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Forum Discussion
Solved
Connecting UPS to ReadyNAS
I am unable to connect my ReadyNas 314 to an APC - SMT1500 UPS (PowerChute- Business Edition). I am connected to PowerChute with my desktop via USB. I have the UPS on the network and I can ping it. ...
Sp4 wrote:What I'm trying to accomplish here is I want my ReadyNAS to be commanded to shut down when local power drops and the UPS is running on battery. Is their a way that I can accomplish this?
So a real network card isn't an option for your UPS model?
As I said in my initial response, you can do what you want using NUT. With NUT, one device is connected to the UPS via USB or serial port and is the master. Other devices powered by the same UPS can be slaves to that device since only one can talk directly to the UPS via USB or serial. The master must be always on and the last thing powered down, obviously, so that's usually the NAS. And NUT is what the ReadyNAS has built in. So instead of connecting the UPS USB to your PC, connect it to the NAS. Then install NUT on the PC, configure the NAS to allow other users to monitor its UPS, and set up the PC to do just that.
That does mean you no longer can use PowerChute with the UPS since APC offers no Linux version except the insanely expensive enterprise version, but you would still have SmartConnect to see anything that NUT doesn't give you insight into.
See https://networkupstools.org/
As a tidbit, Eaton does have a Linux version of it's monitoring software, and one instance can be master and others slaves. But it still works out better to use a network card for multiple devices.
PowerChute does not create an SNMP host, it can monitor one, and that's what those settings are for. You have to have an UPS with an Ethernet port to have SNMP monitoring of it, which is usually on a separately installable card.
If you want to share an UPS on one or more PC and NAS and don't want to add the expense of a network monitoring card (which I believe your UPS supports) or have one that doesn't support a card, you'll need to use NUT (Network UPS Utilities), which is what the ReadyNAS has built in. Most people find that having the NAS as the host and others as slaves works best both because the NAS is more likely to be on all the time and because the Linux version of NUT is more mature.
I tried a lot of stuff with my Eaton UPS and ultimately found that the network card and SNMP was the way to go. I see a lot of fairly inexpensive cards on eBay that I think are compatible with your UPS, but check the documentation to be sure.
Thank you for the response. What I have is the SmartConnect network interface which supports monitoring the UPS through their web portal. I didn't realize the interface couldn't be used for anything else, my mistake.
What I'm trying to accomplish here is I want my ReadyNAS to be commanded to shut down when local power drops and the UPS is running on battery. Is their a way that I can accomplish this? I thought thats what interfacing the NAS and UPS would do for me. If not I'll creat another thread and ask. Thank you
Sp4 wrote:What I'm trying to accomplish here is I want my ReadyNAS to be commanded to shut down when local power drops and the UPS is running on battery. Is their a way that I can accomplish this?
So a real network card isn't an option for your UPS model?
As I said in my initial response, you can do what you want using NUT. With NUT, one device is connected to the UPS via USB or serial port and is the master. Other devices powered by the same UPS can be slaves to that device since only one can talk directly to the UPS via USB or serial. The master must be always on and the last thing powered down, obviously, so that's usually the NAS. And NUT is what the ReadyNAS has built in. So instead of connecting the UPS USB to your PC, connect it to the NAS. Then install NUT on the PC, configure the NAS to allow other users to monitor its UPS, and set up the PC to do just that.
That does mean you no longer can use PowerChute with the UPS since APC offers no Linux version except the insanely expensive enterprise version, but you would still have SmartConnect to see anything that NUT doesn't give you insight into.
See https://networkupstools.org/
As a tidbit, Eaton does have a Linux version of it's monitoring software, and one instance can be master and others slaves. But it still works out better to use a network card for multiple devices.
I agree it's best to connect the UPS directly to the NAS, and then use NUT to monitor the UPS on the PC if you also want the PC to shutdown gracefully.
But don't forget to also connect the switch/router(s) to the UPS power as well, otherwise the PC won't get the shutdown messages. If both the PC and the NAS are connected to the same switch, then there is no need to connect the router or other switches to the UPS power - just connecting the shared switch will work.
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