topic Re: UPS DOWN - DR Plan. in Operating System - HP-UX

UPS DOWN - DR Plan.

joe_91 — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 18:10:21 GMT

All:

The UPS attached to our Nclass servers are currently down. There are about 11 servers. These are development/Test boxes. Is there any way that i would know if the machines are down? OR what are the steps i should take in this condition assuming that the UPS will not be UP for the next 15 days. anyone faced this problem before? Please Share.

Thanks

Joe.

Re: UPS DOWN - DR Plan.

Steven E. Protter — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 18:13:27 GMT

Your UPS has a bypass switch if its from HP. This will switch you over to current straight from the electric company. It is riskh, and I don't know if the unit provides surge and line protection in that mode(probably not) but you can run your boxes that way.

SEP

Re: UPS DOWN - DR Plan.

A. Clay Stephenson — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 18:20:33 GMT

In your case, you have little choice but to run the UPS in "bypass" mode -- meaning that you have no UPS and probably no filtering.

Plan A: Run unprotected.

Plan B: Purchase some power filters to at least furnish a bit of spike/surge protection.

Plan C: Purchase some smaller UPS's -- at least for the most critical servers.

I am not a big proponent of large cetralized UPS's but instead prefer a UPS per cabinet. You are then much less vulnerable to single points of failure and should a given UPS fail, you can generally connect to UPS's in the adjacent cabinets. I have found that by using the smaller UPS's, you can generally purchase a standby diesel generator for about the same cost as a centralized UPS and then you truly don't have to worry. The generator will also power your HVAC systems --- something that will quickly drain even the most robust UPS. In this model, the small UPS's only have to carry the load for about 15 seconds until the generator comes online.

Re: UPS DOWN - DR Plan.

Keith Bevan_1 — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 14:40:50 GMT

Joe,

Unsure if you have taken any remedial action yet, however, you may find pages15-17 on the document located at the following url useful:-

http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/2455/customer_site_prep.pdf

Keith

Re: UPS DOWN - DR Plan.

John Meissner — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 14:52:31 GMT

you could just run unprotected... making sure to get good backups preiodiocally...
If your UPS's are down you could either hurry the repairs along or order new ones. otherwise you're kind of between a rock and a hard place.

one way to tell if your servers go down is to have another server or workstation run a ping and report script against the names of all the servers in question. i.e. I currently have my linux workstation at work run a script that has a list of all our HP-UX servers and pings them every few minutes. Then it reports back a list of any servers that failed to ping. you could then have this send you an e-mail or just have it report on screen (which is what I do).

Re: UPS DOWN - DR Plan.

Ron Kinner — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 15:18:34 GMT

If you think they might be down I would think a visual check would tell you. If remote, try pinging each one. You could install Big Brother which is a free application monitor which reports back to indicate that the server is up periodically. http://bb4.com/

I too prefer small UPS and the diesel backup alternative to the monster all your eggs in one basket giant UPS. (Which the electricians are afraid to go anywhere near when it's powered up.) I also prefer not to get all of my UPS from the same vendor or for them to be the same model. We had a lightning strike last year that killed every one of our identical APC rack mounted units but left other vendors and other model APCs untouched.

Black Box makes a cute little power selection switch box they call a Continuous Power Switch (SP440A). You plug your server into it and it has two power cords. One goes to the UPS the other to commercial power (or the UPS in the next rack). Then when the UPS needs service you can flip the switch and run off the alternative without having to bring down the server. I love them. Now I can do UPS maintenance during working hours instead of at 3AM.

Ron