Schneider Electric PowerChute Offers Extended Power Failure Protection

Energy management specialist Schneider Electric announced the release of PowerChute Network Shutdown v3.1 with enhanced virtualisation support, a network-based server shutdown solution for IT equipment.

Equipped with extended virtualisation capabilities, PowerChute Network Shutdown v3.1 works in conjunction with the APC by Schneider Electric Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) network management card to enable automatic virtual machine migration and virtual machine and host shutdown in VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V clusters.

Extended protection

With PowerChute Network Shutdown v3.1, IT managers are provided with the assurance that mission critical equipment will be protected in the event of an extended power failure.

By supporting virtual machine migration in virtual cluster environments, virtual machines affected by power disturbances can be migrated to hosts not impacted by the specific UPS event, ensuring the virtual systems stay online as long as possible and affording IT managers the time needed to assess and address the power issue.

Available immediately, PowerChute Network Shutdown v3.1 is bundled with current UPS network management cards and available as a free download through the APC by Schneider Electric product website.

Users can also download the software as a virtual appliance from the VMware Solution Exchange, and Schneider Electric offers free technical support.

“While virtualisation has changed the IT landscape, the need for power protection remains. In today’s data-driven society, business success relies now more than ever on the continuous uptime and availability of critical IT infrastructure,” Paul Bohan, vice president of network management, for Schneider Electric’s IT business, said in a statement. “PowerChute Network Shutdown v3.1 draws on APC by Schneider Electric’s history as a provider of dependable network management solutions by ensuring safe handling of virtual machines during downtime.”

Preventing data loss

In instances where virtual systems cannot be migrated, PowerChute Network Shutdown v3.1 can shut down the system to avoid data loss, corruption or equipment damage.

With the latest edition of the platform, the VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V platforms are integrated, allowing for more seamless configuration and protection of virtual machines through a user-friendly setup wizard.

In VMware environments specifically, users can configure the virtual machine shutdown and start up sequencing using vApps. In addition, the PowerChute Network Shutdown v3.1 software is capable of triggering virtual machine migration without needing to leverage migration technologies such as a Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS).

That means in the event of a power failure, the software automatically checks if DRS is available and if so, will leverage it, and if not, PowerChute will perform the migration.

In addition, Users can opt to deploy the solution as a virtual appliance for VMware environments, and the software offers built-in support for the latest virtual platforms including VMware vSphere 5.5 and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2.

Finally, a “Virtual Cluster View” dashboard displays a graphical representation of the virtual cluster environment and UPS setup on a single screen. In VMware environments, this user interface can also be monitored through the vSphere Client using the new PowerChute vCentre Plugin option.

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Originally published on eWeek.