Shared Knowledge

 

“Multiple PC's - Battery Backup - APC’s Network Shutdown Software”

 

13 March 2007

 

 

 Summary: a UPS is going to keep your attached personal computers (PC's) alive during any power drop out but if power goes out for some extended period of time, the battery in the UPS is eventually going to drain and thus must have some way to command all attached to shut down gracefully. This is done buy UPS optional hardware and software.

 

 

 

Background:

 

In 2 other parts on computer system battery backup, I described how I had selected and procured an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) for my 3 tower PC’s local area network (LAN) and my experiences with APC Business Standard Edition signaling software. In summary of the 2 other battery backup sections, after lots of research, I bought an APC SAV 1500 Smart UPS only to find that it would not command all 3 of my tower PC’s to shutdown gracefully at a “power” event right out of the box, using APC’s Business Standard Edition software.

 

According to APC, the only way the 1500 can command multiple computers to gracefully shutdown at power event was to procure either a serial port expander smart card or an Ethernet-based smart card that would plug into my 1500.

 

In my case, rightly or wrongly, I bought a used APC Ethernet-based card off of eBay.

 

 

 

 

Rightly or wrongly? Besides the serial port expansion card, which I absolutely did not want, as who wants 3 serial cables running from their UPS to each of the 3 tower PCs, APC makes 3 version of their Ethernet-based smart cards: the 9617 vanilla Ethernet; the 9618 with environmental monitoring and Ethernet access across domains and finally the 9619 with environmental monitoring but limited to one domain or in my case, LAN.

 

As I just wanted to control the PC’s on my LAN and not PC’s scattered around the country, I bought the 9619 card.

 

Now looking at eBay, I found several APC cards to choose from and could have gone with the vanilla 9617 but like the idea of environmental monitoring and this is what I bought. As is the case with many eBay auctions, the auction did not list that the seller had neither documentation or software for the card and when queried, he indicated that he had neither but both were available off the APC web site at no charge.

 

So the APC 9619 Ethernet-based card arrives and after investigating the APC web site, I quickly found how to install the card into my 1500. I also found quickly APC’s Network Shutdown software and download it onto my main PC.

 

I shut down everything and hooked an Ethernet cable between my Linksys 4 port router and the APC Smart 1500 and then fired everything up. All looked good and I started up the APC Network Shutdown software but right off the bat, it said that it did not know the IP address of the 9619 smart card! Ok, so how do I know what IP address the smart card has?

 

More APC web site research (having some documentation with the card from the eBay seller sure would have helped here) and APC does not make it easy as they make an absolute ton of products and thus their web site is thick and not easy to navigate or search. Anyway, I finally did stumble across what is referred to as “IP Wizard”, which I read was supposed to determine the IP address of a UPS on a network, so I download and install it and sure enough, it produced an IP address for me.

 

Now back to Network Shutdown software and given the IP address, I make it to the username, password screen and know enough to enter the defaults of “apc” and “apc” but no go as the Network Shutdown just balks, with no indication of what is wrong. I reset the APC 9619 smart card by depressing the recessed “reset” pin on the card but still I can not log onto the card.

 

I contact UPS and am told to try Windows HyperTerminal software, which I have seen over the years and moved it about to get out of the way, but have never had any cause to use it. Turns out, HyperTerminal is a serial communications port tool that allows you to connect computer to computer via async. So I connect my main PC to the UPS via a serial cable and fire up HyperTerminal. Again, I get to the log on screen and get hung. Busted card as what else could it be? Won’t go with IP Wizard and now won’t go with HyperTerminal. So I contact the eBay seller and tell him that although I have not given up, I can not get into the card and it might be busted. Lo and behold he responds that, oh, he forgot to tell me, but he changed the default username and password and gives me what he last used to try. Talk about being angry. You would have thought that the seller could have remembered to give this to me when he shipped the 9619!

 

So, with what seller has provided, I am in like flint and into a complex series of menu’s options, settings, and of course, no manual to help decipher the meaning of any of the settings.

 

Now perhaps you knew it all along but APC is a serious, big time, UPS manufacturer and from looking at the software, you can tell they have been in the business for a long, long time and have experienced it all when it comes to handling grid power: this is both good and bad. Good as it assures you that their UPS will cover the basis for you and bad in that there are lots of decisions you have to make to set up the software the way you want. To APC’s credit, they do have a decent on-line help system, which is always available.

 

So I get Network Shutdown software up and running and begin to poke around it. In one section, it defines what I have in the way of a system as to manufacture date and the revision level of the firmware on the APC 9619 Ethernet card. Up to date? I suspect not, as a lot of folks do not keep firmware up to date and so sure enough, when I check APC’s web site, 3.3 of the firmware is the current version and from Network Shutdown I know I have 2.5 or a long way away. So I download and run the firmware updater and then fire up Network Shutdown software again, not sure what I should expect to include the card not working at all but the software fires right up but all screens look different and stuff is not where I found it before the firmware update. None-the-less, I confirm that the firmware has been updated and all is well and proceed to change various settings.

 

Now on the Network Shutdown main screen, there is a menu panel on the left side which lists the UPS as an option. Deciding I wanted to look at the status of my UPS, I clicked on this menu selection and was presented with another log-on screen. So, there are 2 parts to Network Shutdown: the user PC part and the UPS configuration part, both of which require a username and password.

 

So after configuring the UPS to command a graceful PC system when the UPS battery comes close to being drained, I installed the Network Shutdown software on my other 2 tower PC’s and went through the configuration setup for which.

 

Power Clip Strip.  Although I am an Electrical Engineer by college training, I never really practiced that craft but rather went straight into computer hardware and software logic, so I am not sure I understand but APC on their website states that clip strips or power strips should not be used with a UPS. But what do I know? Wanting a nice clean installation, I put in a heavy duty, 10 outlet clip strip and connected by 3 towers, my router, my LCD screen and my telephone answering system all to that same clip strip and then I connected the power cord of the clip strip to the UPS. One cord out of the UPS and all UPS powered devices in one, nice, neat clip strip. But……now and again, I have come into my office and found the UPS and all computer systems powered down and when I checked the event log on the UPS, I find nothing to explain the shutdown, so thinking that perhaps the power strip is the problem, I have now connected everything directly to the UPS.

 

But does it all work?  Yes, sort of. Since I installed my APC SAV 1500 with 9619 Ethernet-based smart card, grid power has gone out several times and my tower computers never missed a beat. Also, from investigating the log, the APC 1500 keeps internally, I have been simply amazed at how crappy grid power really is. The 1500 has compensated for over voltage several times and also for frequency changes (perhaps the reason that I can lose 3 light bulbs on the same day?)

 

I am still not sure if I have fixed the problem of the UPS powering down all PC’s and then turning itself off but it has not happened in the last 24 hours. Certainly, if not clip strip related, could be 9619 or even bum UPS: don’t know yet.

 

So, in summary, I have to say this: APC certainly makes a nice product; their web site could use some work; the whole battery backup thing is way more complex than I ever expected it to be but I think it is all going to be worth it every time the grid drops out like it has begun to do all too frequently.