Two UPS one Unraid

[Iormangund]

New system I've built has a dual 1U redundant PSU in it (it's a 4u rackmount case). Currently I have one of the PSUs connected to an APC backup ups that my old Synology NAS is connected to.

Synology box is the master for that UPS and Unraid is the slave using NUT plugin.

 

Due to the fact the rating on that UPS is barely enough for the Unraid system and the wish for redundancy I am planning on getting a second ups for the other 1U PSU which would just have Unraid on it.

 

Question is, what would be the best way to set  up auto shutdown with Unraid?

 

Unraid connected to second UPS control and shutdown coming from that, ignoring the Synology UPS.

or

Unraid connected to second UPS control via APCUPSD and Synology UPS via NUT.

 

Would having Unraid APCUPSD and NUT running at the same time, with identical shutdown time setting (ie 5mins) cause issues?

 

I am pretty new to Unraid so still getting used to it, hope I have given enough description for what I am planning.

[miniwalks]

Other option is to use an ATS as well, as that will assist in removing single points of failure.


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[miniwalks]

Also, the best bet is to stick with a single UPS in this case, as what you have described above, will mean a shutdown of the UnRaid even if only one of the UPS's has a hardware failure and the input source is still OK.

The ATS would allow you to plug both PSU's and UPS's into it and effectively load balance across both.

my home setup has an ATS with both UPS and Mains going into it. It prefers the UPS power as a primary, but it means I can do UPS maintenance or swap outs without having to shutdown the array completely


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[Iormangund]

3 hours ago, miniwalks said:

Also, the best bet is to stick with a single UPS in this case, as what you have described above, will mean a shutdown of the UnRaid even if only one of the UPS's has a hardware failure and the input source is still OK.

The ATS would allow you to plug both PSU's and UPS's into it and effectively load balance across both.

my home setup has an ATS with both UPS and Mains going into it. It prefers the UPS power as a primary, but it means I can do UPS maintenance or swap outs without having to shutdown the array completely


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I would rather the system shut down if there was a UPS failure, that example gives even more reason to have each redundant PSU on a seperate UPS imho.

 

I don't know anything about ATS so will do some googling to find out what that is.

 

Edit: Just looked into ATS, definitely something to consider for the future but atmo getting one of those as well as a decent UPS is outside my current budget. (couldn't find one where I am for under €500)

Edited June 20, 2017 by Iormangund

[JonathanM]

Is your goal maximum protection or maximum uptime? Given what you've posted so far, I'm guessing maximum protection, which to me means that as soon as an event is detected, you should begin preparation for shutdown. For me, that means timed staggered shutdowns after a power out event. First at 2 minutes, all desktops and VM's that normally have shares open on unraid are asked to shutdown, then at 3 minutes unraid begins the shutdown process. That way if I am physically away from the premises, everything should shut down and stay down until I can physically inspect and determine it's safe to power back up. If I am on site, I can log in and override if need be.

 

If you are using timed shutdowns, then it really doesn't matter which unraid UPS you use to start the sequence, just that all the network infrastructure stays powered so it can transmit the power down event to all the slaves. If the communication drops before the timeout is over, the slaves will fail to shutdown.

 

The pfsense box is on the critical infrastructure UPS, it stays up until it runs out of battery. I've got extended runtime on it, so normally my network and phones stay running for well over an hour after power is out. Plenty of time to make the decision to fire up the genset if necessary.

[Iormangund]

14 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

Is your goal maximum protection or maximum uptime? Given what you've posted so far, I'm guessing maximum protection, which to me means that as soon as an event is detected, you should begin preparation for shutdown. For me, that means timed staggered shutdowns after a power out event. First at 2 minutes, all desktops and VM's that normally have shares open on unraid are asked to shutdown, then at 3 minutes unraid begins the shutdown process. That way if I am physically away from the premises, everything should shut down and stay down until I can physically inspect and determine it's safe to power back up. If I am on site, I can log in and override if need be.

 

If you are using timed shutdowns, then it really doesn't matter which unraid UPS you use to start the sequence, just that all the network infrastructure stays powered so it can transmit the power down event to all the slaves. If the communication drops before the timeout is over, the slaves will fail to shutdown.

 

The pfsense box is on the critical infrastructure UPS, it stays up until it runs out of battery. I've got extended runtime on it, so normally my network and phones stay running for well over an hour after power is out. Plenty of time to make the decision to fire up the genset if necessary.

Yes, you are exactly right. I am looking for max protection. Data safety is far more important to me than uptime (especially now, migrating 40tb to it atmo). Currently if the power goes out everything is set to shutdown after 1 minute with auto restart only on the synology nas. 

Btw I was only talking about one unraid machine. There are no slave unraid machines, currently there is just a small synology nas as master for the old ups and the unraid server with redundant psu is the slave for that. Small unmanaged hub connecting the two, all on same ups so no issue of lack of communication.

 

The old ups is an apc backup one, so simulated sine, which is fine for synology and the original server setup (standard atx power supply). However I am concerned the new setup with 1u psu might have issues with simulated sine, therefore I might just abandon the idea of having both ups on one unraid and leave the old ups on the synology and just have the new one only on unraid. Still haven't decided.

 

Guess the best thing to do first once I get the new ups (cyperpower 900w puresine) is see how the server reacts to nut and apcupsd daemons running at the same time.

Edited June 20, 2017 by Iormangund

[JonathanM]

3 minutes ago, Iormangund said:

Btw I was only talking about one unraid machine.

Yes, I was talking about a single unraid server, hosting multiple VM's and miscellaneous desktop clients. All my VM's and clients run APCUPSD in slave mode so they shut down before unraid starts shutting down. That way any open files should be correctly closed and unraid shutdown won't have to deal with open network connections.

[Iormangund]

3 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

Yes, I was talking about a single unraid server, hosting multiple VM's and miscellaneous desktop clients. All my VM's and clients run APCUPSD in slave mode so they shut down before unraid starts shutting down. That way any open files should be correctly closed and unraid shutdown won't have to deal with open network connections.

 

Oh I see. Good idea, hadn't thought of doing that.

Although come to think of it I do have that for one of my VMs, I moved all the disks from the xpenology nas I was upgrading from into my new system and am running a xpenology vm to move everything into the unraid array, which means the ups settings I had on it for the synology nas master will still be active