[clug] Server installation questions

[Andrew Smith]

Hi Darren,

I tend to favour non-white boxes for rack servers, such as Dell, HP. 
With their extended onsite warranties it gives me good piece of mind.

As for UPS monitoring, definitely Nut
(http://www.networkupstools,org/).  It has drivers for many brands of
UPS (I highly recommend APC) over serial and USB.  It allows vary
extensive configuration, runs a network daemon for remote
monitoring/management (eg: stock Nagios plugin) and can operate with
other networked servers in a master/slave config, so you can safely
shutdown other servers on the same UPS.

I haven't used a SOLA UPS (made in Qld) for a few years, had very bad
experiences with them and their battery quality back then.  The APC's
are very well featured, including self testing and configuration.  Make
sure you can test the batteries automagically, otherwise you'll realise
they don't work at the worst time ;)

I've also installed a few APC's with their networked environmental
management card (about $600 extra) which has some i/o contacts, 100BT
port and a temperature and humidity probe.  If you grab one of these and
monitor it with snmp give me a bell, there's a trick...

Andrew

On Fri, 2004-10-08 at 14:10, Darren Freeman wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm expecting to install a server based on PC hardware in a 19" rack.
> Most likely an Athlon XP or 64. I haven't done anything this funky
> before.
> 
> Can anyone recommend a good rack mount case, and somebody in Canberra to
> build the system?
> 
> Also I'd like a UPS with Linux support, to run the computer and one
> switch, such that Linux will shut-down cleanly perhaps 5min after power
> is lost. Any advice?
> 
> Have fun,
> Darren