Critical Events & PowerChute

[newtom71_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 5/4/2019

---

Hi Guys,

I was testing shutting down the Outlet Groups, ordering them to shutdown in 30 minutes. I decided to cancel the shutdown of the Outlet groups to find PowerChute had started to shut down the virtual machines on vCentre.

Is this because PowerChute detected a critical event, and shutdown the VM's?

What I don't want to happen in a real scenario is that we have a power cut, and the UPS sends a critical event to PowerChute shutting down the VM's. The UPS has an uptime of 52 minutes, so I want the VM's to stay up for at least 30 minutes before deciding to shut the VM's down.

Can anyone help me work out why this happened, and how to get the VM's to shut down after 30 minutes if I critical event is detected by PowerChute.

Thanks in advance

[BillP]

This reply was originally posted by Bill on APC forums on 5/6/2019

---

Hi,

Please attach the troubleshooting files listed in Schneider Electric FAQ FA241061

If you prefer not to attached the files please contact local support and they will be happy to assist you. 

[newtom71_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 5/6/2019

---

Hi Bill,

Does this behaviour seem normal for Powerchute? Will any critical event start the shutdown process of the virtual machines?

The ideal scenario is that we get the most out of the UPS, in terms of up time. The run time of the UPS is 52 minutes, so what I wanted was for nothing to happen for 30 minutes, then gracefully shutdown the virtual machines after this time.

Is this possible?

What I don't want to happen is we have a power cut for 30 seconds, Powerchute gets the critical event from the UPS, and starts shutting everything down.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Regards

Tom

[BillP]

This reply was originally posted by Bill on APC forums on 5/7/2019

---

Hi,

PowerChute will start the shutdown process when a critical event occurs and when it receives notification from the NMC that the UPS or outlet groups is going off line. 

You can configure PowerChute to start the shutdown process after UPS has been on battery for x amount of time i.e. 30 minutes. This is done under the Configure Events menu UPS on Battery. Another option is to configured load shedding on the NMC and the NMC will communicate with PowerChute that it is powering down. 

On 5/6/2019 4:37 PM, Thomas said:

What I don't want to happen is we have a power cut for 30 seconds, Powerchute gets the critical event from the UPS, and starts shutting everything down.

This should not happen unless the battery is low and therefore the low battery threshold would trigger a shutdown.

The PowerChute User's Guide and help files discuss the PowerChute options and the NMC User's Guide and help files discuss those options. 

[newtom71_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 5/7/2019

---

Hi Bill, thanks for your help with this. So I guess when I told the outlet groups to shut down PowerChute would have just got on with shutting the virtual machines down, even though I hit cancel as it was manually initialized by myself?

In regards to the Outlet Groups, they're not smart in any way, are they? so if I have a SAN attached to the Outlet Group, it would just cut power to it after a specific period of time?

[BillP · Accepted solution]

This reply was originally posted by Bill on APC forums on 5/9/2019

---

Hi,

On 5/7/2019 4:28 PM, Thomas said:

Hi Bill, thanks for your help with this. So I guess when I told the outlet groups to shut down PowerChute would have just got on with shutting the virtual machines down, even though I hit cancel as it was manually initialized by myself?

Correct. The command would have been sent to PCNS when the power down was initiated so the shutdown process had started prior to the cancellation. 

On 5/7/2019 4:28 PM, Thomas said:

In regards to the Outlet Groups, they're not smart in any way, are they? so if I have a SAN attached to the Outlet Group, it would just cut power to it after a specific period of time?

Correct. You do have the option of writing a command file / script that PCNS would run during shutdown and it would tell the SAN to power down. Also, new in PCNS 4.3 you have the option of running an SSH command that could be written to tell the SAN to power down.