PowerChute cannot communicate with the Management Card

[Anonymous user]

I have 8 ESXi 4.1 servers and one APC UPS in my production environment. We have bought 8 licenses for Power Chute Network Shutdown. Before implementing in our production environment I would like to do some tests.


I have created a test environment:


10.108.8.204 : ESXi 4.1


10.108.8.210 : APC SUA1500I UPS with management card AP9630


10.108.8.234 : vMA 4.1 with PCNS 2.2.4 with ESXi 4.1 patch - hosted on 10.108.8.204



The vMA is deployed from [http://download3.vmware.com/software/vma/vMA-4.1.0.0-268837.ovf] The vma installed just fine and I managed to register the esx host at the vma: sudo vifp addserver 10.108.8.204*


The connection to the esx host works just fine. If I do a vicfg-nics -l* it will list the nics on the esx host. So far so good.



Then I installed PowerChute Networks Shutdown (PCNS) 2.2.4 for VMware on my vma.
From APCs website ( [http://emea-en.apc.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/11144/kw/11144] ) I downloaded the patch for ESXi 4.1: PCNS224_VIMA41.tar.gz and using the instructions with the patch I installed PCNS at my vma. During installation I was prompted for my UPSs ipaddress, username, password and passphrase. There were no errors during installation. After pcns installation I logged on to my UPS webinterface and checked that the vma's IP address was registred - it was.



Then I login to the PCNS webinterface at [https://10.108.8.234:6547/]


I can successfully browse the interface, but when I look at the "Eventlogs", I notice the vma is unable to communicate with UPSs. The error is:


PowerChute cannot communicate with the Management Card (error1.JPG)*


And when browsing the "Connected Servers" I get the error:


Message: There was a problem accessing the connected servers information (error2.JPG)*



I have tried changing the password and passphrase on both the UPS and in PCNS, but with no luck. I have also disabled the firewall (sudo service iptables stop) on the vma to make sure it allows traffic from the UPS to the vma. But the pcns on the vma is still not able to communicate with the ups. From my own windows pc I can do a: telnet 10.108.8.234 3052


It seems that the pcns on the vma is accepting incoming traffic on port 3052

I have also tried to switch communication on pcns from https to http (*communications.JPG*)


I notice that the time in the webinterface is wrong it should display 13:25 instead of 07:25, so I wonder if that causes the problem? Where do I setup time in PCNS? I have setup NTP on the vma, and date and time is correct, but it seems like PCNS is messing up timezones.



Can anyone here help? Both with time settting in PCNS but especially with communication between PCNS and the UPS.



Thanks in advance.

[Anonymous user]

Ok, the problem here was the [known issue|http://jpaa-en.apc.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/11382] that wasn't known to me...
Special characters in the credentials for PCNS 3.0

Message was edited by: lethalduck

[Anonymous user]

Did you setup the APC device wizard to setup the management card? I think it only supports Windows. Anyways after that you should be able to browse http to the webserver on the management card.

After you have established communication with the management card, then you should be able to see the "connected servers". The connected servers is just a list of listening network shutdown agents that are connected to the management card.

[Anonymous user]

I did not use the wizard to setup the UPS management card.

I have no problems with the webinterfaces on the Management Card or the PCNS on the vma. My problem is that the PCNS on the vma cannot communicate with the UPS management card.

[BillP]

hi.

i'd suggest you go ahead and review this article that we have-> http://nam-en.apc.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/11293

check out #3 specifically to start on the PDF attachment on that article.

[Anonymous user]

Hi,

Here is what I did:

First
ifconfig
to verify settings eveything is OK,

Then
sudo /etc/rc.d/init.d/PowerChute stop
sudo /etc/init.d/network restart
sudo /etc/rc.d/init.d/PowerChute start

[Anonymous user]

Hi,

I have just cheked everything according to http://nam-en.apc.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/11293

Network settings on the vma and any other settings seems to be OK. For testing purpose I have tried disabling the firewall on the vMA and it still doesn't work.

My own pc is on the same subnet as both the NMC, the esx host and the vma. And I have no trouble accessing them from my pc.

Anders

[BillP]

i talked to someone that said even though it was fine, the network may need to be re-initialized. thus, did you just check it, or actually re-initialize it (it being the network and also PCNS service afterwards), according to the instructions on #3, and it still didnt work? (just to be clear).

Message was edited by: i picKed a winna

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hi Anders,

See if this would work for you. Run this command to reconfigure the network sudo system-config-network re-enter the info and restart the network.

