[rescue] another flameware

[rescue at sunhelp.org]

On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Greg A. Woods wrote:

> My current line of UPS' is:

[snip]

    APC SmartUPS 1400    ("workstations", U30/AXi/scanner/5 20" trinitrons)
    APC SmartUPS 1400    (E450/misc sun/switches/HP/RS6k/Alpha/disk farm/etc)
    APC SmartUPS 1400    (running 12 Seagate Elite-9's.  85% load.  Eek. :)

No, I'm not particularly enamored of APC (my old Deltec was far superior)
but the price was far far too good to pass up.  The first APC is in my
"office", the others are out in the machine room.

> The problem with multiple UPS units is that shutting things down cleanly
> and starting them all back up in the right order is not such an easy
> task.  The first time we had a long-lasting power outage the
> configuration wasn't anywhere near optimum and I lost my hub long before
> I got a chance to shut down cleanly.  Even this most recent time after
> careful planning I lost the hub again before I got the last couple of
> machines shut down.

It does take a bit of work.  I use NUT and a single SS20 controls all UPS'
with an SPC/S card.  With the current code its pretty easy to say "if the
UPS controlling the control machine and the switches goes critical, shut
everything down".  I have to do something similar with the UPS controlling
the RAID arrays, if it goes first then I have to bring down the E450 as
well.  Fortunately the runtimes seem fairly balanced and everything goes
into the red at about the same time.

The same SS20 also has a pair of lpvi cards for the printers and now has a
SunVideo card, it's my concession to sbus peripherals.

-James [still searching for cool employment with cool people, anywhere]