Use of Powershute Business Edition 4.1.1 with Network Management Card

[wpqs_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 8/15/2016

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Powershute Business Edition has many more features than Powershute Network Shutdown. For example, it provides graphs of power supply voltages, brown-outs, etc. It is also a stand-alone application rather than a horrid webapp. In the past it also worked with the network management card so I could setup agents for each UPS and manage them from a central server via a console app. Unfortunately, a sometime in the last 5 years some decided to remove support for the network management card. Therefore my options would seem to be:

a) remove the network management card and install Powershute Business Edition 4.1.1. This gives me the functionality I need, but means that I’ve got move my server near my UPS so I can connect with a RS232 cable. It also means throwing away my expensive network card and losing things like email alerts

b) Install Powershute Network Shutdown and live with the very limited feature set it provides.

Please would the APC product manager explain the rationale of not allowing customers to have the best of both worlds – i.e. the features of Powershute Business Edition with the flexibility of a network management card.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

This reply was originally posted by Bill on APC forums on 8/16/2016

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Will,

Both PowerChute Business Edition and PowerChute Network Shutdown provide graceful shutdown of a computer based on a power events. PowerChute Business Edition also acts as an agent to represent the UPS. With PowerChute Network Shutdown the NMC is the interface to the UPS.

PowerChute Business Edition first released version was 6.0 and it was release in August 2001. It was designed to communicate with UPS via serial communications and over the years has been updated to include USB communications. There are 3 components. Agent that represents the UPS, Server that gathers information for the Agent/s, and the Console which is the GUI. It does provide graphs, a data log and event log. The PowerChute Agent acts as the interface to the UPS along with the OS shutdown mechanism. With the Console you can monitor multiple PowerChute Agents attached to multiple UPS (maximum of 25 Agents). The latest shipping version is 9.2. At no time however has PowerChute Business Edition communicated with a UPS via NMC. Serial or USB connection is required for the Agent to communicate with the UPS. 

PowerChute Network Shutdown first release version was 1.0 and it was release in October 1999. The latest shipping version is 4.1. It is designed to communicate with UPS via NMC. It is not designed as an access point for the UPS. That is the job of the NMC. It does not offer graphs or a data log but it does offer an event log. The NMC offers a data and event logs that can be exported and graphed if required. Also NMC is a web interface so to be consistent the interface for PowerChute Network Shutdown client is web / browser based. Having the PowerChute client browser base allow users the ability to access the client remotely as they would the NMC. BTW, PowerChute Business Edition Agent also offer a web / browser based interface http://IP address of system:3052 or https://IP address of system:6547 

PowerChute Network Shutdown is not limited. You can configure it to power down the OS when needed. As stated above the NMC provides access the the UPS and take the place of the PowerChute Agent. This is by design. With the NMC you configure voltage and other thresholds that are passed to the UPS so there is no need for PowerChute Network Shutdown to duplicate those settings. And, since PowerChute Network can have muliple client listening to a single NMC (max of 12700) all UPS related settings should be available via the NMC to allow for easier management of the UPS.