I was playing around with the BladeSystem Matrix creating some new demo videos, and I thought why not dig into the portal skinning features to create a custom look for my system.

The skinning feature is intended to let companies personalize the portal with their logos and product names, replacing the standard HP skin that ships with the product. In this example, my customer is the fictitious Acme Corporation.

Here are the steps I went through:

1. Copy C:\Program Files\HP\Insight Orchestration\webapps\hpio-portal.war to my desktop


2. Rename to hpio-portal.zip


3. Copy hpio-portal.zip to hpio-portal.orig.zip


4. Unzip hpio-portal.zip


5. Browse to the hpio-portal/skins directory, and create a new folder "acme". You should see the following:
   
   


6. Copy your new images into the acme directory. The image names, format, and recommended sizes are shown in the table below. I found there is minor flexibility in the sizes of images you create, but in general things look a little nicer if you stick to the sizes shown in the table.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   Filename	Format	Recommended Size in pixels (w x h)
   LoginScreenLogo.png	PNG	90 x 72
   LoginScreenImage.jpg	JPEG	408 x 287
   TitlebarLogo.gif	GIF	42 x 26
   TitlebarImage.png	PNG	300 x 40

   
   
   


7. Edit the skinConfig.xml file in the skins directory. Here's my updated content:
   
   
   

   <properties>
        <property><key> personalizeMode                 </key><value>insight</value></property>
        <property><key> skinName                        </key><value>acme</value></property>
        <property><key> brandName                       </key><value>Acme Corporation</value></property>
        <property><key> portalName                      </key><value>Developer Self Service</value></property>
        <property><key> bsaURL                               </key><value></value></property>
   </properties>

   
   


8. 
   

   rezip hpio-portal directory
   Once you have re-zipped hpio-portal, you might want to open it and check that the top component of the zip file is the contents of the hpio-portal folder, and not a folder called "hpio-portal". Windows XP zip default behavior is to create that top level folder in the zip archive. Compare with the contents of hpio-portal.orig.zip to make sure you get this correct. Otherwise your portal won't restart correctly in the later steps.

   
   


9. 
   

   rename hpio-portal.zip to myportal.war file

   
   


10. 
    

    Stop the Insight Orchestration service

    
    


11. 
    

    Rename C:\Program Files\HP\Insight Orchestration\webapps\hpio-portal.war to hpio-portal.war.orig

    
    


12. 
    

    Copy myportal.war to C:\Program Files\HP\Insight Orchestration\webapps\hpio-portal.war

    
    


13. 
    

    Delete the folder in the C:\Program Files\HP\Insight Orchestration\work directory with a name starting with Jetty and containing the name hpio.portal.war
    

    
    


14. 
    

    Start the Insight Orchestration service

    
    

 Updated Portal

Here's my updated login screen to the self service portal, and a zoom in on the updated window bar after login is complete.

ioconfig Command

The ioconfig command in the C:\Program Files\HP\Insight Orchestration\bin folder is a useful utility that lets you switch between skins, for example: ioconfig --skin insight will change back to original skin. See ioconfig --help for more information on this command and options.

Send your examples

I hope this quick overview is helpful to getting you started. Send me examples of your self-service portal customizations!

I saw three new opinions about BladeSystem last week. 

First, PC World Latin America announced that the HP BL490c G6 virtualization blade won in the "Best Server" category of the annual PC World Latin America 2009 Awards.  These awards honor the "best digital & IT products available in Latin America", and I'm proud to see this virtualization-oriented blade got recognized.   (HP's been active in Latin America for a long time --  back in 1968, HP helped in the broadcasting of the Mexico City Olympic Games.)

A second opinion came from a market research company.  This one caught my attention when Cisco's Omar Sultan pointed out that Gartner had placed Cisco in the "Visionary" area of Gartner's Magic Quarter for blades, a section also occupied by Liquid Computing.  Omar says that category holds companies with of keen insights into blade usage, but as one comment points out, little track record for delivering on that vision.

