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What to do in the event of a Powercut?
Hello
I have a VNXe3150 and I have been trying to find out what to do in the event of a powercut. I currently have the VNXe 3150 powered by an APC UPS, along with servers etc.
This UPS will give us about 10 minutes of time to shutdown servers etc (using APC powerchute type software), but reading information on the VNXe3150 it estimates that we will need 10/15 minutes for a clean shutdown to occur.
Would it be possible for someone to explain what we should do in teh venet of either a powercut, or a known interruption to power? Is it a case of leave it alone, and allow the power to fail, relying on VNXe3150 internal systems to recover.
Many Thanks.
DynaDin
138 Posts
1
May 23rd, 2014 05:00
Does your UPS has feature to run commands when main power is lost? If so you can setup UnisphereCLI command to shutdown VNXe. I agree it takes around 10 minutes. Since the data in cache is flushed and other services are stopped as shutdown process begins, you would not experience any data corruption at least. If there is not much of data and IO activity in VNXe shutdown may finish sooner.
fluxblocker
16 Posts
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November 13th, 2014 17:00
Is there a document with instructions on how to set this up?
I found this link: How to bring down an EMC VNXe (as if you ever want to do so) | 50mu - about storage
So I guess I can use a network interface from an APC UPS to issue that command somehow if there is a power outage? I have used PowerChute Network Shutdown on physical servers, ESX hosts and VMs, but never on a VNXe. If anyone can help we would be most grateful. If I figure it out I will post the solution here.
Many thanks.
reedic
28 Posts
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November 14th, 2014 07:00
I don't think we have a document that has instructions on how to set this up. But you are correct that the host (in this case the APC UPS) would need a network interface in order to issue that command to the VNXe system. The link you provided does include the Unisphere CLI command needed for this operation:
uemcli -d -u service -p /service/system shutdown
It is also worth mentioning here that the VNXe Series Systems (VNXe3100, VNXe3150, VNXe3300, and the new VNXe3200) all have battery backup units (BBUs) in each Storage Processor (SP) that will engage during a power failure. The BBU is not designed to function like an uninterruptable power supply (UPS). Instead, it provides enough power for the SP to dump the active cache content to the internal storage device (internal SSD on the VNXe3100/3150/3300, or internal mSATA device on the VNXe3200).
You can certainly use the Unisphere CLI command to manually shutdown the system. But the VNXe3150 system would also detect the power failure and safely begin its cache dumping process on each SP to protect the data.
More information regarding Unisphere CLI commands can be found in this document, VNXe-Unisphere-CLI-User-Guide. Unisphere CLI downloads can be found here. More information regarding the Power Modules and Battery Backup Units can be found in the VNXe-High-Availability-VNXe3100,-VNXe3150,-and-VNXe3300-Overview document.