Different critical events on each UPS, redundant UPS configuration using PowerChute Network Shutdown

[Anonymous user]

Hi,

I have found in documentation that if different critical events ocurr, after 10 seconds the server with PCNS installed will be switched off.

Is this value configurable? If it is not, why ?

We have set up PCNS to switch off the servers after 5 minutes after the following events: (as it was required by our client):

-UPS: On Battery

-Communication: PowerChute cannot communicate with the NMC

Switching of after 10 seconds breaks our specification. Is there at least a way to run a script before the shutdown happens in such situation ?

Regards,

[Anonymous user]

Hi,

I have found in documentation that if different critical events ocurr, after 10 seconds the server with PCNS installed will be switched off.

Is this value configurable? If it is not, why ?

We have set up PCNS to switch off the servers after 5 minutes after the following events: (as it was required by our client):

-UPS: On Battery

-Communication: PowerChute cannot communicate with the NMC

Switching of after 10 seconds breaks our specification. Is there at least a way to run a script before the shutdown happens in such situation ?

Regards,

[BillP]

Dear Bill,

       We are facing same issue of the question from our customer, their existing environments are to use redundancy confirmation for all servers. Some servers are controlled by different server teams, thus it is not easy to change all servers of PCNS setting during one UPS in maintenance.  So the suggestion of change PCNS to single UPS mode is not an idea solution.

     Actually, is it possible to change the 10 second delay time to longer such as 20 minutes or even up to 60 minutes? If not, can we configure PCNS to ignore multiple event shutdown feature?

Regards,

Joe Tam

[BillP]

Hi,

Yes. You can adjust the delay and shutdown if you are running PCNS version 3.X by editing the pcnsconfig.ini file.

These are the 2 lines

event_MultipleCriticalEvent_enableShutdown = true

event_MultipleCriticalEvent_shutdownDelay = 10

You can change the enableShutdownDelay = true to = false to disable shutdown for multiple critical events. Note: I strongly recommend not disabling this for any long period of time.

If you change the shutdownDelay = 1200 then PCNS will wait 20 minutes before commanding the OS down. If within the 20 minute delay 1 of the 2 critical events clear the OS will not be commanded down.

if you make any changes to pcnsconfig.ini you should stop the service / daemon before making the changes and then restart after the changes have been saved.

[Anonymous user]

Any ideas on the topic ?

We still have not found a solution.

Let me explain why the behaviour is such a big problem for us. Consider a situation when one of our UPS breaks down, and has to be repaired. By the time it is repaired the system would be using only one UPS and this situation may last several weeks. During that time we have no communication with the second UPS - obviously, as it is being repaired, so we already have one critical event. If during that time the UPS will switch to baterry power (even for serveral seconds) this would cause all our servers to shut down, as explained here (scenario 3):

http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/BKIR-6R9NX5/BKIR-6R9NX5_R2_EN.pdf

So during the time we have only one UPS, all power problems would close the servers almost immediately. This is almost like we would not have any UPS at all.

Regards,

[BillP]

Bill P. - could you comment? I know you were researching this recently and maybe it's related.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Lets look at your scenario. There are 2 UPS set up in a redundant configuration. UPS 1 drops off the network for maintenance. PCNS has no way of knowing if that UPS is now on or off. All PCNS knows is the UPS cannot be communicated with. Sometime later UPS 2 switches to battery. Since PCNS has no way of knowing if UPS 1 is on or off and since the lost of redundancy is considered critical PCNS make the assumption for safety sake that the UPS is off and start the OS shutdown. To resolve the issue If UPS 1 is only going to be off line for a short period of time you can deselect power down on communications lost and PCNS will not start a shutdown in your scenario.

I suggest never run PCNS in a redundant configuration if one of the UPS are going to be off line for any extended amount of time. If the scenario you describe is going to happen you should re-run the PCNS configuration wizard and switch from redundant UPS to single UPS. Another way of switching the PCNS clients from redundant to single is to stop PCNS service / daemon, edit pcnsconfi.ini and then restart the service / daemon. You can also use the .ini file to push the needed changes out to multiple PCNS clients.

To answer the second part of this thread, yes. You can configure PCNS to run a script when OS shutdown is started.