In the message dated: Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:58:03 EDT, The pithy ruminations from Allan West on <[lopsa-discuss] automatic transfer switch for single power supply gear> were: => I've got some single power supply equipment (Cisco switches) in a rack => with PDUs which have 120V C13 receptacles. I'm looking for an automatic => transfer switch which I can plug into a C13 receptacle on either side of => the rack, and feed the single power cables so that either side of the => rack's power can be removed while the switches stay up. => => Can anyone recommend something which fits this niche? I'm not at liberty
Sort of. I'm using a TrippLite PDUMH15ATNET PDU. It does what you want, and also has an LED showing amperage, and is IP accessible to configure and power up/down the outlets. Sounds nifty? Well, it would probably meet your requirements just fine. However, I bought it for use as both a transfer switch (for items like network gear, KVM, etc. that have just one power supply) and for use as a "fencing device" for an HA cluster. [A power fencing device is a method-of-last-resort to forcibly shutdown cluster nodes in case of a logical inconsistency. This is to prevent multiple nodes from writing to the same storage and causing data corruption.] The servers that make up our HA cluster already have 2 powersupplies, so the TrippLite PDU is used as an out-of-band method to shutdown the servers via "fencing"...essentially giving a command to remove power from both powersupplies. <RANT> The TrippLite PDU is unacceptable as a cluter fencing device for one reason: there is no way to shutdown multiple outlets on the PDU simultaneously. The shutdown command, as run on the PDU, inserts a random delay (observed to be about 15~35 seconds). This is a significant delay in a device that's intended to prevent data corruption by preventing multiple machines from acting as if they are the master nodes in the cluster. </RANT> As a network-accessible PDU and transfer switch...it's fine. Mark => to run new PDUs in the rack, nor do I have access to 208-204V => receptacles to feed an automatic transfer switch, which seems to be the => most common solution offered by APC, etc. => => There are a few items listed on reseller sites, but they don't all lead => to current products available from the listed vendor. I'd prefer to find => something which is actually recommended and in use by a colleague. => => Thanks, Allan => _______________________________________________ => Discuss mailing list => [email protected] => http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss => This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators => http://lopsa.org/ => _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
