[Nut-upsdev] Joining forces with the Network UPS Tools

[Arnaud Quette]

Hi Powermen ;-)

I recently came across the Powerman project
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/powerman/), pointed by Tony Merenda,
from Opengear (thanks Tony). Congrats for your work in this area!

I've thought a bit about Powerman and NUT since then...

NUT currently supports hosts of UPSs and few PDUs (RPCs), and provides
tons of features:
http://test.networkupstools.org
http://test.networkupstools.org/Documentation/UserManual/Features
http://test.networkupstools.org/Documentation/UserManual/Compatibility/Stable

I'm currently preparing the support of 4 Eaton network (SNMP) PDUs
(the full Eaton range, from Aphel and Pulizzi)
This is based upon the outlet collection:
http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/nut/trunk/docs/new-names.txt?op=file&rev=0&sc=0
And will be as simple as creating a few .h files like that one:
http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/nut/trunk/drivers/mgemib.h?op=file&rev=0&sc=0

See also http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/nut/trunk/docs/powersaving.txt?op=file&rev=0&sc=0
for some more info on the outlet data collection.

Although the name of the project implies UPS only, I'm willing to
expand NUT to any external power devices. NUT provide many generic
acquisition drivers for serial, USB, SNMP, XML/HTTP, that aren't hard
to be extended. There is even an APC MasterSwitch supported by the
generic serial driver.

So integrating Powerman devices, knowledges and expertize into the NUT
shouldn't be that hard, but would be a great deal for end users:
- RPCs would be available through the network, protected by user auth,
SSL and ACLs.
- GUIs would be easy to develop/adapt using the NUT protocol, the
Python class or the C/C++ client library
(imagine an RPC interactive picture...)
- We could manage a full power chain of UPSs and RPCs, and add some
smarter/advanced features (like subscribing clients (nut slaves
installed on computers) on a specific outlet, and have these shutdown
earlier than others before putting the outlet off)
- Powerman's features would be distributed with the NUT packages,
across a wide set of systems,
- a bigger team, with all that it implies
...

NUT would also have to be extended a bit, for example by adding a
field to determine the device type (ups or rpc/pdu), by modifying the
compatibility list format, ...

What would you think about all that. I'm opened to any questions and remarks.

Thanks,
Arnaud
-- 
Linux / Unix Expert R&D - MGE Office Protection Systems - http://www.mgeops.com
Network UPS Tools (NUT) Project Leader - http://www.networkupstools.org/
Debian Developer - http://people.debian.org/~aquette/
Free Software Developer - http://arnaud.quette.free.fr/