[Nut-upsdev] Adding PDU support to NUT

[Arnaud Quette]

hum, I forgot to mention two points, about the supported instant
commands and the Raritan devices.
see below...

2008/10/30 Arnaud Quette <aquette.dev at gmail.com>:
> I've recently been working a bit on adding PDU
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_distribution_unit) support in NUT.
> Some of you might have seen the Powerman thread, which also deals with
> adding more PDUs support:
> http://powerman.sourceforge.net/supported.html
>
> The result is that we now have support for 2 Eaton | Powerware ePDUs
> (Managed and Monitored iirc, check http://www.epdu.com).
> I plan on adding the 2 other models soon.

Raritan PDUs (http://www.raritan.com/products/power-management/)
should also be supported.
These devices use the same Revelation MIB, as the Eaton Managed ePDU,
but with a different entry point.
So I'm working on having a single shared definition for this.

> It is using snmp-ups and I've attached an upsc/upscmd output of the
> managed unit for info.
> The patch isn't commited yet, but it's limited to adding a xx-mib.h
> file, and some doc update. I've also switched to a 2 decimal
> resolution in snmp-ups.
>
> The things to be noticed are:
> - since NUT is UPS centric, the ups collection doesn't fit for the
> purpose (ups.status most of all)
> - a new collection ("device") has to be created, to make NUT more generic.
> This would consist of the following generic / common data extracted
> from the ups collection:
>       device.model
>       device.mfr
>       device.serial
>       device.type (while keeping ups.status for single / three phase)
> and possibly
>       device.id
>       device.firmware
>       device.temperature
>
>    * the outlet collection has to be extended with the following data:
>       outlet.n.current: Current (milliamps RMS)
>       outlet.n.current.maximum: Maximum seen current (milliamps RMS)
>       outlet.n.realpower: Current value of real power (Watts)
>       outlet.n.voltage: Voltage (V)
>       outlet.n.powerfactor: Power Factor (dimensionless value between
> 0.00 and 1.00)
>       outlet.n.power: Apparent power (VA)


       * the outlet collection has to be extended with the following
instant commands:
         outlet.1.load.off
         outlet.1.load.on
         outlet.1.load.cycle: might be replaced by shutdown.reboot or
load.reboot?!


> - status_{}() needs only to process when device.type=ups
>
>
> More generally, I think that NUT is able to handle the smart power
> devices that will appear in the future.
> And the above change will help in going in that direction.
>
> comments / feedback?

still valid ;-)

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/