Help with a configuration?

[Anonymous user]

Hello all!
I'm in the process of specing equipment for a new server room. I plan on having 2x Netshelter SXs with Rack Air Removal Units on the back (ACF400)

My issue... The servers will be protected by an Inergen Fire Suppression system, in order for this system to be effective/be certified, the room must be air tight when the suppression system activates. Ergo, the ACF400s need to shutdown. This is not a problem as I have already been in contact with SimplexGrinnell and they say it can be done without issue.

My problem. When the ACF400s shutdown I obivously need all servers in the effected racks to shutdown. I have spoken with APC Sales support over the phone and they recommend doing this via PowerChute Network Shutdown triggered by a thermal event. This is all well and great, but I am planning on migrating to Symmetras in the future and not having UPSs in the racks. (Infact a Symmetra will be powering the ACF400s)

Second option is using NetBotz gear, however APC Sales support has indicated that I will need to purchase ISX Central Basic edition ($3,500) in order to fully integrate the NetBotz thermal sensors to trigger a mass server shutdown.


Does anyone have any other ideas for a shutdown? I'm thinking about a dry contact system (triggered by the SimplexGrinnell alarm panel) that will then feed into a Smartslot card.... Is this even possible..?

Any help?

[voidstar_apc]

Using PCNS to trigger the shutdown on dry contacts... of course. I should've known 🙂 Thanks for the info.

[voidstar_apc]

Yes, you can do it using a network management card, however I believe (someone correct me if I'm wrong) that the input contacts on the network management card today cannot directly initiate a shutdown. That may be changing in the future.

The indirect route is to use the dry contacts on the NMC to monitor the fire suppression system and send a trap to your network management system when the contact is triggered. The network management system, upon receiving the trap, should then use SNMP to tell the NMC to perform a shutdown. We have instruction on shutting down the UPS via SNMP here and to summarize, grab the [Net-SNMP|http://net-snmp.sourceforge.net/] toolset and do something like this:

snmpset -c public -v 1 IP_of_ups 1.3.6.1.4.1.318.1.1.1.6.2.1.0 i 3

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the reply!

I called back APC tonight because this was bugging the piss out of me. According to the person I spoke with we need to use a NMC w/Environmental Monitoring as this has an I/O block, lucky us, the Symmetra comes with one.

She noted that her tech said that the NO/NC is config'd via the web GUI, next we need to install PowerChute Network Shutdown on all required nodes and it can be configured to read the specific NMC and trigger a shutdown event when the NO becomes closed (or vice versa)

I knew we weren't re-inventing the wheel. 🙂