HP to release server management apps for iOS, Android

IDG News Service - Hewlett-Packard will be showing new smartphone and tablet applications for Apple's iOS and Google's Android that will allow system administrators to remotely control and configure servers, the company said on Monday.

The company's applications will not only provide information about the health of servers, but also allow system administrators to remotely manage or shut down servers, said John Gromala, director of modular systems product marketing, during an interview at the HP Global Partner Conference being held in Las Vegas.

The ability to manage servers through mobile devices is a powerful tool, Gromala said. System administrators can also use the app to login to management subsystems to swiftly identify and address server problems, instead of logging on to management consoles in data centers.

The mobile applications are designed to take advantage of HP's new Gen8 servers, which were announced on Monday. The servers feature tight integration of hardware and software to deliver better performance-per-watt while reducing maintenance and electricity costs in data centers.

The new Gen8 servers analyze, monitor and diagnose server issues gathered across 1,600 system parameters, and an HP service app will be able to access that data to get a picture of server health. The monitoring information is gathered by a secondary processor and controlled by a management application called Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) management engine.

A separate mobile app will allow system administrators to run scripts that help configure applications on servers, said an HP representative who declined to be named. The scripts can be simply cut and pasted, and the app will help configure the servers. For example, database servers can be configured by scripting in the app.

A system administrator will also be able to check the location of a server in a data center through HP's mobile apps. That should help isolate specific server problems.

The service will be provided directly by HP or its partners for customers who opt in to receive the data. The company did not share information on when the mobile apps would be available for download.