On Thu, Aug 15, 2024 at 4:51 PM Snyder, Alexander J via PLUG-discuss <
plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:

> Does anyone in this community have any experience managing Network UPS?
>
> I purchased an "APC 3000VA Smart-UPS" (
> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0785NCFMY) in 2020. It's been
> performing exactly as it should ever since, and life is great.
>
> However, when I've had it, I have experienced two or three "catastrophic"
> power outages (*line utility goes out*), and the UPS kicks in and does
> exactly what it is supposed to do.
>
> My problem is that in the time between buying the UPS and now, my homelab
> has grown significantly, and in one of those power outages, I
> overestimated my battery time, and my entire stack died while I was fucking
> around with one of the servers.
>
> In my most recent power loss, learning from the past, I raced downstairs
> at 2AM with all the UPS alarms beeping loudly, and I raced to shut down the
> stack properly, knowing (*this time*) that I'd only got about 5 minutes
> of life. I got everything shut down this time, which is good—but it forced
> me to take a good hard look at some kind of Automated Shutdown.
>
> I've known for a long time that these things *could* happen, but I've
> never had a need to investigate. Well, here we are, LOL.
>
> I have the APS UPS connected to my switch, and it is getting a DHCP IP --
> and I can see ARP requests going back and forth -- my pfSense FW shows that *it
> is* sending/receiving data -- albeit just a few kilobytes here and there,
> but I know there is TCP/IP life on it -- but I'm at a loss beyond that.
> I've tried to SSH to it, but I just always get a "Connection Refused" --
> using the "default" credentials I found online, "apc/apc"...
>
> So yeah, anyone out there with any background or experience with Network
> UPSs, I'd love to chat with you to figure out how I can get into this thing
> and make it do what I'm absolutely certain it's capable of doing!
>
> Looks like you are looking for a Network UPS Monitoring capability.
Take a look at NUTS <https://networkupstools.org/features.html>
YMMV based on NUT support for the APC model

A typical setup would be:

   1. A controller system -- a server or a network device that is ON 24x7
   with the UPS unit connected to it.
   2. NUT client on all other systems, also powered by the UPS, that you
   want to shut down gracefully before the UPS runs out of charge.

HTH

--
Arun Khan