Power loss to ESXi, SAN & Physical dc

[TraineeGeek]

Hi Folks,

Over the summer we had an expensive VMware, ESXi 5.1 system installed. 2 ESXi servers running on a 1TB SAN. All this Dell hardware sits on a Dell UPS 2700 W. I've just discovered that the UPS isn't configured to do anything when mains power is lost and the Network Management Card hasn't been installed (just found it in a box)

When I asked the people who installed the system about the unconfigured UPS I was told the installation and configuration of the network management card was "massive massive overkill". This doesn't seem right to me as there are 15 virtual servers (1 physical) including a SIMs server, that ideally should be shutdown gracefully. On top of that I've been reading that there is a procedure for shutting down the SAN to prevent data loss.

Thoughts would be most welcome, is this overkill?

Many thanks and have a great crimbo

D

[Theblacksheep]

Its not overkill to shutdown the VMs of powerloss, they just didn't do it.

[rich_tech]

SAN should be the last thing to power off after all the servers using its disks have powered down, not entirely sure on the vmware version and its shutdown procedures, I run hyper-v 2012 here, my answer though would be, yes, I would configure the servers to shutdown in the event of an outage, not a power flicker, but an actual sustained outage, (i.e. more than 2/3 minutes of power failure if your UPS can handle that uptime, ideally it should be able to hold them up for about 10/15 mins), we have 2 UPS here and the load split over the two of them, because strange things can happen as we have found recently, when one UPS (our older APC one) actually blew out 4 of its 8 batteries after a power surge here, no acid leak thankfully, as they are dry cells.

[DMcCoy]

Is it free ESXi or licensed? The APC software is easy enough to add unless it's running a free version. Can also configure auto startup/shutdown order with no major issues. The SAN may not have an off function, all you can do it give it time to write anything in the cache to disk.

[glennda]

Is it free ESXi or licensed? The APC software is easy enough to add unless it's running a free version. Can also configure auto startup/shutdown order with no major issues. The SAN may not have an off function, all you can do it give it time to write anything in the cache to disk.

 

With Sans this is how I have tended to leave them, it isn't ideal but but give the san a couple of mins once the VM and hosts have shutdown to clear itself.