Simple guide for a newbie

[fluxtor]

Hi,

I'm in the process of setting up PowerChute Network Shutdown to gracefully shutdown 4 x VMWare ESXi Hosts. Our setup comprises of 2 vCenter Server instances. 1 instance is managing our main production hosts x 3 and virtual machines and the second our lab or test setup managing only 1 host and virtual machines. Our UPS is a Smart UPS 1500 with the Network Management Card installed.

For now I have PCNS installed on the lab instance for testing purposes but the end goal is to have it gracefully shutting down all of our hosts and virtual machines. Our setup is somewhat different to what you might expect as in we have 2 x VMWare Essentials Kits so they are independent of each other. Due to this I as I understand we would need to install PCNS on both instances of vCenter Server?

As a relatively novice user of PCNS I'm finding it difficult to find a concise guide or howto to aid me setting up correctly for our environment. I find conflicting information in both the NMC interface on the UPS and then within PCNS and then again in vCenter Server. 

For instance I'm currently trying to test this on our lab setup and the only way I can see to simulate or test a power failure event is to switch of the mains power to the ups and wait for the shutdown to commence. Is there a more efficient way of testing the procedure without pulling the plug on the UPS? I don't like doing this as it's powering our production servers too!

Could anyone please point me in the right direction for help and resources to aid me setting up for our environment. 

Thanks in advance.

Trev

[BillP]

@fluxtor 

What is the exact model of the Smart-UPS?

What model Network Card (NMC) is installed in the Smart-UPS?

What firmware is on the NMC? 

The information can be found on the NMC under About.

[fluxtor]

@BillP 

Hi, thanks for the reply.

See attached screenshots for information, hope this is sufficient.

[BillP]

@fluxtor 

You are running old firmware on the NMC. You should update it. See Schneider Electric FAQ FA156047

If the PowerChute server is connected to the switched outlet group and the production servers are connect to the Main / unswitch set the switched outlet group to power off with the delay. The NMC will send a packet to PowerChute stating the outlet group is going to power and and PowerChute will trigger the shutdown. 

Go to Control - Outlet Groups

[fluxtor]

Hi Bill,

Once again thanks for the response. I will get the firmware updated.

I'm not entirely sure how to use the outlet groups and I've never configured them. In a previous version of PCNS running on a vSphere Management Assistant we used to just run a perl script which shutdown multiple hosts and we setup each host to auto shutdown any running vms with the host. 

Is it possible to do it this way with version 4.4.2 of PCNS? The reason I ask is as I mentioned in my OP we only have the vMWare Essentials Kits which means we need two separate versions of vCenter Server running. It seems overkill to then have to have a PCNS Appliance for each instance and would be more optimal to just initiate a shut down from a script. We have no desire to migrate vms we simply want to shutdown all hosts if the UPS has been on battery for a specified amount of time.

TIA

[BillP · Accepted solution]

@fluxtor 

You can install a single PowerChute VM and configure it to run scripts to power off all the hosts, but that method is not supported, or recommended. Doing so gives you a single point of failure. If the PowerChute VM is off none of the host will be powered off.

Let's assume you have two UPSs. Each UPS is powering a cluster that consists of vCenter and three hosts. We'll call them Cluster 1, UPS 1, and Cluster 2, UPS 2. PowerChute is running on Cluster 1. UPS 1 switches to battery, so cluster 1 must power off. Later UPS 2 switches to the battery. Cluster 2 is unprotected because PowerChue and Cluster 1 are off.

The best method is to install a PowerChute VM for each cluster. PowerChute would then be configured for the single cluster.

I fyou only have one UPS that installing a single PowerChute VM will work. 

[fluxtor]

Hi Bill,

Thanks again for responding. I completely understand your point and it makes perfect sense. 

In our instance we do only have the one UPS monitoring all of our hosts. The most important are 3 of the hosts which our our production hosts and the most critical. The final host is purely as a spare and for testing purposes. 

With VMWare Essentials Kits we can only have 3 hosts per vCenter Server and vMotion etc is not supported so we will only ever have the one cluster and associated hosts and resources in a live environment so I think having a single PCNS VM on the live environment with it's priority being graceful shutdown of the production hosts would work. I think it sounds like it would work if we were to use scripts to firstly shut down the test environment followed by the live environment we should be okay.

Thank you for your support and help answering my questions!