News: 1656955687

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Schneider and Dell integrate UPS, HCI for graceful shutdown

(2022/07/04)


Schneider Electric has teamed up with Dell Technologies on an automated shutdown system for hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), based on the integration of its APC PowerChute with Dell's VxRail HCI platform.

According to Schneider, this new capability was developed as part of a [1]joint effort with Dell to try to reduce the complexity of the hybrid IT environment.

The idea is to ensure a graceful shutdown of all the virtual machines and their workloads operating on a VxRail cluster in a situation where mains power has failed, but the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) has exhausted its battery runtime.

[2]

“When power is interrupted and UPSs extend past their battery runtime, our partners can’t just flip a switch and shut down operations,” said Schneider's SVP of EcoStruxure Solutions, Kevin Brown.

[3]

[4]

Instead, there has to be a proper shutdown process, or organizations risk losing work or corrupting data held on their systems.

The integration brings together three components: UPS equipment from Schneider's APC subsidiary, the APC PowerChute software, and [5]Dell's VxRail , an integrated and pre-configured platform that stands up HCI running a VMware-based environment.

[6]

The APC PowerChute software communicates over the network with the APC UPS, and prevents possible data corruption by performing a graceful operating system shutdown in the event of an extended power outage, without the need for operator intervention.

[7]Iceotope: No need to switch servers to swap air-cooled for liquid-cooled

[8]Eaton, Microsoft to outfit datacenters with 'grid-interactive' UPS tech

[9]Off the grid, Day 10: Yandex's only datacenter outside of Russia still running on diesel

[10]US DoJ reveals Russian supply chain attack targeting energy sector

"PowerChute integrated directly with the Dell VxRail API enables a safe shutdown of virtual machines followed by the VxRail cluster including hosts; often referred to as a graceful shutdown with no loss of work, no data corruption, and no hardware damage," Brown said.

According to Schneider, a new capability offered as part of this integration includes the option for an automatic restart so that when power is restored, the HCI systems automatically come back up, minimizing downtime.

The new feature is also part of Schneider's updated EcoStruxure Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software, [11]announced last month alongside a line of Modular Data Center units that are designed to make it faster and easier to deploy datacenter infrastructure.

Earlier this year, Schneider's APC Smart-UPS products were found to have [12]three critical security flaws dubbed TLStorm, which made them vulnerable to a "complete remote takeover." Schneider said at the time that patches were available, and it was also working to develop remediations and mitigations for customers. ®

Get our [13]Tech Resources



[1] https://www.apc.com/us/en/partners-alliances/alliances/technology-alliances/dell-technologies.jsp

[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YsNi-jnpU0IcR7QRJ2y@FwAAAAU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YsNi-jnpU0IcR7QRJ2y@FwAAAAU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YsNi-jnpU0IcR7QRJ2y@FwAAAAU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[5] https://www.dell.com/en-us/dt/converged-infrastructure/vxrail/index.htm#scroll=off&tab0=0&tab1=0

[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YsNi-jnpU0IcR7QRJ2y@FwAAAAU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/30/iceotope_says_no_need_to/

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/16/eaton_microsoft_grid_interactive_datacenters/

[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/05/yandex_datacenter_in_finland/

[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/25/us_indicts_russian_state_hackers/

[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/10/schneider_electric_dcim_tools/

[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/09/tlstorm_apc_ups_critical_zero_days/

[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/



This is not new...

Anonymous Coward

...UPS integration with Operating systems has been around since the 80s... Most modern UPSes integrate with UEFI clean shutdown.

UPS software: Admin Tool or...

chuckufarley

...Ransomware? That has been an internal debate of mine for quite a while. If it wasn't Ransomware then this could have been done two decades ago with a single shell script. If it is an Admin Tool then why is it only being introduced now and only to the Hyper-Filleters?

At what point does protecting your revenue stream through obfuscation equate to extortion?

If you can answer that then you can answer the the whole #!

A New Way of Taking Pills
A physician one night in Wisconsin being disturbed by a burglar, and
having no ball or shot for his pistol, noiselessly loaded the weapon with
small, hard pills, and gave the intruder a "prescription" which he thinks
will go far towards curing the rascal of a very bad ailment.
-- Nevada Morning Transcript, January 30, 1861