Shutting down Dell Server via iDRAC and UPS

Question

does anybody know if it's possible to shut down a Dell Server via iDRAC card triggered by UPS? Background: The server hosts a ESXi which isn't (in the free version) able to shut down via UPS. But it's possible to tell ESXi that it shall shut down in preferred way if the "power swich" is pressed - so maybe something like a "virtual" power switch could be "pressed".

Answer 1

If you really need to stick to ESXi, I suggest that you plug this UPS into another machine (maybe a desktop running linux?) and from there you can remotely perform a clean shutdown on all VMs, then on the ESX host via ssh as soon as you pick up a signal that you're running out of backup power.

The linux package nut - Network UPS Tools will run whatever script you want when batteries run out, enabling you to shutdown everything and even email you or whatever action you need.

Check nut on opensuse or nut on ubuntu as examples.

Answer 2

You can SSH to iDRAC - so if your UPS has some kind of management agent, then you could run this in a virtual machine with a trigger to run an iDRAC shutdown.

HOWEVER, this will not do a clean power down of your VM's, which is the critical component and the whole point of a clean shutdown. An ESXi server is easy to rebuild - your VM's are not.

Therefore you'll need to shutdown your virtual machines somehow. I have no idea if ESXi free can do this from the command line. If not, you'll need to remotely shutdown each of your VM's using whatever tools their operating systems provide.

This, does, of course leave you in a sticky situation because your scripts will be running on a VM, too. So, you'd be better off running your scripts in their own dedicated VM which takes the risk with an unscheduled shutdown as the host goes down.

Alternatively, you could purchase the proper tools for the job and use the VSphere suite with VCenter.