RE: How long does a PWRDWNSYS restart(*no) actually take?

A "power down" depends on what's running-- you need a process to start an orderly shutdown ASAP.

Question for the wiring guys-- when the power goes out the UPS/battery takes over. Then the generator kicks in. Do you get a different message at each event? IE "System on battery." "System on generator." If the system can't tell the generator from utility power, you'll never know you have a problem other than a two messages, probably minutes apart: "System on battery" / "Utility power restored."

A generator question-- does it have a 'low fuel' indicator in the computer room, or does someone have to open the doors to the generator and check a fuel gauge? Do you have a contract with a fuel company to deliver fuel any time of the day or night and on weekends? How long does the generator run on a full tank?

Does the generator kick on for a test once a week? How about routine service for the generator, including load testing?

Once you figure out you have a power outage and the system must come down, what will you do? I'd hold the jobqs to the batch subsystems first. Heaven help the long-running jobs! Send messages to all interactive-type jobs to sign off NOW! TFRJOB your session to QCTL, then you can end the interactive subsystems so no new jobs can start.

You need to examine all of the subsystems and see how they should be ended. PWRDWNSYS *IMMED should be a last resort-- IBM recommends gently shutting down TCP/IP!

Do you run 'lights out' / unattended? Will your process shut things down without human intervention? Will you be able to stop it in mid-stream if the power comes back on? Will it be easier to complete a shutdown and IPL the system, starting things up properly?


Paul E Musselman
PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

On Fri, Jul 28, 2017 at 7:17 AM, Jim Hawkins <jhawkins@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have been tasked to write a program to monitor the UPS on our IBM power
system. I found a good base program-so that is all good. We have a
generator
that is supposed to kick in within the 1st minute of a power failure. My
question is more of "what if the generator fails?" From my research, it
appears that the ups on the system will last for about 20 minutes.

We do an IPL each week (pwrdwnsys *immed restart(*yes)), (it is what it is,
I'm not rocking the boat on this one, so save your breath). What I see in
the log is entries indicating: this ended, that ended, etc. for about a
minute and a half, then nothing for 32 minutes when I see "Unattended IPL
in
progress".

If the generator fails, I want to power down the system, but I am not sure
how much time I have to wait. The last time we did a pwrdwnsys
restart(*no)
was 3 years ago when we had to replace the cache battery-and I don't recall
that far back (lol).

I want the system to power down on my terms, not the terms of the UPS. So,
good folks, how much time do I really have to power down, before my UPS
runs
out of batteries? (Yes, I will allocate a little extra for the unexpected
and the fact the batteries are 7+ years old.) Just simply, at what point is
the system powered off?

(I will be away from my email from noon today until next week)

TIA

Jim Hawkins

Programmer Analyst

Interkal LLC

Kalamazoo, MI