Powerchute and ESX

Although we have moved a significant number of our servers onto ESX we now have the issue of shutting down these servers using the Powerchute Network Shutdown, all the windows servers have been done but there is a 'VMWare aware' version of the client for ESX servers to allow them time to shutdown there virtual servers and then shut themselves down.

Powerchute Network Shutdown is available from HERE.

With instructions available HERE.

The story doesn't end there though as during my searching of information regarding the ESX server version I came across this handy post from a fellow blogger.

In short you need to run the following at the ESX server command line:
/usr/sbin/esxcfg-firewall -o 80,tcp,out,http
/usr/sbin/esxcfg-firewall -o 3052,tcp,in,PowerChute

The first line opens port 80 outwards to allow the Powerchute Network Shutdown client to register its IP onto the APC management card. You could of course do this by hand in the web interface of the card.

The second line allows the UPS to talk to the client on port 3052 to give it commands for shutting down etc.

When you have finished completing the setup you can close the port 80 outbound:
/usr/sbin/esxcfg-firewall -c 80,tcp,out,http

We did all this user WinSCP to copy over the client followed by Putty to connect and run the required commands.

Also worth noting, the default phrase for the APC management cards is 'admin user phrase', having not set these at original setup finding this out took longer than installing the client!