Multiple Switched PDUs

[BillP]

All,

We are building a new datacenter and I have multiple APC switched PDU's (two per rack). Each PDU is set on its own circuit breaker. I then have the servers (with mulitple power supplies) plugged into both PDU's.

My question is, how can you control (turning off, turning on, rebooting, etc) the server on mulitple PDU's. I did see in the help section about global outlets. How does this work? Also, I see that APC has the AP92200. Is this a better way to go? I know I am going to continue to get some of the switched PDU's.

Thanks for the help.

Jeff

[Anonymous user]

Hi Jeff,
Global outlets do appear to be the solu tion you are looking for. If you configure two or more PDUs with matching multicast parameters, their outlets can be configured in global groups. Triggering a control action on the main outlet (Global Outlet) in a global group will cause all other members of that global group to behave in the same way. This would allow you to Turn off/on outlet 1 on PDU A and outlet 1 on PDU B together.

The AP92200 is a Management tool that allows you to monitor and manage all of your online APC devices, but it will not help you create the global outlets on your PDUs.

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

One thing to note, the outlets in the group are designed to function when the PDU's themselves are powered on. If the PDU's lose power and one happens to come on before the other, the timing to power a dual power supply server will not be sync'd and if your server requires the power supplies to come "on" at the same time, this will not work for your application. You might see this in a situation where each PDU is plugged into a seperate UPS to achieve the full redundancy of using a server with the dual power supplies. However, as dirtfoot mentioned, while the PDU's are both on, the powering on, off, rebooting of outlets will be sync'd.