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We are looking for a solution to automatically shutdown server room equipment in a controlled process, based on priority, automatically during a power outage and on demand if necessary. We would also like to be able to power the servers back on in a controlled manor.

We have a mixture of equipment (physical and virtual servers and multiple types of UPS/storage array/server vendors) and no budget for this :-) so even a partial solution would be helpful. We hope to get a generator but we have been hoping for years now.

Scott Keck-Warren
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Stop hoping, start planning & budgeting. To shutdown, you could write a simple script to call psexec, WMI, etc. Most good UPSes come with software to gracefully shutdown the attached computer. To turn on, you either need WoL, or a hardware solution like IPMI (iLO, ILOM, etc).

Chris S
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  • I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on iLO vs. WoL (wrt the purpose above) -- we have HP systems that include the basic version, but have never enabled. – nedm Oct 01 '10 at 17:54
  • Tools like [wolcmd](http://www.depicus.com/wake-on-lan/wake-on-lan-cmd.aspx) make the wake-up scripting a lot less intimidating. It's not too complicated to pull a list of MAC addresses from your automated inventory database (e.g. [OCS Inventory NG](http://www.ocsinventory-ng.org/)) and fire off some magic packets. – Skyhawk Oct 01 '10 at 18:01
  • @nedm, We have all HP servers and i love iLO. It impresses the boss when you can turn servers on from another country while you're on vacation. Or get notifications of a BSOD (and the Stop code). Remote media and console are really useful if you've got the advanced license. – Chris S Oct 01 '10 at 18:15
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    the funny thing is that if you use linux, you need no advanced license, the ilo console always works ;-) (at least in the g5 servers we have). – natxo asenjo Oct 01 '10 at 19:08
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We have a mixed Windows/*nix environment and have been dealing with the same issues. We're in the process of implementing apcupsd and using it to kick off .bat and shell scripts to shut things down gracefully. So far it seems to work very well across the disparate server environments and UPS systems.

nedm
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