Configuring PC Network Shutdown w/AP9630 .. intelligently

[buckZor_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 3/11/2013

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My company has decided to go with SMT1500RM2U's in our smaller locations, armed with the venerable AP9630 NMC.  This is my project and I am trying to come up with the configuration strategies for the PCNS clients and NMC. 

So far I am plugging along swimmingly, but I've come to a hitch in that the PCNS client shutdown options are very limited.  Looking at the screenshot below, you can see that the main Power Interruption events are: UPS: On Battery and (perhaps) Runtime: Exceeded

The hover over descrips for these two Power Interruption events are (UPS: On Battery):

and (Runtime: Exceeded):

My SHUTDOWN configuration choices for each of these events are again, an extremely limited choice of:  Yes, I do want to shut down the Operating System and if I do want to shut down the O/S how many seconds should the event last.  This I suppose works if you are willing to arbitrarily pick a time period of Power Interruption before executing Shut Down of the O/S.  What if you want some actual intelligence?  Why can't we have an Event of "50% of Battery remaining", or "Low battery warning".  There's no way I can determine via my settings what the BATTERY RUNTIME is at some point in time in the future. 

Please tell me there's some additional functionality that I am missing.  Pleeeeeease!!!

[BillP]

This reply was originally posted by Angela on APC forums on 3/11/2013

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off the top of my head, to give you another quick thing to check, i believe you can do some of the advanced configuration on the UPS from the AP9630. if you go to UPS tab->Configuration and select outlet groups via the web UI, you can configure each outlet group with individual load shedding options. PCNS is also outlet group aware and you would've had to tell PCNS what outlet group your service is connected to. I believe this may work a little bit better for you (selecting something like "when UPS runtime is below X seconds"), especially if you have many clients on the same outlet group. and yes, PCNS will always by default shutdown when the low battery signaling time is reached which is 2 minutes on most UPSs. this means when 2 minutes of runtime is remaining, it forces a shutdown. this typically is not enough time for servers to gracefully shutdown so you can customize the UPS on battery event (by knowing your typical runtime with your load and leaving enough time for your server to gracefully shutdown) or do sort of the same thing on the UPS side of that is not an option for you.

Do you think this will work? Then you can set particular delays, etc for shutdown to give you some buffer time. I definitely recommend testing it out when we figure out a configuration for you.

what is your ideal configuration? what most users want is to run the UPS as long as possible and then shutdown the servers gracefully, ensuring they have enough time to shutdown properly, then the UPS turns off. so we do need to know how much total runtime your UPS has on full load either way.

let me know if you have any other questions.

[buckZor_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 3/12/2013

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If you are referring to the Load Shedding options for Outlet Groups, I do not see how that helps me.  There is a "UPS remaining runtime" item there, but that just turns off the outlets in that outlet group, how does that help my servers perform a graceful shutdown?  That's just unplugging them, why would I do that?  I don't have any vacuum cleaners, lights or humidifiers plugged into these things that I can shed to preserve runtime, every outlet is a Server or critical Network device.

[BillP]

This reply was originally posted by Angela on APC forums on 3/12/2013

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Hello again. Configuring the options under "load shedding" on the AP9630 have to happen when the UPS is on battery and will cause any PCNS clients connected to the outlet group (and where PCNS is outlet group aware) to perform a graceful shutdown. You're right in that the devices connected without PCNS on them and unaware of what outlet group they are in would cause a hard turn off, most applicable to devices such as lights.

I took this from the help file on the load shedding section on the NMC:

Use these settings to automatically shut down an outlet in response to one or more conditions. To enable a condition, mark its checkbox and configure its value; you can enable multiple conditions.

Conditions to turn off this outlet group:

• power failure is longer than ___ seconds: An input power failure continued for more than this number of seconds.
• UPS runtime remaining is less than ___ seconds: The number of seconds the UPS can support the current load while operating on battery power has dropped below this number of seconds.
• UPS is overloaded: The output drawn from the UPS exceeds the rated limit.

• Skip outlet off delay: Shut down the outlet group immediately.

Settings that determine how the outlet group is turned off:

• Skip outlet off delay: Shut down the outlet group immediately.
• Stay off after power returns: The outlet remains off until you turn it on.

If you use PowerChute Network Shutdown (PCNS) on this outlet, be sure "Skip outlet off delay" is not checked so that PCNS clients can safely shutdown. Also, each PCNS client has its own set of conditions that may be configured to start a shutdown.

Again, it might be helpful to understand what you'd like to do. If you pretty much just want to run the UPS down as long as it can possibly go and leave adequate time for everything to shutdown, what you could do is just adjust the low battery signaling time of the entire UPS. this is by default 2 minutes as I mentioned. This setting is under Configuration->Shutdown in the web UI. If your servers will take about 10 minutes to shutdown, you could up this to 10 minutes so the UPS will signal everything attached (no matter what outlet group) to start its shutdown when 10 minutes of runtime is remaining.

Lastly, the way the actual shutdown is done with a UPS with outlet groups may be helpful to know because of how the delays are done. This should also come into consideration when picking a low battery signaling time if you go this route. If this is all you want to have the UPS do (shutdown when it hits "low battery" value that you set, you don't need to do any extra configuration on PCNS besides figure out if you want that client to shut the UPS off when it's done turning off).

This application note on outlet groups may help: http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/NWHG-8ACJSR/NWHG-8ACJSR_R0_EN.pdf

Also, we added some info on this in the NMC user's guide (refer to PDF page 41-42ish): http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/PMAR-8P9G2C/PMAR-8P9G2C_R2_EN.pdf

It is very confusing in my own personal opinion so I can only imagine how this does not seem intelligent at first glance.

[buckZor_apc · Accepted solution]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 3/12/2013

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Thank you, I'll read this App Note and see if I can make sense of this..