Searching a best practice for a Shutdown Scenario

[Anonymous user]

Hello Guys

We have a vSphere6 test environment with an ESX host running 4 VMs:
two Windows 2008 servers, a virtual appliance with vCenter 6, and a
PCNS 4.2 appliance. The UPS is a Smart-UPS 3000 with MGMT card 2, AP9630

We are currently looking for a best practice for a Shutdown Scenario
in order to implement this with customers.

During the shutdown configuration, the MGMT card has a low battery duration of 8 minutes
and a Shutdown Delay of 180 seconds, the total remaining time is about 15 min.

In the PCNS appliance, "Runtime Exceeded" and "Runtime below Threshold" were set up as shutdown events.

I have found that after a shutdown, when the power is back again, a shutdown is triggered.
The battery is not recharged enough at this time, i.e. the remaining runtime is less than set,
and the Shutdown Event is triggered again.

I would like to know how I tackle this problem with the Shutdown Events "Runtime Exceeded" and "
"Runtime below Threshold".

Can someone give me experience values ​​how the problem was solved?

Do you work with the events "Runtime Exceeded" and "Runtime below Threshold" or with the event
"UPS on Battery", which does not have the problem of shutdown after restarting.

If there is a delay in the UPS on Battery Shutdown event, a power failure of a few seconds or minutes
does not immediately trigger the shutdown.

Thank you for any suggestions

kind regards

Andreas Knopp

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You should review both Runtime Exceeded and Runtime Below Threshold by clicking on the help files or in the PCNS VMware User's Guide. Available runtime has been exceeded is explained on page 101 and Runtime Below Threshold is explained on page 104 of the User's Guide. 

Basically Runtime Exceeded is triggered when the available runtime of the UPS is not sufficient to allow the configured system/s to power up and power down safely. As an example the low battery threshold you sent is 8 minutes. PCNS will trigger a shutdown if configured to do so if the available runtime of the UPS is lower that 8 minutes or if the system and VMs require more than 8 minutes to power up and down. If you have configure a power down delay for the VMs of 2 minutes, power down of vCenter server of 4 minutes and the OS needs 2 minutes, and a power up time of 2 minutes for the VMs available runtime will be exceeded because the program requires there be a minimum of 10 minutes and the low battery threshold is set for 8. I recommend in the above scenario to set low battery to 12 minutes at a minimum. The 10 minutes needed plus 2. See page 87 of the User's Guide for a graph.  

Runtime below threshold will trigger a shutdown when the available runtime of the UPS falls below the set threshold. As an example if configured to do so PCNS will start the shutdown process when it see that the UPS has less then 10 minutes of runtime. 

On 10/20/2017 7:49 AM, Andreas said:

If there is a delay in the UPS on Battery Shutdown event, a power failure of a few seconds or minutes
does not immediately trigger the shutdown.

You can configure a power up delay in the NMC. Depending on the Smart-UPS 3000 you have the setting is either under the shutdown settings or outlet group settings. The delay will allow the batteries to charge so that when the system is started the available runtime and runtime below threshold will not be met.