Powerchute 911 and Smart UPS 1000

[Anonymous user]

Good morning,

on december 2014 I've installed and configured a VMWare 5.5 Host with an old APC Smart UPS SC1000 (cod. SC1000I). I've set up the system with a VMA55 and PowerChute Business Ed. 9.11 linux version, the serial connection cable was 940-0024C and the UPS was correctly detected with "Smart signaling". PowerChute was able to shutdown gracefully all VMs and the VMware Host.

Past week I've installed a brand new Smart UPS 1000 (cod. SMT1000I), connected to VMWare Host with the provided serial cable cod. 940-0625A and troubles has begun:

- with "smart signaling" selected in PCBE 9.11 the UPS is not detected (Unknown UPS Model);

- with "simple signaling" selected in PCBE 9.11 the UPS is detected as "BACK-UPS" with power failure and the system shutdown is invoked.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks a lot. Fabio.

[BillP]

SC1000I and SMT1000I are different UPS types communication-wise. In order to get the SMT1000I working and communicating properly, you'll need to uninstall the PowerChute Business Edition Agent and then re-install it with the SMT1000I connected so that PowerChute can be re-configured properly. This boils down to the fact that the agent gets installed differently depending on the UPS type you're using.

[Anonymous user]

Thank you Angela.

I am looking for a way to re-run the initial setup of PCBE but I can't find anything and I'll uninstall and reinstall the agent.

Best regards, Fabio.

[BillP]

We have this site -> http://swhelp.apcc.com/pcbe/help/productcenter/en/index.html and then the last link under the bottom under Virtualization, Installing PowerChute Business Edition 9.1.x on VMware vMA 5.0 or 5.1: FA165747. seems to lead you to a knowledge base that has information on uninstalling PCBE on ESXi as part of the PDF attachment.

[Anonymous user]

Some days ago I've uninstalled and reinstalled PCBE 9.11 as suggested in the previous post.

The initial wizard  has been successfully completed and the UPS was connected to PCBE via serial port. Everythings seems to be ok but after a few hours the communications was lost (and nothing has been changed meanwhile).

After a bit of "googling", I've read somewhere (perhaps in APC forum) an interesting post about serial port issue in HP server caused by ILO interferences. Well, today I've restarted the server, an HP ML310 G8, and in ILO configuration (F8 during POST) there's nothing about serial port connection so I can't disable anything. The problem is still the same after server reboot.

Has anyone met the same issue before? How can I be sure that the problem is in the hardware? In PCBE interface the communication between server and UPS are lost, how can I change any parameters to find a solution?

Thanks a lot. Fabio.

[BillP]

The description does point to the Prolient iLO issue. Have you reviewed this HP document. http://h20566.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c01139344〈=en&cc=us

Also, have you checked to verify that no other VMs are attempting to attach to the serial port. That would cause communication issue.

If you want to verify the SMT is working properly you should attach the SMT to anouther system (Windows would be best) and install PowerChute Agent to see if it looses communication. If it does not then the SMT is good and the issue is with the server.

[Anonymous user]

I'm quite demoralized, I just checked that no other VM is accessing the serial port and I've disabled BIOS Serial Console Port, as the ILO serial setting mentioned in HP doc is not available, I think 'cause my server has an ILO4 and the doc is referred to an ILO2.

However, I've uninstalled and reinstalled the agent, choosing "RJ45" in wizard: the agent is not able to connect to the UPS.

I can see that the version of agent installed choosing "RJ45" is different than if I choose "DB9". With DB9 version it has been succesfully connected (to an old UPS with serial cable).

May I check the serial port speed or any other parameters? If so, Where are that settings?

Best regards, Fabio.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Serial port setting for a SMT are bits per second: 9600, data bits: 8 parity none, stop bits: 1, flow control: none.