known issues during Image Streamer appliance removal or insertion........................................................................48
Updating Image Streamer........................................................................................................................................................................................49
Update process.............................................................................................................................................................................................49
Update Image Streamer in a single frame configuration..................................................................................................... 50
Update scenarios.........................................................................................................................................................................................52
Backup, restore and recovery................................................................................................................................................................................53
Backup............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 53
Restore and recovery................................................................................................................................................................................53
Image Streamer appliance claim and reset....................................................................................................................................................56
About the support dump..........................................................................................................................................................................................58
Image Streamer Maintenance Console........................................................................ 59
About the Maintenance console.......................................................................................................................................................................... 59
Access the appliance maintenance console.................................................................................................................................................. 60
Access the appliance maintenance console through an SSH connection..................................................................60
Access the appliance maintenance console using a keyboard, video monitor, and mouse.............................60
Access the appliance maintenance console through a notebook or laptop............................................................. 62
Log in to the appliance maintenance console..............................................................................................................................................62
About the appliance maintenance console password.............................................................................................................................63
Appliance maintenance console main menu screen details.................................................................................................................63
Appliance maintenance console details screen details...........................................................................................................................65
Maintenance console appliance states.............................................................................................................................................................66
View the appliance details.......................................................................................................................................................................................68
Reset the appliance maintenance console password.............................................................................................................................. 68
Reset the administrator password with the appliance maintenance console........................................................................... 69
Shut down the appliance using the appliance maintenance console ............................................................................................70
4

Restart the appliance using the appliance maintenance console ................................................................................................... 70
Create a support dump file from the appliance maintenance console..........................................................................................71
Perform a factory reset using the appliance maintenance console ...............................................................................................71
About changing the MGMT port purpose .....................................................................................................................................................72
Configure MGMT port for management network connectivity........................................................................................73
Configure MGMT port for deployment network connectivity...........................................................................................74
MGMT port repurpose for a single enclosure setup...............................................................................................................74
Manual activation of an appliance...................................................................................................................................................................... 75
Security............................................................................................................................. 76
Roles and Authorization........................................................................................................................................................................................... 76
Authentication................................................................................................................................................................................................................77
Communication.............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 77
Certificate management........................................................................................................................................................................................... 77
Establishing trust between a web browser and Image Streamer....................................................................................78
Certificates in Image Streamer............................................................................................................................................................ 78
Certificate status checks.........................................................................................................................................................................79
Appliance Discovery....................................................................................................................................................................................................79
Data Protection..............................................................................................................................................................................................................79
Password Storage....................................................................................................................................................................................... 80
Network Security...........................................................................................................................................................................................................80
Audit Logs.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................80
Compliance....................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 80
Deployment and Maintenance.............................................................................................................................................................................. 80
Known issues...................................................................................................................................................................................................................80
Troubleshooting Image Streamer................................................................................ 82
Unable to identify which appliance in an appliance pair is undergoing upgrade ..................................................................82
Active-standby Image Streamer appliance pair is not highly available........................................................................................82
Changes to compute module settings are not updated onto Image Streamer........................................................................ 83
Compute module waits in PXE boot mode due to unavailability of OS volume from Image Streamer......................83
Creation of OS deployment server (Image Streamer) fails due to conflict in IP address................................................... 84
Creation of server profile for a server hardware may fail if attempted immediately after logical enclosure
creation for the bounded enclosure group....................................................................................................................................................84
HPE OneView does not claim Image Streamer appliance after a reset........................................................................................ 85
OS deployment server creation fails due to communication issues between HPE OneView and Image
Streamer.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................85
Image Streamer appliance loses management network connectivity in single enclosure setup................................... 86
OS deployment using Image Streamer fails.................................................................................................................................................. 86
Problems in the functioning of the Image Streamer standby appliance......................................................................................86
Unable to access Image Streamer appliance from HPE OneView....................................................................................................87
Unable to include support dump for a standby Image Streamer appliance...............................................................................88
Unable to power on an Image Streamer appliance on a remote enclosure in a multi-enclosure setup.....................88
HPE Synergy documentation resources......................................................................89
HPE Synergy firmware update resources...................................................................................................................................................... 90
HPE Synergy document overview (documentation map)....................................... 92
Websites............................................................................................................................93
5

