UPS monitoring under Linux

I recently made reference to the fact I purchased some UPSes.

For our desktop machines I purchased 2 x Powerware 5110 1500VA units. We also purchased a 1 x Powerware 5125 2200VA (15A socket) to run our 19" racks. (This will also include some networking gear, a 8-port KVM with 15" LCD monitor, and a reasonable server and Disk Arrays).

I make it a habit when sizing a UPS of ensuring I don't load it too high. Whilst I can run many things on each UPS, I would refer a relatively low load, so that if required I can hold the box up long enough to shutdown everything safely. There is nothing worse than hard crashing a server because the UPS load sat at 70-80% load and couldn't hold up for 5-10 minutes whilst machines started shutting down. This is particularly true of a busy database server.

I generally try to run a UPS load of around < 50% and ideally between 10-30% if I can. I would rather have a few minutes up my sleeve then spending time worrying whether I will be able to recover from backup.


The software that comes with the Powerware 5110 runs under Windows. (They do provide 'Linux' software but it's pretty shoddy and a PITA to try and get working).
LanSafe - does work well under Windows.

Pauline runs Windows as her default OS (mainly due to her need for MYOB and ATO's ECI Client Software both only native to Windows. There is also the occasional business website she requires that is IE only - much to our disgust...)

We will probably look at moving her over to a Linux desktop in the future and running Windows in either a dual boot or virtual machine. In fact, we'll probably do that sooner rather than later, for a number of reasons.

1. End of Life for Windows XP Professional has been announced, for early next year. (if you don't get 'Extended Support' which most consumers won't be offered - it's mainly for business.).
2. We've purchased 2 x 1TB SATA2 disks for her machine
3. A reinstall of Windows may resolve the long delay at startup she faces - upto 5 minutes before the machine becomes 'usable'. Yes, we've cleaned the registery, removed any unwanted startup programs, defragged the disk, and even cleaned out old pre-fetch data. It's still a mystery.

I wanted something that easy under my Linux desktop (Ubuntu in this case).

That's where NUT comes in.

NUT supports a wide range of UPS makes, models and connectivity options. Feature-wise it is quite impressive.

Reading through the documentation for NUT it's quite clear that you can extend on the notifications you can generate. From items like sending wall messages, Emails, syslog alerts, to even Email messages. You can even get an OSD display if the UPS state changes. I'll probably make use of the SMS daemon I wrote about previously to send me an SMS.

Apparently Gnome Power Manager is supposed to pickup a UPS (it is just a battery after all) is attached. Seems it doesn't in this instance. (I'm happy to be corrected -- but I'm yet to find anything on the web that shows so much for this UPS).

There has been a bit of discussion in recent times of getting an independent system together that relies on D-BUS/HAL so that other Window Managers can also hook into it. A lot like what we're seeing now in Network Manager (love or hate it!) (See: BetterPowerManager and the Power Management Specification

For the record, you can also use check_ups from Nagios to actively monitor your UPS that is being managed by NUT

Those using an APC UPS should look at apcupsd (a new stable version was just released on the 20^th of May 2008). There is also native Windows versions available.