HP Power Management

I'm not a system engineer so I hate to perform infrastructure configuration... so that's post it's for my remark only.

We're delivering a project in an industrial plant in Belgium (L1 & L2 integration, L2 Tracking, Reporting, BAM) with small server farm (7 HP DL and a 2 nodes cluster).

The servers are connected to an HP R5500 XR UPS.

• The UPS guarantees 22 mins of uptime (that's a very short time elapsed I think and it's good just for flickering lines)
  
• The UPS must be connected to a Management Server (where you've to install HP Power Manager suite).
  
• With HP Power Manager the rule is 1 UPS, 1 Management Server

To setup HP Power Manager in the farm, the steps are:

• Connect the UPS to the choosed management server and install Power Manager suite (I've used version 4.2).
  During setup you must provide information on:
  • how the UPS is connected (serial, UPS, network)
  • an IP/Port where to provision the management site (the prerequirement is having IIS already deployed)
• Install the HP Remote Agent on the servers you want to stay connected with UPS.
  HP Remote Agent is in charge to shutdown gracefully the servers when the management server receives a notification of battery low from the UPS (and it forward this message to all the connected agents).
  I've used HP Remote Agent V 4.0 which is the lates version and it works with Power Manager 4.2.
• Enter the new Power Management administration site on the management server (the default account/pwd should be admin/admin).
• Test the battery to tune the internal management software data ("Battery Test" from left menu from the administration site)
• Enlist the Attached Devices which defines the scope of management. Each specified device could be:
  • Management Server: The server phisically connected to UPS and it could be only 1 in the topology
  • Remote Agent: The servers connected Management Server through Remote Agents
  • Other: Other devices on the switch which cannot be monitored and gracefully shutdown (i.e. switches)
• It's very important to provide to each Attached Device the parameter Shut Down OS which is used by the software to evaluate the shutdown time basing on the estimate battery charge.
• The last step is to assign each Attached Device to a Load Segment:
• In my deployment I've go 2 Load Segments. A Load Segment defines an atomic set of servers which are managed by the Power Manager as a single unit because they are phisically connected to a single electric line. So if you perform a shutdown on a Load Segment, all the servers on the segment will be shutdowned.
• In my topology:
• on Load Segment 1 there is only the management server which should be the last server to be switched off and the database.
• on Load Segment 2 there the remaining servers
• You must pay attention where connect the Attached Device to a Load Segment controlling that the server power-wire is connected to the right ups plug-in.

• You can control the shutdown policy from Power Fail menu option (on the left). I choose:

  • For Load Segment 1: Run Until Battery Depletion which means that HP Power Manager should evaluate the remaining battery charge and shut down accordingly the management server.
  • For Load Segment 2: Maximize Runtime which means that the servers which will be shutdowned with the management server. It's like a dependency betwen Load Segment 1 and Load Segment 2.