3PAR System Reporter, Part 1

System Reporter is a 3PAR tool that provides informative reporting about your 3PAR arrays, as well as being able to build custom reports, and schedule daily execution and email of any report.
System Reporter is also required to be installed, in order to use Adaptive Optimization, as System Reporter is used to determine which chunklets are to be migrated between which CPG’s. All the Adaptive Optimization configuration is done from within System Reporter’s web interface.
System Reporter can be installed on Windows 2003, Windows 2008, or RedHat Enterprise Linux 5. It may use either Microsoft SQL, MySQL, Oracle, or SQLite as it’s backend database, although there are restrictions on each database. MySQL seems to be the recommended database to use, as it has the fastest query times due to it’s MyISAM structure, and it has minimal restrictions across the server Operating Systems.
I will be installing and configuring System Reporter 2.8 on a RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.8 virtual machine. I will be using MySQL as the database backend, which will be installed on the same host virtual machine. In part 2 of this series, I will be then be installing and configuring System Reporter. Part 3 will be configuring and adding a 3PAR InServ system, in my case a T400. Part 4 will be setting up Adaptive Optimization. Part 5 will be all about reports, and how to create custom and scheduled reports.

System Requirements

System Reporter has the below requirements for it’s host system:

• CPU: Pentium 4, 3Ghz or faster
• Memory: 1GB
• Disk: 20GB free space

Please make sure your host system meets or exceeds these requirements, prior to installation.

Install Linux

The first step, is to make sure you have a freshly installed and updated RedHat EL 5 installation. I chose to use the normal installation, and deselected anything I didn’t want. I left the apache webserver installed, as well as X11, but removed all Window Managers. After fully updating the installation with ‘yum –y update && yum –y upgrade’ I began the rest of my installation.

Install Apache Webserver

From the command line, issue the below command:

yum –y install httpd

This will install the Apache Webserver, if it has not already been installed.

Install 3PAR CLI

The System Reporter installation CD has both a Windows and a Linux directory, which contain all files necessary for installation. In my example, we are using Linux, so to install the CLI, you will need to copy the Linux/CLI/setup.bin file from the CD, on to your Linux host.
Once the file has been copied, change it’s permissions to be executable, and run the file:

 chmod +x setup.bin
./setup.bin

You will be prompted several questions, including where to install the CLI. I would recommend using the /opt/ location it defaults to. Make sure you write down this location, as it will be needed later in the installation. Once the installation is completed, it’s time to move on.

Install MySQL

Next, you need to install mysql. Connect to your linux server with ssh, and issue the command:

yum –y install mysql-server

Once the installation is completed, you will need to set the root database password.
To do this, issue the below commands:

mysqladmin -u root password "NEWPASSWORD"
mysqladmin -u root -h localhost -p password "NEWPASSWORD"

Installing System Reporter

Now that your system is ready, you can move on to Part 2, Installing System Reporter. Part 2 will be posted within a few days.
If you have built your base system as a Virtual Machine, now would be a great time to take a snapshot, or build a template for future installations.