soveryapt Posted January 8, 2014 Posted January 8, 2014 So, you know the issue, how to really test the UPS setup to make sure that it functions correctly in the even of a power outage etc. I've never really got round to it, other than switching it off at the mains, but thanks to the local power outage we've just had, I now know it works rather well .. lol .. Ok, my switches aren't covered by it, but the servers kept spinning! Whoop .. Wasn't off long enough to test the safe shut down procedure, so I'll do that another time perhaps .. lol .. Right, now, where was I before I was so rudely interrupted ..
Gibbo Posted January 8, 2014 Posted January 8, 2014 Not sure how many switches you have but I've fitted some second hand mini APC UPSes into my cabs for the switches, see pic below for a typical example. If you do a local Ebay search you can pick them up for a couple of quid. http://az413224.vo.msecnd.net/img/25514/m_s_p_25514_1.jpg 1
soveryapt Posted January 8, 2014 Author Posted January 8, 2014 Not sure how many switches you have but I've fitted some second hand mini APC UPSes into my cabs for the switches, see pic below for a typical example. If you do a local Ebay search you can pick them up for a couple of quid. http://az413224.vo.msecnd.net/img/25514/m_s_p_25514_1.jpg 3 in the main cab, then I have 7 other sub cabs around with a single switch in each .. so if anything, I'd only look to cover the main cabinet, but to be fair, everything came up fairly well without the need for teachings hunting me down with pitchforks and flaming torches, so I'm good with that for now .. lol ..
jmak Posted January 8, 2014 Posted January 8, 2014 I know ours works 'cos it did. Several times. I also know that in the past, it hasn't for different reasons. Just before I started, the batteries were dying (not holding much charge) and it got itself into a cycle where the server would try to restart automatically when the power came back on, but then try and shut down because it knew that it didn't have enough juice to do a graceful shutdown if the power went off again. New UPS sorted that. Last year I had a couple of occasions where the server just stopped dead as though the power had been disconnected. Best guess is that a power surge (we think lightning strike) damaged it, but it didn't report a fault, so first we knew was the next time the power went out, the UPS failed. Thankfully it was replaced under warranty, but was a bit of a pain to sort the server. Still if it hadn't been for the UPS the surge would probably have fried the server. Long story short, you can never be quite sure until the power actually goes. Both of the UPS's I have used have diagnostic s/w which allows you to run tests and I do run them now. I'm sure that they cover most scenarios, but the only real test is what happens when you actually remove the power supply. The only way I can think of doing that is pull the power out of hours and see what happens. Check your backup first Happy to hear better suggestions... 1
PotNoodleTech Posted January 8, 2014 Posted January 8, 2014 It's a school holidays job - pull the power and see what happens. Also useful for timing exactly how long you get before the servers shut down - you may find it is not as long as you thought it was! 1
twin--turbo Posted January 8, 2014 Posted January 8, 2014 Take full backups. Have you DR plan on hand. Be prepaird for systems to fail to post. Pull the plug and wait.......... Make sure your core switch, san, email server, and gateway are all on good ups's so that you can (A) Recive an alert at home when the power fails. (B) shared storage for Virtual Machines does not go off leaving hung servers. Rob 1
plexer Posted January 8, 2014 Posted January 8, 2014 How do your serves shutdown in the event of a power failure? if any of them are using network connections to ups or other servers etc.... then the network connectivity to those devices needs to be powered up. Ben 1
soveryapt Posted January 8, 2014 Author Posted January 8, 2014 How do your serves shutdown in the event of a power failure? if any of them are using network connections to ups or other servers etc.... then the network connectivity to those devices needs to be powered up. Ben Each server is directly connected to the UPS so they get told directly from them that there's an issue instead of relying on switches (hence not being too fussed regarding switch UPS) but I do like the suggestion from @twin-turbo about having the ability to get remotely notified of failure and/or successful reboots and what not, so might look into it for the core.
Sirbendy Posted January 8, 2014 Posted January 8, 2014 All our SmartUPS' have self-test buttons and automatically run it every so often, IIRC... 1
twin--turbo Posted January 8, 2014 Posted January 8, 2014 We had a brownout before christmas that tripped the RCD to our network UPS. ( hopefully that problem should be sorted) But in that even the server ups was fine and happy, it saw a blip but carried on. However 20 minuets down the line the network would have gone down taking out the connection to the shared storage. Fortunatly I noticed and scooted into the office to restore power to the UPS. Remote access, and remote alerting is very very handy so keeping availability to these is a good thing. Rob
soveryapt Posted January 8, 2014 Author Posted January 8, 2014 All our SmartUPS' have self-test buttons and automatically run it every so often, IIRC... Yeah, mine (APC Smart UPS 3000) has the self test on it, which when I'm bored of a summer I'll press .. lol .. but most of the time, I forget ..
twin--turbo Posted January 8, 2014 Posted January 8, 2014 Yeah, mine (APC Smart UPS 3000) has the self test on it, which when I'm bored of a summer I'll press .. lol .. but most of the time, I forget .. They do a 14 day battery test. One of Our Inet 2200 beeps every 14 days as it thinks the batteryies are shot. Another had to be taken out of service as it droped the load every 7 days! Rob
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