I am about to purchase a UPS because power went and my server which was on standby had to rebuild parity when the power resumed.

 

My question is, if my system is on a ups and power goes, will the UPS be able to wake the server from sleep and then shut it down gracefully?

 

If it can't then I don't see the point in getting a ups since, it is going to die eventually (if the power does not resume quickly) and I would be in the same position as I started with!

 

Please advise before I spend the money..

It depends on your BIOS.

 

Set the BIOS to wake up on a serial event, so the UPS on the serial port will wake up the server when it reports the power outage.

 

Unfortunately, some BIOS settings have left out the serial port in the PME wakeup events.

The UPS I was looking to get has a USB port. I'll have to see if my MB has a wake on USB event. Any more suggestions guys?

Wake on USB is not the same thing.... I'm not so sure that just "any" data from a USB device will wakeup from s3 like serial port data will.

 

You need to test it (without the array loaded, obviously).

I guess you're right. Especially since the server will be in a suspended state anyway drawing mere watts..

I'm running three servers off of one UPS. Two of them are unRAID; they spend most of their time in S3. The last one runs OpenSolaris and stays on 24/7. The UPS is connected to the OpenSolaris box with USB. The unRAID servers run apcupsd as network clients off of the OpenSolaris box. A few minutes into a power loss the OpenSolaris box sends magic packets to the two unRAID servers. The unRAID servers then wake up and poll the power-off state from the OpenSolaris box over the network and then proceed to shut down properly.

 

This approach may or may not apply to your situation.

^^ Thats the thing. You need to have a box on 24/7 

^^ Thats the thing. You need to have a box on 24/7 

 

I'm not convinced. I certainly have computers that wake up from S3 when I touch a USB-connected mouse or keyboard, and even when I select onto or away from them on a USB-connected KVM.

The thing is, this "Wake on USB" works on keyboards and mice. Not a UPS connected via USB 

 

I tried it and it didnt work. I really wish someone can prove me wrong..

I'm attempting to answer the same question .. I'm still not routinely using S3 because of this doubt.

 

It has been suggested that I use a relay to drive the RI on the serial port in order to trigger a wake event.

^^ Thats the thing. You need to have a box on 24/7  

 

If you have one of the better APC UPS'es you may put in a network card in there and it will act as the server that is on 24/7 and may configure the UNRAID server to be a network clent to that APC card. Basically the same situation as the one described above.

I tried several configurations, and could not get a UPS to wake a box from S3 with USB.

 

You need one box that can detect power fail that stays on 24/7, send WOL to all the other boxen.  You might be able to rig something like that with the PCH, or a router with a USB/Serial port.

 

As for the management card for APC UPSes, I have one and it has NMS and SNMP, and can send e-mails of events, but It is not hackable to do a WOL to various destinations.

BubbaQ, you are right on the USB. The APC card may be setup to send notification emails, checked by an AMX processor, who is able to send WOL to the servers in case of power outage. It may also check for SNMP traps... Same AMX system may be used to wake servers by sending WOL after clients comsuming their services are turned on (or on any other event) and execute standby on the server via telnet after clients are turned off. Extremely flexible but added programming overhead. An used AMX NI-700 or ME-260 may be had for around $100. One may do pretty similar with Crestron too and both may be used to control some other Relais, RS232 and IR stuff around there.