That led me to the Quadrant itself,  where it looks like HP has been placed in the "Leaders" quadrant.  I’d agree with that – it signifies solid vision, along with the ability to deliver on that vision.  Obviously one criteria for demonstrated leadership is a satisfied base of users, which points me the third (and most revealing) opinion I saw last week.

Bytemark Hosting, a web hosting provider that calls itself the "nerd-hosting outfit of choice", let HP write a case study about their infrastructure based on BladeSystem.  It uses virtualization blades (specifically the ProLiant BL495c), HP Virtual Connect Flex-10, and carvable storage from the SAS-connected HP StorageWorks MSA2000.

But the slots-and-watts of what the guys put together what stood out to me.  It's what Bytemark's Peter Taphouse said about the impact of the system.  He said  BladeSystem’s improved uptime can actually boost the company’s revenue (by as much as 5%), because it delivers an SLA that lets Bytemark reach a new, untapped set of customers.

Now THAT'S an opinion on BladeSystem that's truly eye-opening.  It's not that BladeSystem earns awards, or that it helps guide data centers toward the future.   It’s that BladeSystem users say it doesn’t just cut costs, but it can also expand the reach of your business.

This week we released VMMark results for the new HP BL490c G6 server blade.  The scores establish the BL490c as
the highest performing 2-socket server blade for virtualization -- eclipsing blades offered by IBM, Dell, and Cisco.

By the way, this 2-socket result ( 24.24 at 17 tiles) follows just on the heels of our #1 4-socket blade result for the BL685c G6.

It's particularly revealing that the BL490c tops the Cisco B200-M1, since Cisco trumpeted performance on VMWare as a centerpiece
of their Unified Computing System.  Cisco engineers deserve lots of kudos for their innovative work on UCS.   Their UCS ideas seem very network-centric, though, and I think
the BL490c's VMMark result shows the benefits of looking at performance problems from the data center level, rather than just from the
CCIE's perspective.

To get this high performance, our engineers designed the right compute server (with high memory bandwidth and capacity),
and coupled it with lots of NICs and bandwidth provided by Virtual Connect Flex-10.  (We also bring in the right storage, too.)

Yet the breadth of HP BladeSystem means we can deliver that performance for vSphere, but not compromise on other workloads. 
No compromises in Top500-style high performance computing, for example, or for many, many other workloads.

Bonus: HP's high-performance virtualization solution (including the HP BL490c G6 server blade and HP Virtual Connect Flex-10) are available today.
Cisco's UCS?  Well...I just hope Cisco starts shipping that product sooner than Duke Nukem Forever.

I ran across this website and a great tech brief about the good and bad of SSD technology so you can make up your own mind and decide if SSD is right for you.

Every time a competitor introduces a new product, we can't help but notice they suddenly get very interested in what HP is blogging during the weeks prior to their announcement.  Then when the competitor announces, the story is very self-congratulatory "we've figured out what the problem is with existing server and blade architectures".  The implication being that blades volume adoption is somehow being constrained by the very thing they have and everyone else is really stupid. 

HP BladeSystem growth has hardly been constrained; with quarterly growth rates of 60% or 80% and over a million BladeSystem servers sold.  So I have to wonder if maybe we already have figured out what many customers want - save time, power, and money in an integrated infrastructure that is easy to use, simple to implement changes, and can run nearly any workload.

Someone asked me today "will your strategy change?"  I guess given the success we've had, we'll keep focusing on the big problems of customers - time, cost, change and energy. It sounds boring, it doesn't get a lot of buzz and twitter traffic, but it's why customers are moving to blade architectures. 

Our platform was built and proven in a step-by-step approach: BladeSystem c-Class, Thermal Logic, Virtual Connect, Insight Dynamics, etc.  Rather than proclaim at each step that we've solved all the industry's problems or have sparked a social movement in computing; we'll continue to focus on doing our job to provide solutions that simply work for customers and tackle their biggest business and data center issues.