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Forum Discussion
How to configure UPS with PC and 3 NAS boxes
Purchased Cyberpower 1500PFCLCD, which is protecting a Windows 10 PC, RN528X, RN212, RN314, and XS716E switch. All are co-located and all are ETH connected to the XS716E. Goal: in a power outage, 3...
Now stuck on NUT on Win10 machine:
0) Uninstall Cyberpower PowerPanel
1) Per advice, USB connection was switched from PC-to-UPS to NAS1-to-UPS. Now have NAS1 and NAS2 connected/configured
2) Installing NUT, it wants the UPS directly connected to the PC over USB so it can install a USB driver. if I choose "ignore" then the software gets stuck trying to install the USB driver anyway and says I need to do it manually (with no instruction of course)
3) Tried re-connecting PC-to-UPS over USB just to get NUT to install. No dice. Same behavior as above. Uninstalled/Reinstalled, no dice. Rebooted PC, no dice.
4) If there is supposed to be a NUT console of some sort, for entering "monuser" and "pass" for example, I don't have any such program. All I have is a "Start Service" and "Stop Service" in my app list. Selecting Start Service pops open a CMD window for a nanosecond, then disappears. That's it
NUT appears to be a linux-friendly, coder-friendly utility for folks who are adept at libraries and driver folders. I'm not that guy. The installer should just work, and if it is working, then I don't see how to configure the PC with no console.
jimk1963 wrote:
NUT appears to be a linux-friendly, coder-friendly utility for folks who are adept at libraries and driver folders. I'm not that guy. The installer should just work, and if it is working, then I don't see how to configure the PC with no console.
And of course it has been stuck in beta for some years.
There is some information here that can help: https://www.seriouslytrivial.com/2018/09/26/shutdown-windows-computer-and-synology-nas-using-winnut/ There is apparently a configuration gui, and you can alternatively edit upsmon.conf.
Personally I don't monitor the UPS from the PCs (though the desktops are protected by them). My PCs don't have RAID, and I haven't run into any issues restarting them after an unclean shutdown. And while I do get some power failures, it's quite rare to get one that lasts long enough to drain the UPS battery.
- Thanks StephenB, I did load WinNut last night but got stuck on config. Also saw the article you referenced, thanks. First thing I read was that his Synology NAS had a way to add remote devices to an approved list (He added just PC this way). I don’t see anything like that in the Netgear NAS console, only a single option which is to enable remote access in general (a single check box). Maybe the Netgear NAS is somehow more sophisticated and doesn’t need me to enter PC credentials, or more likely, I don’t know what I’m doing. Will revisit WinNut to see if I get some more automagic love from the NAS.
You said your PC is protected even though you don’t monitor for shutdown. Where then do you set your UPS shutdown parameters that are protecting the PC? Doe you console into the UPS (like a PowerPanel) and program it, or do you just set the few global settings available on the UPS front panel to protect everything that isn’t going to receive a graceful shutdown message. Same question for switch.
jimk1963 wrote:
You said your PC is protected even though you don’t monitor for shutdown. Where then do you set your UPS shutdown parameters that are protecting the PC?The PC is protected because it's power comes from the UPS. I don't monitor it on the PC it all - so if the UPS battery drains the PC will have an unclean shutdown. As I tried to say, the odds of that happening are low, as I don't get very many extended power outages.
jimk1963 wrote:
First thing I read was that his Synology NAS had a way to add remote devices to an approved list (He added just PC this way). I don’t see anything like that in the Netgear NAS console, only a single option which is to enable remote access in general (a single check box).You don't need to do that with the ReadyNAS. The relevant steps are further down (configuring WinNUT).
jimk1963 wrote:
Same question for switch.You power the switch from the UPS. But it can't monitor the UPS (and has no shutdown processes to run anyway).
Understood re: switch and PC shutting down with UPS. Question was whether you applied any special settings to the UPS other than through its front panel, e.g., shutdown with X% remaining, auto-turn on after power is restored, etc. Minor stuff in the grand scheme.
Got WinNut to work, had to edit just one line in the config file:
MONITOR ups@192.168.1.210 1 monuser pass slave
The "1" and "slave" aren't mentioned in the config file comments, your link helped me as a user at the end commented that these need to be added. Once I did that, worked fine.
Final question I think: now that everything is connected and working, I'm back to configuring the shutdown process. From what I can gather, there is literally only one setting available, as shown below on the Master NAS (RN518X), which I guess is acting as the SNMP server. Under UPS Settings, there is only a % threshold I can set... this is a bit goofy, since everyone on these threads talks about shutdown commands in terms of minutes, not % of UPS battery remaining (I'm guessing that's what this % means).
So if I want to avoid shutting down too often (in case of few-minute type outages), but also don't want to let the UPS get scary low before telling the NAS's to shut down, what's the best compromise % to select here? Right now with everything running the UPS front panel is estimating I have 23-25 minutes run time. So if I chose 50% for example, I assume that means on average the NAS will wait about 12 minutes or so before telling everything to shut down. Am I understanding this correctly?
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