UPS (Eaton) Communication?

[TrevorX]

Hello,

I have an Eaton 9130 1500VA UPS protecting my servers and network hardware. I have a switch, modem, router, NAS and Hyper-V server running off it, which amounts to a 12% load. The UPS is monitored and communicates over USB to the Hyper-V server using the Eaton Intelligent Power Manager (IPM) software. I've installed the Intelligent Power Protector (IPP) module on important VMs to control elegant shutdown. That all works swimmingly.

What doesn't is the lack of communication with the FreeNAS server. During a power outage the UPS powers down after 10 minutes, which is plenty of time for me to gracefully shut down the FreeNAS box if I'm present, but is a bit difficult to do when I'm not home. It is possible for me to respond to an alert from the UPS, remote into my gateway RDP VM and then run the command on the NAS manually, but such manual intervention is far from elegant.

Is there something I can run on the FreeNAS box to get it to trigger a shutdown from the UPS agent? For example, I can run command line commands from the Hyper-V server based on events like 'Runtime Threshold Reached' and 'Power Restored', but while the 'shutdown' command can remotely shut down a Microsoft box easily, would a Windows command line command be able to trigger a shutdown on a FreeNAS box? Alternatively, my NAS is built on an Asrock Rack C2750D4I with IPMI BMC - most BMC's can be controlled by the command line, but would require an SSH connection to respond to remote commands, which sounds like I'd be making things a lot more difficult than necessary, but might have to be explored if I run out of alternative options.

I've been meaning to devote some time to this for at least a year, but about a month ago a power failure resulted in the UPS powering down and when everything came back up the FreeNAS box had somehow got its domain (and thus permissions) configuration all messed up and none of the shares were accessible - it took me about six hours to get it back online, and I really don't want to have to go through that (or worse) again.

Suggestions much appreciated.

Cheers,

Trevor

 

[danb35]

The nut HCL indicates that your UPS is supported for direct connection, but if it's connected there, it isn't connected to your Hyper-V server. Is there a network card available for the UPS?

 

[TrevorX]

I hadn't even heard of the NUT project, that is really cool. Thanks very much for pointing it out.

Is there a network card available for the UPS?

Yeah, but it was about $600 when I bought the UPS. I just took a look through the latest manual and it appears that there's a newer version of the comms card that's a lot cheaper, so I'll look into that - I installed a dedicated network port next to the UPS that goes back to my network rack (the UPS is in the garage because the fan is so fricken loud) just in case I upgraded the comms card, so it will be easy to do - thanks for the kick, I should have looked at that already ;-)

Regarding NUT, how does that work with the comms card? Does it use SNMP?

 

[danb35]

I just ask because the snmp_ups driver works well for me, and networking the UPS itself should make it easier for whatever clients to talk to it directly. Good luck.

 

[TrevorX]

I just ask because the snmp_ups driver works well for me, and networking the UPS itself should make it easier for whatever clients to talk to it directly. Good luck.

Agreed, I vastly prefer network/comms cards in a UPS wherever possible, but things are a little different when it's your own budget taking the hit ;-)

Looking at your sig, that's a nice collection of kit you have there. My Hyper-V server is similar - E5-2670's, 128GB RAM on Intel S2600CO4 but Intel 750 PCIe SSDs for the VMs where you have massive storage - what are you doing with 50TB?? I built my FreeNAS box about 18 months before I discovered the cheap Xeon E5's, so it has a lot less power, but still does the job nicely (unless I ask it to serve up subtitles through Plex :-/ ).

 

[danb35]

that's a nice collection of kit you have there

Thanks--the server really is overkill, but I couldn't resist the deal--I was looking for a Supermicro 4U, 24-bay chassis on eBay, and the server itself came up at a price I couldn't refuse. I upgraded to 2670s as well because, again, they were just too cheap to pass up. I'm not sure I'll ever fill all the front bays, and really don't see me using the rear, but they're there if I want them.

what are you doing with 50TB??

Sonarr and Radarr make it really easy to burn up lots of storage, or so I've been told...

 

[TrevorX]

the snmp_ups driver works well for me

Hi again Dan,
I now have a Network Card-MS (it's surprisingly affordable if you buy it in the USA - the same can't be said for local distributors in Australia!) in my 9130 and that's working fine with the Eaton IPP clients. So I now want to set it up with FreeNAS using the SNMP driver, but I'm a little confused by the less than stellar FreeNAS documentation. The UPS section is pretty woeful!

Would you mind running through your configuration, please?

• What driver are you using? I can see a number of SNMP drivers, but the 9130 only has a USB driver, not SNMP (so I assume I need a generic one, but not sure which).

• What port should I be using? I noticed elsewhere a recommendation to put 'auto' in this field...?

• Do 'Monitor User' and 'Monitor Password' relate to the SNMP read/write credentials, or something entirely different?

• Do I need to check the 'Remote Monitor' checkbox, or leave it blank?

Thanks again for your help,

Trevor

 

[danb35]

What driver are you using? I can see a number of SNMP drivers, but the 9130 only has a USB driver, not SNMP (so I assume I need a generic one, but not sure which).

As I said above, I'm using the snmp_ups driver. In my case, I chose the listing for the APC 9630, since that's the card in my UPS. If you don't see a comparable listing, I'd guess you could pick any other entry using that driver, but that's just a guess.

What port should I be using? I noticed elsewhere a recommendation to put 'auto' in this field...?

For port, type in the IP address of your UPS's network card. I have a bug open to address this in the docs.

Do 'Monitor User' and 'Monitor Password' relate to the SNMP read/write credentials, or something entirely different?

I left those, as well as remote monitor, blank.

 

[TrevorX]

Thanks Dan, yeah pretty much immediately after I posted that, I figured out I needed to put the IP into the 'port' field. So obvious... :-/

Unfortunately that hasn't fixed things for me yet, though - I'm still getting 'Connection failure'. I've tried a bunch of different Eaton and 'Powerware' SNMP drivers, but no joy so far :(

 

[TrevorX]

I left those, as well as remote monitor, blank

When I try to blank those out I get an error: 'This value is required'.

Wait, are you using SNMP v1 or v3? I have v3 configured on the UPS.