Re: IBMi UPS cable -- MIDRANGE-L

On 12/12/2013 8:12 AM, Briggs, Trevor (TBriggs2) wrote:

I'm just curious, but I'm familiar with the Arduino as a hobbyist's kind of device - is it robust enough to be used in such a mission-critical role as this?

The various Arduino boards are rock solid. As with any computer, the
software is what makes this solution useful (or not). This is a custom,
one-off project requiring custom, one-off software. But like
programming custom, one-off software in RPG, it's a very achievable project.
--buck

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roberto José Etcheverry Romero
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2013 5:46 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: IBMi UPS cable

I'm leaning towards the Arduino myself (in fact i may have to implement it
for my DC, even though i have no POWER systems running there), with the
Arduino you can also monitor temperatures, input voltage ranges, and
interface with normal and inexpensive UPS (compared to the ups that have
the relay output required for POWER). You can have 2 rs232 UPS which also
report neat stuff like "time remaining on battery" which is better than
having a dumb timer and starting a shutdown...
On the same page, is there any command to prompt the system to flush main
storage? (i mean, do the d9002740 and d6000298 steps beforehand or at least
part of them)?
Maybe if there was you could implement say:
On power failure start a timer,
If power failure lasts more than X minutes, start flushing
If battery has less than X minutes, start shutdown (but this shutdown would
take less since changed pages have already been flushed)...
I ask because i've seen machines take ages to flush (specially machines
with lots of ram and slow disk controllers)

On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 6:38 PM, Buck Calabro <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 12/11/2013 4:11 PM, Jerry Draper wrote:

We use the MONUPSPWR CL IBM gives us to monitor a msgq for UPS statuses.

We take appropriate action depending on what messages we get (or not).

Now we have a situation where we have redundant AC on our IBMi connected
to two different UPS systems. (redundency of the redundent).

We only have one port on the IBMi for a UPS sensor cable.

IBM suggests a box with two UPS inputs to resolve to one UPS cable that
attaches to the IBMi so if either UPS system said we were on UPS we
would act as though we were on UPS.

Jerry

I think the consensus is rapidly forming that there's no commercial box
that 'combines' the outputs of multiple UPS units. That puts you in DIY
land. Generally speaking, if I say 'diode or' and you say 'huh?' it's a
signal to me that I should advise you to hire this out locally.

--buck

On 12/11/2013 12:48 PM, Roberto José Etcheverry Romero wrote:

Depends on one's need. I would like my system to stay up if one grid

lost

power but the other was OK (not running on battery). Some people might
want
to start a shutdown when only one of them fails. The Arduino path is
what i
meant when i said a tinkerer is the best choice to implement this, i'm

26

but i would've done it with logic gates, even simpler (less points of
failure, unless you want TCPIP monitoring, which an arduino can give
you).

On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 5:32 PM, DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

wrote:

Would you want the system to power down if only one UPS lost grid

power?

Would you want the system to power down if BOTH UPS lost input power?

Looking to understand the logic in the magic box because an Arduino
could do this very very easily.

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com

On 12/11/2013 2:07 PM, Jerry Draper wrote:

We have an 8202-E4D with redundant power supplies (2 AC).

Mgmt wants to connect each AC to a different UPS for UPS redundancy.

We only have one port for the RJ45 UPS sensor cable (P1-T2).

http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/powersys/v3r1m5/index.jsp?topic=%2Fp7had%2Fp7hadups.htm

IBM suggested that we could build a box with two RJ45 in and one RJ45
out (or two DB9 to one DB9) that would detect UPS status from either
UPS
and send one signal to the IBMi.

Anyone have this box or know where to get one?

Thanks,

Jerry