Support and other resources........................................................................................ 94
Accessing Hewlett Packard Enterprise Support.........................................................................................................................................94
Accessing updates....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 94
Remote support.............................................................................................................................................................................................................95
Warranty information................................................................................................................................................................................................. 95
Regulatory information............................................................................................................................................................................................. 95
Documentation feedback......................................................................................................................................................................................... 96
6

Introduction to Image Streamer
Image Streamer overview
HPE Synergy Image Streamer is an HPE Synergy management appliance used to host, configure, and serve operating
systems to the HPE Synergy compute modules. The Image Streamer appliance is managed by HPE OneView and must be
in the same subnet as HPE OneView. To access the Image Streamer user interface, you must use single sign-on through
HPE OneView.
The Image Streamer appliance uses the following artifacts to deploy and configure the operating systems for HPE
Synergy compute modules:
• Plan Script
• OS Build Plan
• Golden Image
• Deployment Plan
Image Streamer also provides a capture functionality that enables you to capture an existing instance of the operating
system on a compute module. This capture functionality removes server-specific configuration and provides you a
generalized Golden Image.
Stateless servers
Image Streamer permits a stateless server deployment experience for compute modules. Stateless servers are physical
servers without local storage for application data. Stateless servers might still contain temporary local storage such as
swap space. However, the applications running on the server use remote storage. The compute modules boot and run
from the OS volumes hosted on the Image Streamer appliance.
Image Streamer achieves OS deployment on stateless servers by maintaining the OS deployment state as part of the HPE
OneView server profile. The server profile holds the logical hardware and software state of the server separately from the
physical server. The logical state in the server profile can then be assigned to a physical server as required. The software
state contains the firmware configuration, network connections, boot settings, and the iLO configuration. The deployed
state contains the Golden Image (a combination of a bootable operating system, applications, and I/O driver version) and
personality (hostname, IP configuration) and is stored in the Image Streamer OS volume. This stateless experience helps
in achieving consistent software deployment and update and easy repair or replacement of the servers.
Image Streamer preserves OS volumes when server profiles are assigned to physical servers, unassigned, and moved
between physical servers. There are some scenarios when Image Streamer does not preserve OS volumes. For more
information on these scenarios, see OS volumes status scenarios.
More information
Image Streamer appliance terminology
OS volumes and Image Streamer deployment
Image Streamer architecture
Image Streamer architecture
The Image Streamer appliance is placed in one of the Composable Infrastructure Manager (CIM) slots on HPE Synergy.
The following diagram illustrates the dierent components of Image Streamer appliance architecture.
Introduction to Image Streamer 7

HPE Synergy Image Streamer Module (OS Deployment Server)
User Interface and API
HPE Synergy Frame
Image Streamer Management Application
Solid State Drive (SSD) with two partitions
Repository partition
File System, Binaries, Database, and Artifacts
(Plan Scripts, OS Build Plans, Golden Images, and Deployment Plans)
Server Volume Storage partition
Extracted Golden Images and OS volumes
(Rapid deployment images and deployed server OS volumes)
1
2
3
4
Figure 1: Image Streamer Components
The Image Streamer appliance has the following components:
1The Image Streamer user interface and API enable administrator access to the management application
for artifact and OS volume management, including deployment management.
2 The Image Streamer management application performs artifact management including Golden Image
creation and artifact replication between appliance pairs. It also handles Golden Image deployment and
OS volume management.
3 The Image Streamer SSD repository partition stores the management application data, artifacts, and
Golden Images. This repository partition has a capacity of approximately 69 GB.
4 The Image Streamer SSD server volume storage partition stores the Golden Images in their extracted
form and OS volumes. The OS volumes can be stateful or stateless depending on whether they have
been deployed for specific servers or have just been created for deployment. This partition has a
capacity of approximately 600 GB.
The Image Streamer appliance works in pairs to achieve high availability. For an Image Streamer appliance pair, the
artifact management and OS deployment function is served by an Active-Standby management cluster, whereas the OS
volume storage is served by an Active-Active Storage cluster.
More information
High Availability
Introduction to Image Streamer 8

