Timers or scheduling equipment shutdowns and start ups

[Anonymous user]

We have a wiring closet that has about a 1/2 dozen switches that runs fairly warm during business hours. After hours our facilities department turns off the air conditioning which only makes the room hot from 11PM to 7AM. This is less than ideal and will likely shorten the lifespan of the switches in that closet. We could put the switches on simple timers but our desktop support group runs maintenance in the middle of the night.

Is there an APC product that can schedule turning off the power outlets as well as turning them back on? Ideally this product would allow for different schedules on different days or even multiple shutdowns and power ups in a day.

thank you.

[Anonymous user]

We have a wiring closet that has about a 1/2 dozen switches that runs fairly warm during business hours. After hours our facilities department turns off the air conditioning which only makes the room hot from 11PM to 7AM. This is less than ideal and will likely shorten the lifespan of the switches in that closet. We could put the switches on simple timers but our desktop support group runs maintenance in the middle of the night.

Is there an APC product that can schedule turning off the power outlets as well as turning them back on? Ideally this product would allow for different schedules on different days or even multiple shutdowns and power ups in a day.

thank you.

[Erasmus_apc]

You can use a Switched Rack PDU for this purpose. You can set up a one-time, daily, or weekly event for various actions such as "off immediate, off delayed, on immediate, reboot", etc. There can be more than one event a day, and you can also customize which outlets receive these commands. You can also make outlet groups among more than one PDU.

An alternative would be using a network card in a UPS. This would allow for general UPS shutdowns, and if you get an environmental card, it will support shutdowns based on temperature alarms. The latter feature will require a PC that is capable of running our PowerChute Network Shutdown software (compatible with the majority of Windows Versions, including 2008, Vista, Win7, and Hyper-V).

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Thanks but that all seems to be shut down and reboot related. We will need something more like a timer to power off/on all of the switches in the closet

Monday through Saturday
2AM: turn power on: PC updates start
3AM: turn power off, End of PC maintenance
6AM: turn power on: Start of business day
10PM: turn power off: End of business day
Sunday: off all day.

Maybe we could set up something with environmental monitoring but that would be less predictable. Doing a network based shutdown might be ok but how do you turn on the LAN switches remotely when the network is what we just turned off? 🙂

I am also going to look into industrial rated switches that may handle the heat better.