How to configure ESXi to shutdown using an APC SmartUPS (with lamw scripts)

[#1]

This tutorial will show you how to configure a VMWare ESXi install to shutdown using an

APC SmartUPS. This proven practice came about because our company was sending a

Dell PowerEdge T300 server with ESXi and a APC UPS to one of our sales offices.

Because it would just be this server and the UPS there, we needed a way for ESXi to

shutdown the guest operating systems and then itself gracefully.

This document assumes that you have a VMWare ESXi install with VIMA running on it and

an APC SmartUPS with a network management card installed.

This document includes scripts from the VMWare Communities user “lamw.” His scripts

are available at http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9531 Lamw's scripts do not

need the enabling of the unsupported SSH option within ESXi.

[depping]

Cool stuff! Maybe you should contact vmtn user "lamw". he's looking into using perl to do the shutdown of vm's and host. this way you won't need to change the ESXi hosts, which is preferable in terms of support.

Duncan

Blogging: http://www.yellow-bricks.com

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[barber50701]

I am having a problem... when I run apcacess it says that the communication is lost..any ideas... I have retraced all of my steps via the nice document that he put together.

Nick

[redsnapper76]

Is this also supported on the latest version of ESXi? version 4.0.0?

[jholland]

I have never tried this on version 4 of ESXi. You are welcome to try it though. Joe.

[VMarpole]

Hi Jholland,

I have one ESX1 3.5 with one Windows Server 2003 gues VM.

I have followed your steps, installed VIMA and configured apc daemons. It works fine except the script failed to shutdown the Windows guess machine.

I set the sleep delay time to 30 and 45 minutes but didn't make anything change.

This is the upslogs:

12-22-2009 17:38:44 -- Found ESX/ESXi host: vmesx35i.localdomain!

12-22-2009 17:38:44 -- Begin shutdown process ...

12-22-2009 17:38:45 -- WARNING VM: Server01 failed to hard power down, please verify this system later!

12-22-2009 17:38:46 -- Shutting down final host: vmesx35i.localdomain and UPS VM: vima-ovf-124830!

So far I didn't see anything usefull in the esx server and Vima message logs.

Is there anything to do with the Auto startup order in ESX configuration?

Any idea?

Thanks in advance ... Happy Holidays!

Regards,

Vmarpole

[Terry3]

This looks like a really good document. Trying this out right now. Looks much better than this other document I was reading that relies on 3.5 U3's read/write access via RCLI. Wouldn't want to be stuck on U3 forever.

I'm figuring out if this will support multiple UPS. I have 3 x 5000 VA UPS between 2 racks and we have the load balanced so if one UPS dies, the equipment with dual PS still runs. Too bad you can't get dual PS media converters for a TLS, I"d be fully redundant then. I'll post back with my results when I test.

[raghavendrats]

I have ESX 4 U1 Servers. Anybody tried this on ESX 4 environment?

[Omero2010Albert]

good morning

is this method valid for  automatic shutdown esxi when battery is for example at 10% ( similary at power cute under window) so that can i have a right shutdown of my virtual machine inside esxi and for esxi too ?

must i buy a apc with lan ?

sorry for my primary questions but is my experience of this function

thanks Alberto