Assistance needed to configure gracefull shutdow of windows servers,,,E

[Anonymous user]

Hi all,

We need some help here, trying to achieve the follow goal.

Here is what we have:
We have 1 * SMT1500 and 1 * SMT3000 each equipped with a NMC. Connected to each UPS, we have 3 windows server (1 PSU only) - a total of 6 servers.


On each Windows server, we have installed PCNS 2.24 and they all have registered themselves with the NMC, as they are in the clientlist on their respective UPS. Firewalls have been disabled on each windows server, and all servers are on same network - both physical and ip.



Here is what we want:
As the loads are not that high on both UPS, we would like to accomplish the following.


After 10 min. of power failure, we would like to initiate a gracefull shutdown of all servers.
Then after another 15 min we would like the UPS to turn off (a couple of the servers (Exchange and SQL) take about 10 min. to shutown, and we would like to add a 5 min. safetymargin to this).



So far, all we have achieved is to shutdown the UPS after a 10 min dalay, but without any gracefull shutdown of the servers. It seems the shutdown (on battery) signal, is never sent to the servers?


Below I have attached a few screenshots of our configs.



I hope someone can help us by indicating which parameters we need to configure to achive the above described goal? I have done quite a few searches in these forums, but even though I have read a lot of posts, I dont seem to be able to get on top of this issue..



Cheers,
Henrik Holm Nielsen

[BillP · Accepted solution]

hi henrik,

let me see if i can point you in the right direction.

1.) the low battery duration on the NMC is the amount of runtime left where the UPS will signal that it has a low battery. so, you set it to 10 minutes. this means that if anything is still turned on and hasnt started to gracefully shutdown, when 10 minutes is left, it will start t. this is sort of a fail safe so that if you don't configure PCNS in any special way, it should always start to shutdown at this point.

2.) is there a reason you configured both battery discharged and UPS on battery events? in your attachment PCNS-Event_Config.jpg, what event did you click on to get to this screen to have it shutdown after 5 seconds?

3.) here is what it sounds like we need to do. configure all of the servers for the UPS: On battery event to shutdown after the event lasts for 600 seconds (10 minutes you mentioned). this should start the graceful shutdown on all servers. you need to UNCHECK the setting Turn off the UPS after the shutdown finishes (Not applicable to Parallel Silcon UPS, Smart-UPS VT or Galaxy). under Configure Shutdown on the left hand side EXCEPT on the last server that will be shutting down so that it will tell the UPS to turn off after it is done shutting down. you might want to add a command file delay under configure shutdown for the extra 5 minutes or uncheck the "Turn off the UPS.." setting on all servers that I just mentioned, instead of leaving it checked on the last server, and then just adjust the low battery duration accordingly so that the UPS runs for another 5-10 minutes. this might need to be tested though because when servers shutdown, then the available runtime will change (rise) on the UPS with a smaller load. just so you know, in the PCNS help file, there is a timeline of the shutdown so PCNS does factor in some delays for unforeseen circumstances so i dont know if you still want/need to do this.

4.) this is all assuming you have enough runtime - but, what is your total on battery runtime on your UPSs?

i hope that this helps you or at least gets us started in the right direction.