apc pdu (AP8868) lost communication to dce

[DCIM_Support]

Hi,

I have a APC PDU (model AP8868) that DCE has a "Communication Lost" error on.  This PDU has been connected to DCE for the past 6-8 months, and had firmware version 6.4.0 on it.  The funny thing is that I can successfully ping the PDU, and I can log into the PDU from a web interface.  In addition, it appears that I can perform SNMP Device Configuration updates via the DCE interface to it.  I tried rebooting the interface several times, but the DCE Communication Lost error did not clear.  Then I tried to update the firmware via he DCE Update process to firmware version 6.4.6, and this completed successfully, and I can still ping the pdu and I can log into the pdu via a web browser, but the communication lost error in DCE still has not cleared.

The version of DCE that we are running is 7.3.1.114.  Also, we have over 80 other AP8868 that have not had the same problem.

Does anyone have any suggestions that may help?

Thanks

(CID:122095925)

[DCIM_Support]

Hi Michael,

The device  communicates with DCE using SNMP. This could be disabled and you would still be able to ping the unit. Firmware upgrades and configuration are FTP or SCP so that too can work without SNMP working. The same can be said for web. 

What at version of SNMP are you using?

Can you access the device using the same authentication configured in DCE but with a different SNMP system? 

Is this the only device failing?

Have you rebooted either DCE?

Did this start before or after the firmware upgrade?

K-base has documents that can assist in SNMP troubleshooting.

http://www.apc.com/us/en/faqs/FA226273/

Steve. 

(CID:122095945)

[DCIM_Support]

Hi Steve,

Thank you for responding to my question.  Here are the answers to your questions that I can provide:

1)  What at version of SNMP are you using?

  I believe that it is SNMP version 1

2)  Can you access the device using the same authentication configured in DCE but with a different SNMP system? 

  I don't have access to an alternate SNMP system.

3)  Is this the only device failing?

  This is currently the only device failing in this way.

4)  Have you rebooted either DCE?

  I have not yet rebooted DCE.  I plan to do this sometime this week

5)  Did this start before or after the firmware upgrade?

  This started before the firmware upgrade to the APC PDU, and continued after the firmware upgrade completed

My questions:

1)  How can I check if SNMP got disabled on the specific APC device?  I know that we didn't purposely disable SNMP on the PDU, and it is curious why only 1 of them got into this state (We have over 80 of the APC PDUs in monitoring)

Thank you

(CID:122685276)

[DCIM_Support]

Hi Michael,

In DCE, go to the Device menu->SNMP device communications settings->Device Scan settings.

Find the device at issue and select only that one. Click "Edit Device Scan Settings". You should see the SNMP Community Strings there (Assuming SNMP V1)

Double click the device in DCE, it should launch to the web page which you say you are able to do without issue. Go to Configuration->network->SNMP v1->Access

Again assuming SNMP V1) verify SNMP version 1 is enabled.

 Go to Configuration->network->SNMP v3->Access

Make sure this is disabled. You don't want both enabled at the same time, I've seen issues. 

Go to Configuration->network->SNMP v1->Access Control

Verify the community names match that associated with the device in DCE we just looked at.

Make sure the IP associated to each community name (for test purposes) is set to all 0s (0.0.0.0). This means any system can access the device.

If you've made any changes, right click the device and request a device scan. 

If you still can't access the device, you or someone else will need to verify the device is capable of communicating using SNMP over the network. This means downloading a utility to scan via SNMP. iReasoning or GetIf are both free utilities and the APC "PowerNet.mib" file is downloadable on the www.apc.com/tools/download page.

Again try rebooting the device and server but with SNMPv1, this should not be as important.  

Again, you may want to check k-base  FA226273 for more assistance.

Thanks,

Steve

(CID:122685821)

[DCIM_Support]

Hi Steve,

Thank you for you insite.  I'm not sure what happened to the answer I posted here last week, but I figured out what happened with your help.  It turns out that the SNMP community names for this particular PDU got changed from "public" and "private" (I'm not sure how they got changed).  When I changed the names back, the PDU came back online and all is now good.

Thanks again for your help

(CID:122687241)

[DCIM_Support]

Dear Michael Adachi,

Most recently, a new firmware v.6.5.2 was released for rPDU 2G.

As you can see from the short update description, the developers can to solve the above problem with SNMP v3:

At me, for example, updating by means of DCE software was successful.

Therefore, try it, and I hope this is what you need 😀.

With respect.

(CID:128747969)

[DCIM_Support]

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