How to perform graceful shutdown of an ME4024 on power failure

Question

I would like to know how to perform a graceful unattended shutdown of the ME4024 SAN if there is a power outage, and all the servers etc are on UPS. We have set the servers to shut down via UPS software then we need to shut the SAN down when the servers are powered off, how is that meant to be done at the correct time without someone having to do it manually?

DELL-Chris H · Accepted Answer

Af_it_ltd,

With the ME4 series you want all your hosts to power off first so that all data can be flushed to your ME4. Once all your host are powered down then you will want to power down your ME4, and any other expansion enclosures. When power is restored you will want to power on your ME4 and give it about 5 minutes to fully boot before powering on your hosts.

Now as far as an unattended path, the controller shutdown is manually either through the GUI or SSH/serial in and done with CLI. Then the chassis and stuff will still be up until you flip the power switches off (or the UPS runs out of battery). Theoretically you could script something that will ssh in and run the 'shutdown both' command, if the servers are all offline, but I would worry about a false trigger from something like the monitoring system with the script having a network blip or something and assumes the servers went down.

Usually the biggest concern with unexpected power loss though is the cache or writes that were still in flight from the host. If the UPS software is gracefully shutting down the hosts first then the ME will most likely be fine with dropping once the UPS runs out of power

Let me know if this helps.

PowerVault

How to perform graceful shutdown of an ME4024 on power failure

Was this post helpful?