Advice on new monitoring setup

[Anonymous user]

Hi all,

We have a remote office that currently has 3 SUA1500RM2Us (1500 VAs) which have various equipment attachment (routers/hubs, ESX server with serveral virtual windows servers, Win2K3 servers, a couple Win2000 servers), but evidently no one had setup the remote monitoring software previously.

My goal is to get some simple monitoring (graceful shutdowns) in place in the simplest and cheapest manner possible. I am new to using APC software

Should I:
a) use an existing serial cable and PCBE to send commands to one server per Smart-UPS, and in turn have those servers send out shutdown requests to peer servers (can I configure the Smart-UPS or the agent/server to trigger a batch file when it sends its signal?
b) Pay for NICs (do the SUA1500RM2U's not come with built in NICs/network management cards??) for the network management system?

Any advice is welcome. Thanks

[Anonymous user]

Hello,

If you are looking for cheap, then using the existing serial cable and PCBE would be the best option. The Agent portion does require direct line of communication to the UPS, but, like you said, there is the option for one agent to send a command file to shutdown related servers. You can try out our demo of PCBE through the following link:

http://testdrive.apc.com

The easiest way would be the Network Management Cards and using PowerChute Network Shutdown. You would need to purchase the NMC's though. This is simple IP based communication to initiate a graceful shutdown. You can do up to 50 servers with one NMC in one UPS.

My advice would be to use the NMC's and download PowerChute Network Shutdown, because in my experience, it is the easiest and safest way to protect your servers from crashing. If you are looking to save some cash, PCBE and running a shutdown script would work, but you would be on your own to develop the command file. We have several Knowledge Base documents that offer advice on how to make sure the command file runs through our software, but creating the actual file would be the customer's responsibility.

Hope this helps, Thanks.

[Anonymous user]

Thank you, sir, that is quite helpful info

The batch jobs are easy, as long as the PCBE can trigger them.

Couple more Q's:
1) Since I have multiple servers attached to each SmartUPS, I assume I would need to buy a serial hub for each UPS and some more cables (ie we have about three servers per UPS)

2) The Network Solution looks like the best bet, If I can get my boss to approve. 3 NICs for about 300 a pop but... im reading the release notes for the network software and it has to be run on a MAC/Netware/HP_UX or AIX server? Am I missing something or can this not be installed on a windows server (I don't think we have any unix boxes out at that office)

3) ESX server. One of our servers is ESX with a few VMs. Do I need some additional software to get that puppy/its VMs setup to shutdown gracefully (if I go with the PCBE option)? I will hunt around the KB for info on this, but just in case you know off the top of your head...

Thanks again!
Rob

Message was edited by: talent

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

PowerChute Network Shutdown is available for AIX, HP/UX, Linux, Novell, Solaris, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows XP, Mac OS X

You can see the specific versions of each OS listed above by clicking this link, and choosing PowerChute Network Shutdown from the drop down list.
http://www.apcc.com/tools/download/index.cfm