AP9605
The AP9605 PowerNet SNMP Card is a SmartSlot card for APC SmartUPSs. It allows full management and monitoring via SNMP (and its Telnet interface). They are considered *old* cards, but work perfectly, and are cheap - usually around $20 refurbed.
The card can be monitored extensively via Nagios with plugins available through the Nagios Exchange.
Contents |
Setup
From my blog: In the theme of upgrades, I also purchased two APC SmartUPS1000 units from refurbUPS.com. Now, I know that a lot of people are perfectly happy with serial connectivity. And it has its positives. But I'm running 2-3 servers per UPS, older servers, wanted to be able to monitor the UPSs, and perhaps control server shutdown, over the network.. So, I found that refurbUPS.com also sells SNMP management cards for them. They sell a refurbished AP9605 - it's an old 10BaseT PowerNet SNMP-only card (with telnet management). Seemed good, and the price of $15 was right.
They showed up, but I couldn't find much about them online, let alone anything useful.
After a phone call to APC, I managed to get the user's manual emailed to me. The few instructions I found online were totally wrong.
The general setup goes like this: 1) Connect network cable to card 2) Connect serial cable between a computer and the UPS's serial port. 3) Get a terminal emulator, like kermit. Settings for kermit: set modem-type none set carrier-watch off set speed 2400 4) connect and press enter. You'll be asked for a username and password. Use "apc" for both. 5) Setup the network - IP, mask, gateway, etc. 6) Ready-to-go!
Manual
Monitoring
At the moment, I'm monitoring my AP9605 cards through simple Nagios check scripts, as well as graphing through Cacti. You can get my Cacti host template for it from ViewVC (CVS web GUI) here.
WARNING
Update 2008-07-23: I've only used these devices with APC serial cables. As per a reader who was kind enough to drop me an email. connecting with a non-APC-pinout (standard or null modem) cable can crash the machine used to connect. Please be warned. Pinouts are available on the Network UPS Tools site.
