General PowerChute Business, PowerChute Network Shutdown and NMC2 Card

[Anonymous user]

Hello everyone,

We have been using the a few unit SMT1500 for the past 3 years and we are happy with the product.

We recently upgraded our little server and decided to go for the rack-mount SMX1500 which has the network management card 2 to communicate with the server.

This is the first time we installed the Network Shutdown but unsure if we do understand it correctly. So when the power is down, and our server runs from the battery, after the "X" amount of minute, the PowerChute Network shutdown will actually "shutdown" our Windows 2019 server? How does it do that? Or, we must write a shutdown-script and setup the software to run the script?

And how about the PowerChute Business edition? Is it similar to the Network shutdown or something else? What is it for?

We are a little confused so everyone could give us some hint, we would be appraised.

Thank you for our newbie questions, and we appreciated your patience.

[BillP]

Hi,

On 4/27/2020 11:27 PM, James said:

This is the first time we installed the Network Shutdown but unsure if we do understand it correctly. So when the power is down, and our server runs from the battery, after the "X" amount of minute, the PowerChute Network shutdown will actually "shutdown" our Windows 2019 server? How does it do that?

PowerChute Network Shutdown works in conjunction with the Network Card. You can configure events within PowerChute to start OS shutdown after the UPS has run on battery for x minutes or when the battery has x amount of runtime remaining. Open the PowerChute web interface and go to Configure Events. There you will see UPS on Battery and Runtime remaining below threshold. If you click on the ? the help file will launch and you will see a description of each event. Also, see Schneider Electric FAQ FA326148 

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If you do not configure an event within PowerChute the OS will be powered down when the UPS reaches the low battery threshold. The network card will report the UPS has reached low battery and the PowerChute client will command the OS down. See Schneider Electric FAQ FA405707 for an explanation of the low battery setting.

On 4/27/2020 11:27 PM, James said:

And how about the PowerChute Business edition? Is it similar to the Network shutdown or something else? What is it for?

You would not install PowerChute Business Edition on an OS that is running PowerChute Network Shutdown. If you have installed PowerChute Network Shutdown on an OS and attempt to install PowerChute Business Edition the installer warns you that Network Shutdown is installed the installation will fail. The same will happen if they have installed Business Edition on an OS and attempt to install Network Shutdown. 

PowerChute Network Shutdown communicates with the UPS through the Network card via the LAN. PowerChute Business Edition communicates with the UPS via USB or Serial cable. When running Networm Shutdown management of the UPS is done via the Network card. When running Business Edition management of the UPS is done via PowerChute since there is no direct connection to the UPS.

When utilizing Business Edition, you are limited to the number of servers that can be powered down. Usually 3 unless a command file has been deployed. When utilizing Network Shutdown if pushed to the extreme you can power down 12700 servers. I don't recommend configuring 12700 servers with a single UPS, but it can be done. See Schneider Electric FAQ FA159540 

[Anonymous user]

Hey Bill,

Thank you very much for your 101 into the APC world.

So if we setup correctly, the Network Shutdown will issue "shutdown" command to the Windows Server 2019, and the server would be shutdown properly as if we did it ourselves, is that correct?

And one more thing that I realize from your screen shot: Our Network shutdown > Configure Events does not have the column called "Notification" (I attached ours one here for your reference). We installed the latest version of the Network shutdown already.

How do I enable this column Notification then?

Thank you very much for your patience

Regards

[BillP]

Hi,

On 4/28/2020 11:31 AM, James said:

So if we setup correctly, the Network Shutdown will issue "shutdown" command to the Windows Server 2019, and the server would be shutdown properly as if we did it ourselves, is that correct?

Yes. That is correct.

On 4/28/2020 11:31 AM, James said:

How do I enable this column Notification then?

The screenshot I provided was of PowerChute running on a Linux OS. Notification is not available in PowerChute on Windows. We do have FAQ FA239561. You can use the command file attached to the FAQ to enable messaging for Windows OS. 

[Anonymous user]

Thank you very much for your help Bill.

I have just one more question, regarding to the extra batter. According to the user manual, I see that we can only (or the manual only mention) add 1 extended battery to prolong the run time. Could we add 2 extended batteries to the SMX system?

Thank you again, for your helps

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You can add up to 5 SMX48RMBP2U 

https://www.apc.com/resource/include/ups_runtime_chart.cfm?base_sku=SMX1500RM2U&family_id=165