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Guide: how to setup APC Powerchute Network Shutdown in VMware ESX 3
Saturday October 06th 2007, 9:04 pm
Filed under: vmware

At customers I often need to setup ESX servers together with APC UPS devices. this guide describes how to do that.

APC has a guide on how to do this but it doesn’t totally cover the installation for VMware ESX 3.0.x For example it forgets to tell you about the firewall in ESX 3 that blocks some ports that need to be open to make the Powerchute Network Shutdown agent communicate with your APC ups (with network management card option installed)

Assumed:
you have an ESX 3 server running.
You have an APC UPS with a management card that is configured.
The IP address of the ESX server is registered to allow it to communicate with the management card.
You know the login, password and authentication phrase of the UPS management card.

This is a 3 step process

1. Configure the VMware ESX 3 firewall
2. Install the APC Network Shutdown agent
3. Configure the APC Network Shutdown agent

Step 1 - Configure the VMware ESX 3 firewall

Logon to your service console with your favorite ssh client (putty)

open up the firewall with the following commands


esxcfg-firewall -o 80,tcp,out,"APC tcp Port 80"
esxcfg-firewall -o 3052,tcp,in,"APC tcp Port 3052"
esxcfg-firewall -o 3052,udp,out,"APC udp Port 3052"
esxcfg-firewall -o 3052,udp,in,"APC udp Port 3052"

Move to the next step.

Step 2 - Install the APC Network Shutdown agent

Download the “PowerChute Network Shutdown v2.2.1 for VMWare” from the APC website called pcns-2.2.1-100.i386.rpm link(need an account to get it)

copy the file to the ESX service console and run the following command

rpm -ihv pcns-2.2.1-100.i386.rpm

Step 3 - Configure the APC Network Shutdown agent

Run the configuration script command:

/usr/local/bin/PowerChute/PCNSConfig.sh

Now a “wizard” will guide you to configure the agent follow the instructions.

after this you can configure the rest of the setup through a webinterface http://youresxserver:3052

In the event log link you can check if the esx server is communicating with the UPS. It should show a message that it established a connection.

Resource Links
APC install guide link
VMTN forum link (thanks box293)

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