Unable to shutdown two computers

[Anonymous user]

I just bought my first UPS, a XS 1300 at circuit city. I have my HP and 22" lcd plugged into it, needless to say I'm only using up 170w and there's so much more room for my small server to be hooked into it. Problem is, the powerchute program and usb connectivity only limits you to one pc. I feel that I've been mislead, is there a way to get this ups to work and shutdown two of my machines with powerchute, the software provided by apc?

[BillP · Accepted solution]

No, unfortunately, these UPS are intended for home/home-office applications which assume a 1:1 ratio between UPS and PC. The PowerChute Personal Edition software will only work with one PC. The UPS itself cannot address more than one PC host.

One idea would be to use the native UPS support offered by Windows. Then with a bit of skill, you can engineer a script that monitors the UPS state and sends a graceful shutdown or hibernate command to your other PC.

That's just an idea, and not officially supported by APC.

Our Smart-UPS line has the ability to address and gracefully shutdown multiple PCs. Depending on which Smart-UPS you choose, additional hardware may be required to achieve this result using the appropriate PowerChute software.