Powerchute software to shutdown base on battery percentage left?

[fl_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 5/24/2011

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Hello,

I'm trying to find out if it's possible to configure the Powerchute software on the clients to shutdown based on battery percentage left on the Symmetra 80K UPS as it seems the only thing I can configure for the event "UPS: On Battery" is the number of seconds the event last before issuing the shutdown signal. I have like 100 servers and I currently have to go to each server and manually configure and change this value and since we just added more battery capacity it means I will need to go to each 100 servers and update the value again. If there is a way to set it to a percentage it would be best that way I can set each server to shutdown at like 10% battery life left once and not have to re-adjust each time a new server is added since runtime will be less after each new hardware added.

Thanks in advance.

[Lexmark_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 6/23/2011

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Take a look at apcupsd. It is free and can perform a shutdown based on battery %. They have clients for Windows. I am currently using it on my Linux Servers talking to a APC Symmetra over the netowrk. I have not tried it on Windows yet but I did install it to verify that you have the same options. I hope this helps. I don't understand why APC wouldn't have this feature either.

[BillP]

This reply was originally posted by Angela on APC forums on 5/24/2011

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that is a good point. the only thing i can think of is setting the "low battery duration" setting in the network management card to something that matches up with ~10% battery capacity so when the UPS hits that runtime duration, lets say its 20 minutes, it will tell the powerchute clients, if any are still up and running, that it is time to shutdown. the UPS will run for the remaining 20 minutes while everything is shutting down and then there are a few other delays built in that are configurable like shutdown delays, and a 2 minute delay for unforseen circumstances. if you have any other powerchute clients configured for different settings, they may shutdown earlier than the low battery duration. this setting is on UPS tab->Configuration->Shutdown. the default is generally 2 minutes for most UPSs, even large UPSs like a PX i believe.

hope that helps. let me know if I misunderstood.

[fl_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 5/24/2011

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Yes I am aware of the setting in the NMC you are referring to and that would work if I wanted all the servers to shutdown at the same time but in my case I need to define different shutdown times base on the function of the servers. For example for all non-production or non-critical servers I want them to shutdown with 20 minutes of battery left, then all remaining production and critical servers (excluding DCs and SQL clusters) to shutdown with 15 minutes and then finally the last remaining SQL clusters and Domain Controllers at 8 minutes battery life. It would make life a whole lot better if the Powerchute software was smart enough to work together with the NMC or UPS to determine the runtime and dymanically adjust itself. I guess I'm asking for too much and I can only dream in the future some super smart developer/engineer with figure this out. Thanks anyway for the suggestion.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

This reply was originally posted by Angela on APC forums on 5/25/2011

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i would hope there is a reason why they have not done it this way but i asked around and honestly could not find one. i passed the feedback along to our software technical support lead who can relay the comments to the software product management team who can change these types of things.