RE: UPS and Time to End = Phase II -- MIDRANGE-L

Hi,

Now this is a very long winded reply, because I've got the impression
that you've got a few things mixed up - bear with me.

Depending on the UPS and the manufacturer, UPS have a variety of
connectivity options. Sadly, all System i machines only support the
"relay interface card" natively, which requires a direct cable to the
machine.

Nowadays, UPSes do not ship with a relay interface as standard. Usually,
you need an extension card. They do have a normal serial port for
communication, which exposes much more information than a relay
interface. Relay Interfaces and Serial Ports usually have the the
physical connector (a 9 or 15 Port D-Sub), but are electronically
completely different.

So for a native connection to your System I, you need a relay interface
card and a cable to the machine. IT does not have any interesting data
like battery left, battery life, etc.

Moving on, there are other extension cards available. Whats used most in
todays environments are so called SNMP cards - they have an Ethernet
interface and usually run an SNMP and a web server. You can query most
of the interesting data points using SNMP or a web browser.

Usually central management software exists for better UPSes. They
require either a serial connection, USB or SNMP/Ethernet card for
connectivity, and a special client software. This client is usually only
available for Windows, and usually not required when the UPS is SNMP
capable (it's then queried directly by the management server).

So if you want to access battery etc. information from your System i,
you will need an SNMP card and query the card using SNMP. This will give
you all the information you need, but it won't shut down the system. For
this, you'll still need a relay interface card in order to support a
proper connection to i5/OS.

Usually smaller UPSes only have a single extension slot, leaving you
with a SNMP/serial UPS that can't be connected to your System i. A
solution for this problem is to replace the SNMP card with a relay
interface card, and use an external serial to SNMP/Ethernet converter.
This gives you all the connectivity you need from a single UPS.

I hope this was useful information.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Turnidge
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2007 7:02 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: UPS and Time to End = Phase II

Thanks to all who responded to my Phase I question. We now have most of
our
sites up to date with proper UPSs.

In the process of diving into this area, I have found that (at least the
UPC
UPSs) have a Management Card that is hooked into our WAN. I have also
found
that we have a UPS "server" that is supposed to have access to all these
Management Cards.

I am wondering if there is anyway to get the information that is on the
UPS
to let me know the CURRENT capacity of said UPS. That is, if we had a
"short" power outage, how much battery power is left for the "next" one?

I haven't read about this being available - and I wouldn't know where to
start to attempt to communicate with the UPS server if the information
was
available. Could I interrigate the UPS directly regardless of the
server?
Has anyone done anything with this?

TIA,

Dave