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Here is my situation. I have 10 Dell servers in my rack with 8 1500VA battery backups. I would like to take 1 of those battery backups and connect it to my network switch and use a software solution to effect the graceful shutdown for each of the servers in the rack. The operating systems I have to work with are ESXi5.1U2, RHEL5, and Windows 2003/2008. I have found instructions on how to configure each of these solutions individually and so I am pretty sure I can figure it out on that side of things...here is the question now. Can I use 1 battery backup to trigger all the graceful shutdowns of the different OS'es via the network interface? Has it been done before? Can someone show me a link to an example? I have looked unsuccessfully to this point and now I look to the pros here to see if it can be done. I thank you all in advance for insight into this matter and I look forward to the information provided by you all.

Edit The backups do not have network interfaces...just USB. Purchasing new battery backups with network interfaces...not optional. Looking for a creative way to do this due to budgetary constraints.

Second Edit So I reconfigured the battery backups in the office to use newer backups with network data port. The one I want to use is an APC XS 1500 to trigger the servers to shut down. I also have an older APC XS 1300 with a network data port as well.

Joshua
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    Your title and your question contradict your edit. You stated in your title and your question that you wanted to connect the UPS to the network. What you're saying in your edit is that the UPS doesn't have the capability to be connected to the network? What model UPS is it? – joeqwerty Feb 14 '14 at 18:59
  • Like Joe said...but why would you want 1 of the UPS' to control all the servers shutdowns if they aren't connected to that UPS? You're making an assumption that if one drops to battery they all will? Likely but not always. I think you should just talk with APC and discuss your options with them. The 1500VA model may not even be giving you much uptime to begin with on those servers, depending on what kind of load you are putting on them. You might have to force a shutdown immediately upon "failover". – TheCleaner Feb 14 '14 at 19:05
  • In this case if they drop to battery they all will since power is derived from the same circuit panel. Poor power design in the first place...not meant for server room status...but making due with what we have. Between all server loads and status displays on backup units at full load. I have 15 min to shut things down before battery runs out. My esxi server takes the longest to shut down at 12 min while under full load. I want other servers to also shut down gracefully in this amount of time to avoid crashing and data corruption. – Joshua Feb 14 '14 at 19:23
  • You've never seen a single outlet in a PDU fail? I have. – MDMarra Feb 14 '14 at 19:24
  • @Joshua, I get your reasoning and limitations. I've seen it before. It's not ideal but it is what it is. That being said, without having a UPS connected to the network and without having PowerChute installed on your servers it's going to be a difficult task getting one UPS to send a graceful shutdown command to all of your servers. – joeqwerty Feb 14 '14 at 19:26

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For the Windows servers you can do this for sure. For the other hosts you'll have to do some more research or wait for other answers.

As for the Windows servers:

Once you have the network module installed in the UPS and configured for and connected to the network you'll need to install the network shutdown agent on the windows servers and configure them to communicate with this UPS. You'll configure them as "clients" on this UPS as well. That will allow this UPS to send a graceful shutdown command to these servers in the event of a power loss, etc. based on your settings.

Note that because these servers may not have their power supplies physically connected to this UPS and may be connected to another UPS you could have a scenario where this UPS has a problem (battery, power loss, etc.) but the UPS that the server is actually connected to is fine yet this UPS will send a graceful shutdown command to these servers.

If you want "one-to-one" capability so that each UPS is configured to communicate with the servers physically connected to it then you'll need a network module installed in each UPS.

joeqwerty
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