Questions[apcupsd](server)

I am using an APC BackUPS Pro to run two machines. One is critical and is connected directly to the UPS as the master and the other machine is not so important and is connected via the NIS as a slave.

As I understand it, if a machine is shutdown by APCUPSD it issues the killpower command to the UPS just before shutting down so that the UPS kills the power to connected deviced when it regains mains power to prompt the connected deviced to start up.

However it seems like all APCUPSD clients issue this command rather than just the master. Is this the correct behaviour?

I have the slave turning off 2 minutes after power loss but would like the master to continue running until 10% battery remains.

We have an APC Smart UPS 1500. The "Replace Battery" light is on, and apcupsd reports:

Emergency! Batteries have failed on UPS xxxx. Change them NOW

However, from this article,

http://sturgeon.apcc.com/kbasewb2.nsf/for+external/f39c4312fcaf7b948525679a005ebb78?OpenDocument

it seems that it's not so clear that the UPS battery needs to be replaced. Stranger, according to the information on the UPS, an 11 minute runtime at 42.9% load running at 27.7V isn't so bad.

Any thoughts about what to try next? We're a non-profit, money is an object. It would be a shame to replace a battery with a year or so left in it.

# apcaccess status
APC      : 001,041,1017
DATE     : Thu Mar 29 13:01:41 EDT 2012
HOSTNAME : oreilly2
VERSION  : 3.14.6 (16 May 2009) debian
UPSNAME  : xxxx
CABLE    : Custom Cable Smart
MODEL    : Smart-UPS 1500
UPSMODE  : Stand Alone
STARTTIME: Thu Mar 29 12:57:30 EDT 2012
STATUS   : ONLINE
LINEV    : 112.3 Volts
LOADPCT  :  42.9 Percent Load Capacity
BCHARGE  : 100.0 Percent
TIMELEFT :  11.0 Minutes
MBATTCHG : 5 Percent
MINTIMEL : 3 Minutes
MAXTIME  : 0 Seconds
OUTPUTV  : 112.3 Volts
SENSE    : High
DWAKE    : -01 Seconds
DSHUTD   : 090 Seconds
LOTRANS  : 106.0 Volts
HITRANS  : 127.0 Volts
RETPCT   : 000.0 Percent
ITEMP    : 23.8 C Internal
ALARMDEL : Always
BATTV    : 27.7 Volts
LINEFREQ : 60.0 Hz
LASTXFER : No transfers since turnon
NUMXFERS : 0
TONBATT  : 0 seconds
CUMONBATT: 0 seconds
XOFFBATT : N/A
SELFTEST : NO
STATFLAG : 0x07000008 Status Flag
SERIALNO : AS0603298896
BATTDATE : 2006-01-14
NOMOUTV  : 120 Volts
NOMBATTV :  24.0 Volts
FIRMWARE : 601.3.D USB FW:1.5
APCMODEL : Smart-UPS 1500
END APC  : Thu Mar 29 13:02:12 EDT 2012

Error when running upstest

You are using a SMART cable type, so I'm entering SMART test mode
mode.type = USB_UPS
Setting up the port ...
Hello, this is the apcupsd Cable Test program.
This part of apctest is for testing Smart UPSes.
Please select the function you want to perform.

1) Query the UPS for all known values
2) Perform a Battery Runtime Calibration
3) Abort Battery Calibration
4) Monitor Battery Calibration progress
5) Program EEPROM
6) Enter TTY mode communicating with UPS
7) Quit

Select function number: 2

First ensure that we have a good link and
that the UPS is functionning normally.
Simulating UPSlinkCheck ...
YWrote: Y Got:
getline failed. Apparently the link is not up.
Giving up.

I have a server racked and its redundant power supplies plugged in two APC Smart-UPS 3000 XLM. Each UPS is connected to two different mains power sources.

Two instances of apcupsd are running, each one connected to its own UPS. They can both detect when an UPS is on Battery, and each UPS can then trigger a shutdown on the server.

Question is : How NOT to shutdown if ONLY ONE UPS runs out of battery ?

Note : Smart-UPS 3000 XLM has a "Power Sync" Function that is able to connect to its peer and detect its status. But when I pulled the plug out of one of them, the Shutdown order was sent anyway. I'm thinking about modifying the shutdown scripts to check with "apcaccess" if the other ups is down. Any experience on this would be appreciated !

We are setting up a new Windows 2008 R2 server and I am trying to get it to listen to the attached UPS and shut itself down gracefully when there is an outage. Unfortunately, the included PowerChute Business refuses to install because it noticed that hyper-v is installed. After some searching, I found that the network version of powerchute does have a version that supports hyper-v. Unfortunately, the UPS (Smart UPS 2200 VA 2U rack mount I think) does not have a network card so that's not working.

Another option I found was APCUPSD, the open source UPS monitor. Unfortunately, I cannot seem to get it to find the UPS. The difficulty is that I cannot confirm if/how it is plugged in to the server, as I have never actually seen the UPS or the server. I am told that the cable plugs in to an ethernet jack on the UPS and a USB port on the server and that it acts like a serial cable. However: when I use the simple USB configuration for apcupsd it reports that it cannot find a USB device, but I can't figure out what device to use. I suspect I need to use the smartups config, but I'm not sure what device name to use. Being a Windows server, "ls /dev/" is unlikely to be very helpful.

Has anyone delt with a situation like this? What am I doing wrong? All I want to do is shut down the Hyper-V VMs and then the server (I have a PowerShell script that will do just that) when the power goes out. Is there a simpler way?

I have several computers connected to a single APC SmartUPS 1500. The UPS status is monitored by a server running acpupsd. The other computers also have apcupsd installed, and poll the main computer over the network to get the UPS status, and they shut down if a power loss event occurs.

I want to add a computer running Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (free version) into the mix, but as far as I can tell it isn't possible to install apcupsd or other UPS monitoring software in the hypervisor. How can I get this machine to shut down during a power loss event?