What setting do I need to allow PCNS appliance to automatically restart after failure?

[BillP]

I am running ESXi 7.0 on a two host cluster but currently don't have HA or DRS enabled as I am beginning to configure everything. I do however want to make sure PCNS is configured correctly in case of a power outage.

I read in the vmware guide (correct me if i am wrong) that in order to successfully allow the PCNS appliance to auto start is to enable HA. Is this the correct setting?

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I simply want to make sure that when everything starts back up after a power failure, that the Powerchute appliance auto starts in order to restore all hosts and VMs.

Thank you.

[BillP]

Hi Lee,

The Powerchute appliance can't turn your machines back on.

You need to modify the server's BIOS to ensure that recovery after AC failure is turned on, this will boot the physical server after a power failure, you would need to contact your server manufacturer to find out how to do this on their specific hardware.

Next, you need to configure your VMWare to boot the VMs, this would be a question for VMWare but the link below should help:

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.7/com.vmware.vsphere.vm_admin.doc/GUID-5FE08AC7-4486-438...

-Gavan

[BillP]

On 1/28/2021 6:18 AM, Gavan said:

Hi Lee,

The Powerchute appliance can't turn your machines back on.

You need to modify the server's BIOS to ensure that recovery after AC failure is turned on, this will boot the physical server after a power failure, you would need to contact your server manufacturer to find out how to do this on their specific hardware.

Next, you need to configure your VMWare to boot the VMs, this would be a question for VMWare but the link below should help:

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.7/com.vmware.vsphere.vm_admin.doc/GUID-5FE08AC7-4486-438...

-Gavan

Hi Gavan, 

I think you misunderstood my question. I actually meant what setting is needed for the Powerchute appliance to auto start when the hosts are restored from a power outage. For example, power goes out, powerchute gracefully shuts down all vms and hosts. Power is restored and all hosts are back online but now powerchute must restart itself in order bring other hosts out of maintenance mode and start the vms back up.

I believe something needs to configured in order for powerchute auto start and I remember reading somewhere that it may be a HA setting. 

I hope this clears it up. 

[BillP]

As I said above, you just need to configure to configure VMWare to turn the PCNS VM and all other VMs back on after the power is restored.

-Gavan

[BillP]

Thanks Gavan.

I was under the impression that some sort of HA configuration was needed to allow PCNS to autostart. 

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Lee,

When running the PowerChute virtual appliance configured with vCenter for the PowerChute appliance to restart automatically with the host you must

1 - configure HA and select Host failure response = Restart VMs.

or 

2 - enable Autostart on the host for the PowerChute VM. See Schneider Electric FAQ FA159688

If you do not do one of those two, when the host is started the PowerChute VM will need to be started manually. 

As Gavan wrote earlier, for the hosts to restart automatically when AC is restored you must configure the BIOS of the server to power on when AC is restored.