Image Streamer stateless architecture
UID
Synergy D3940
Storage Module
UID
Active
Power
UID
Active
Power
HPE Synergy Image Streamer
Cloned boot OS volumes that
include server personalization,
applications and configuration files
HPE Compute Modules HPE Synergy Storage Module
External Storage
Temporary content only for CPU,
memory, and storage local
disk for swap and journal files
NAS or SAN
Data fabric
Production Network
Image Streamer
iSCSI deployment
network
HPE
Synergy SAS
(Serial Attached
SCSI)
Drivers available for assignment
to any compute module
in the frame
OS Volume
Legend:
Temporary files Data files
Figure 2: Illustration of Stateless Architecture
The diagram illustrates how Image Streamer integrates with compute and storage to achieve stateless architecture.
The Image Streamer modules contain the required applications, storage, and other components necessary to compose and
manage the OS volumes for compute modules. An OS volume is composed from a Golden Image that is fully configured
without any state information (application data). The Golden Image may contain utilities, applications, and application
configuration files.
When the HPE OneView server profile is created with an OS Deployment Plan and assigned to a compute module, Image
Streamer composes an OS volume by cloning the Golden Image associated with the specified OS Deployment Plan. The
personalization information such as hostname and IP address are added to the composed OS volume with the values that
you specified in the HPE OneView server profile. The OS volume resides in Image Streamer and has the state information
such as the OS image and personalization data. The compute modules remain stateless since the state defining content is
hosted separately. These stateless compute modules can be assigned to dierent OS volumes at dierent times to switch
workloads dynamically, as required. The Golden Image based deployment can also recreate these OS volumes with the
same state when an OS is corrupted.
NOTE: While working with dynamic workloads, data stored in Image Streamer storage volume are persistent as long as the
storage volume is not used for a dierent purpose.
If required, when the HPE OneView server profile defines the OS volume personalization, it can also define the storage
that is assigned to the compute module. The storage may be HPE Synergy D3940 Storage Module drives or it may be
external NAS or SAN storage. The storage device is where the application data is stored.
As illustrated in the diagram, the composed OS volumes in Image Streamer contain the state information. The compute
module local storage is typically used only for swap files and journal files. The external storage module, if configured,
contains application and data files.
Introduction to Image Streamer 9

In general, and in accordance with the Hewlett Packard Enterprise provided Reference Architectures (RAs) or Reference
Configurations (RCs), the application is installed and configured along with the OS. The application can be added as part
of the Golden Image or installed during the personalization process. When application customization is required at the
time of deployment, Plan Scripts that are referenced by the HPE OneView server profile can be used to define the
customization as part of the OS volume personalization.
More information
Deployment using Image Streamer
Image Streamer appliance terminology
An HPE Synergy Composer domain can have multiple Image Streamer appliance pairs. An Image Streamer appliance pair
serves a single logical enclosure, and a single logical enclosure can have at most one Image Streamer appliance pair. One
Image Streamer appliance pair is designated as the primary appliance pair, and all other appliance pairs are designated as
secondary appliance pairs.
For an Image Streamer appliance pair,
• An Active-Standby management cluster serves the artifact management and OS deployment functions.
• An Active-Active storage cluster serves the OS volume storage.
All Image Streamer appliances managed by an HPE OneView instance operate as one deployment server. The Image
Streamer deployment server acts as a single interface for management of all Image Streamer appliance pairs including
deployment and capture of OS volumes residing in any appliance pair. It also manages the artifacts that provide details
about for deployment and capture and replicates the artifacts on multiple appliance pairs when needed.
A special single frame configuration with one Image Streamer can be used for development or testing environments.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise requires a three frame configuration as a minimum for production environment. The following
list describes the appliance and cluster concepts:
Image Streamer appliance
An individual HPE Synergy Image Streamer module placed in HPE Synergy frames or a pair of Image Streamer
modules that function together to form a highly available redundant pair.
Primary Image Streamer appliance
The primary appliance pair for a deployment server. The primary appliance pair is responsible for managing the
server deployment, creating artifacts, and providing storage for the OS volumes for the compute modules in its logical
enclosure.
Secondary Image Streamer appliance
The secondary appliance pair provides storage for the OS volumes for the compute modules in its logical enclosure. If
the primary appliance becomes unavailable, contact your authorised customer support representative to designate a
secondary appliance as the primary appliance to manage the deployment process.
Primary active Image Streamer appliance
This appliance provides the deployment server user interface, artifact management, and deployment control. You can
assign the primary appliance.
Primary standby Image Streamer appliance
When an active appliance becomes unavailable, the standby appliance takes over the management function of the
active appliance and becomes the active appliance.
The secondary appliances contain a copy of artifacts as available on the primary appliance and assist with deployment of
OS volumes. If required, the standby appliances provide redundant artifact storage and deployment functionality. Standby
appliances also have an active OS volume storage.
Introduction to Image Streamer 10