Integrating Eaton UPS Into A Virtualised Environment

Web servers are one of the most common uses of virtualisation. Instead of providing a single file server to host a single website, the virtualisation approach allows a single server to run a number of dedicated but virtualised servers.

Each virtual server is a unique environment in its own right, run on the host hardware but in a partitioned environment. It’s not hard to imagine how web-server technology has evolved into today’s cloud environment and the wide-scale adoption by many organisations that no longer want to run their own server asset(s) but prefer to lease space on virtual servers.

From a power protection point of view, running server virtual servers on a single hardware platform can place an organisation at greater risk from power problems and mains power failures. However, UPS manufacturers like Eaton UPS have developed software and hardware solutions for virtualised environments.

Eaton UPS and ePDUs have been designed to integrate seamlessly using Eaton Intelligent Power software into many industry leading virtualised software environments; namely VMware vCenter, Microsoft SCVMM and XenCenter. The Eaton hardware device (UPS and/or ePDU) simply requires a Network card and once connected can be managed into the virtualised environment alongside other network, physical server and storage systems using the Intelligent Power software package.

Another critical power safeguard built-into the Eaton Intelligent Power software is the ability to trigger vCenter’s vMotion, SCVMM’s Live Migration or XenCenter’s XenMotion to initiate a transparent move of the virtual machines to another server network. This can be achieved during a power failure to ensure overall integrity within the virtualised environment and its continuous operation.

Eaton’s Intelligent Power software can also be used for the controlled and orderly shutdown of hypervisors and their guests during extended mains power failures. The software can invoke virtual machines to shutdown or hibernate and signal the hypervisor to shutdown and power off the physical server itself. The Intelligent Power package supports VMware, Hyper-V, Xen and the KVM platforms and can also be used for monitoring and managing the power protection of NetApp storage devices used in conjunction with hypervisors and virtual machines.

Eaton Intelligent Power Software

The software provides the opportunity to:

• Identify efficiency improvement opportunities through metering and energy consumption analysis
• Prevent costly site visits by monitoring and controlling equipment in remote locations
• Prevent problems with timely alarm signals
• Improve productivity with software that plugs directly into vCenter
• Minimise downtime by automatically initiating virtual migration
• Save time and effort – removes the need to install shutdown software on all physical host servers
• Prevent data loss through the orderly shutdown of virtual machines
• Initiate real time Cloud backup to avoid disaster scenarios and downtime
• Extend runtime in a virtual environment

Eaton UPS and ePDU Integration With Virtualisation Packages

Notes

• OVF compliant; fully tested on VMware
  ^ Upto 10 nodes (Eaton UPS or ePDUs)

For more information see the Eaton UPS range and in particular the bundled packages for virutalised environments.