[BillP]

yes, try what JonPro said. this is what I was hoping you'd try, as part of #3. we have heard of an issue with VMWare and certain pieces of software requiring this step.

[Anonymous user]

I've been on an extended Easter holiday, so I have not had a chance to come back with a reply. I have just done a sudo system-config-network and it seemed to have solved the problem, so thats great news.

I guess I have misread/misunderstood #3 in the document [http://nam-en.apc.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/11293].
It said:
How to check the network settings on the ESX server or vMA client.
a) Use the command ifconfig to display the network settings.
b)To reboot the network use the command sudo /etc/init.d/network restart
The available options are stop:start:restart:reload:status
c) To reconfigure the network settings run the command
sudo system-config-network
you will be asked to accept DHCP or enter ipaddress, subnet mask, gateway, DNS
addresses, host name.

I only did 3a and 3b. Never did 3c since ifconfig showed that it the network was correctly configured, so I never really throught about reconfiguring.

Thank you for the help guys.

Anders

Message was edited by: andersm

[Anonymous user]

Didn't work for me..
I've got a similar setup.
I'm not sure if using the free ESXi has anything to do with it?
nmc AP9606 with 601.3.I
Have tried with firewall on and off.
I can see ports were opened by the pcns install.
ESXi 4.1.0
vMA 4.1.0

Installed this on VMware's vMA.
Went through the following steps in the Configuration Wizard
as described in the Overview of PowerChute
Network Shutdown Installation

Configuration Wizard: Security
Configuration Wizard: Select IP
Configuration Wizard: UPS Electrical Configuration
Configuration Wizard: UPS Details
Configuration Wizard: Miscellaneous
Configuration Wizard: Confirm
Configuration Wizard: Applying Changes

In the Configuration Wizard: Applying Changes stage it looks for the nmc. Says it can not communicate with it.
Although when I look in the nms's settings, I can see the IP address of the vMA that has pcns installed on it.
So there was obviously communications of some sort.
I open another tab in firefox and try to log in to pcns
https://:6547/login
I'm told
Invalid User name or Password.
Please try again.

I know I'm using the credentials I added in the setup, as I wrote them down.
I followd the directions provided in the
Overview of PowerChute Network Shutdown Installation..
"if you forget or lose your password, you can set a new one and also change the user name and
authentication phrase by editing the pcnsconfig.ini file. In the [NetworkManagementCard]
section of the INI file, set the following lines with your new values:
username= new user name
password= new password
authenticationPhrase= new authentication phrase"
not reseting the auth phrase though, and it didn’t make any difference?
Any ideas

Also I don't seem to have a PCNSConfig.sh in /opt /APC/PowerChute/group1
Will this affect anything?
Can ping the pcns machine from the nmc using the pcns machine name and the correct IP is returned. visa versa is also file.
Ideas?

RunningPCNSinstall_en.sh.png also yeilds no EULA.
So one has to agree to the EULA without reading it.

When I click the More Info link on the ConfigurationWizard.png I get some other checks to try.
Error Message “PCNS is NOT receiving data from the NMC.”

If you get this message, check whether the IP address of the Agent is listed on the NMC user interface under UPS - Configuration - PowerChute clients (or UPS - PowerChute - clients).
(from the supplied image, you can see that this is the case.)

If the IP address is not listed then you can try to add it manually as mentioned in the section directly above.

If the IP address is listed there:

* Establish whether the UDP port 3052 is being blocked by the firewall.
(According to sudo /sbin/iptables -L it doesn't look like it is... I've just stopped iptables, so firewall unlikely to be a problem.)
* Check the IP settings on the PCNS machine and on the NMC user interface to verify that the default gateway
and subnet mask are correct.
(Checked default gateway and nmask with a route -n and ip ofcourse.
Also went through and reconfigured with system-config-network and this confirmed all was good.
Checked the same on the nmc)

I've tried uninstalling pcns by using the sudo /opt/APC/PowerChute/uninstall
and re-installing, to make sure I didn't enter an incorrect password.
Still having the same problem.
in the pcns Configuration Wizard, I just went back to try using port 80 instead of the 8000 that nmc was listening on.
this failed instantly this time.
I went back and changed it back to 8000 again and I then got a success, you are connected and your system is protected (or something along those lines.) It said I needed to log in. So I tried again with same failed result.

Ideas please?

Message was edited by: lethalduck

Message was edited by: lethalduck