Want to shut down servers with % of battery left, not X amount of time left

[Mgregory2K_apc]

I have a Symmetra PX model #: SYCF40KF

I have installed PCNS v2.2 on all of our servers (about 15) and I have configured it to shut down after X amount of time - depending on if the server is production or not. We recently had a power outage and the batteries ran out of juice long before the time I had specified for production equipment to shut down.

I have been told that I should be able to configure it to shut down when the batteries are at a certain level of charge. For example, if I wanted to shut down production servers when there is 15% of battery life left in our UPS.

However, I called APC and they have told me that this is not possible. So, my question is this: Is it possible to use PCNS to shut down in this way? If not, is there another product that I could use? This is a pretty critical issue because I live in an area where power outages are relatively common.

Also, I had to copy the config file over to each server individually and I've been told that I should be able to centrally configure each device. I'm pretty new to PCNS so any info would be very helpful.

Thanks

[voidstar_apc]

On your NMC under UPS -> Configuration -> Shutdown, there's a "Low Battery Duration" setting. For example, if you set it for 5 minutes, then 5 minutes before the batteries die, your computers should begin a shutdown.

[Mgregory2K_apc]

Thanks! I was expecting it to be on the server side and not the NMC

[BillP]

you can do it a couple different ways. if you want all your servers to shutdown at the same point, voidstar's suggestion is the way to go.

if you wanted to stagger shutdowns, there are configuration changes you can make on the powerchute software on the servers.

[voidstar_apc · Accepted solution]

Expanding on what i Picked a Winna said,

Lets say you have servers A, B, and C, and you want A to shutdown first. Once we've signaled A to shut down, the UPS will need to turn off and on the power to get A to turn back on again. However, to safely do that, B and C need to shut down as well. So in short, if you shut down one of them, you need to shut down all of them. Hence, why you set up the shut down time for all three on the NMC rather than per-server.

By using the PCNS settings, you can delay the shutdowns for B and C so that they start a certain time after the signal to shutdown, thereby staggering them. The NMC keeps track of this and will not reboot the UPS until enough time has past that all PCNS clients should have shutdown.