Powerchute Business Edition Agent installation help

[BillP]

Hi all, I hop you can help with this agent installation issue..

My setup:

I have a Smart-Ups 5000 RM DL4 connected by serial cable to a windows 2003 server. Installed on this server is Powerchute business basic edition 7.0.5 with the windows agent, server and console.

In the Console I can see the server and everything checks out fine.

Now when I go to add a second server I insert the cd and during the installation of the agent I am asked “Would you like to automatically search all communication ports for an APC UPS?” I select no because this is the second server and is not physically connect to the UPS as you can obviously only have once connected through the serial cable.

So when I get to the window for selecting UPS type I’m not sure exactly what to pick as they all seem to want to connect over a Communication Port.

How can I connect 5 servers to one UPS with a single serial cable?

Would really appreciate your help on this as the documentation only references attached UPS systems.

Cheers,

Stephen

[Anonymous user]

Hi Stephen,
In order to connect more than one server to a ups, you have 3 options:

1. You can purchase a 2 port interface expander, ap9607cb, and put that in the ups smart slot. Then you just need to connect your servers with the included cables and set the communication type to simple with interface expander.

2.If you need more than 2 ports, you can purchase a share-ups, ap9207, and connect that to ups' serial port, and then connect 1 server using the smart signaling cable, 940-0024, and up to another 7 using the simple signaling serial cable 940-0020. Be aware that you will need to purchase all of the simple signaling cables separately

3.Use our network management card, ap9617/18/ or 19, and put that in the smart slot. This is the most cost effective method for shut down since it sends a shutdown signal over your network instead of a serial cable, therefore you can more or less shutdown unlimited servers with one ups. Be aware that this card uses powerchute network shutdown instead of business edition. This is free software for almost every OS, with the exception of the latest version of vmware esx server.

These are the primary supported methods for shutting down multiple servers attached to one ups. Theoretically you could write a script to shutdown other servers instead, however you would need to know how to write the script to do so.

[BillP]

Hi TaSpEc,

Thanks for your reply, I'm surprised out of the box a UPS of this size only supports one server. It looks like I'll have to purchase and additional network management card. I thought it would have come with this kind of stuff by default.

Cheers,

Stephen

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Most of our larger ups' do have a network card included, unfortunatley this is one of the few that does not. Glad I could help.