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    Best practice on shutting down

    Hi all,

    My environment is essentially a HP Microserver running Windows Server and a Windows 7 virtual machine running HS3.
    I've yet to face an issue with power outages as the microserver is connected to a UPS ... until last night.

    What essentially happened is the substation blew up quite literally. As a result, power went out, UPS kicked in - happy days. Power was restored, UPS started charging again however they found there were not enough generators and so more came in and power went out again while they distributed the power between the generators. As the UPS was not charged up enough by the second cut, it ran down enough to tell the server to shutdown.
    What SHOULD have happened was the virtual machine shutdown safely but it did not - something of a known issue in Hyper-v apparently.

    Everything works fine and I take daily backups of HS3 so there was no issue but what I wanted to know is if this happens again, what is the best practice.
    Should all plug-ins be switched off first and then homeseer shutdown? This is how I would shutdown on a normal day if/when required but is this actually required or is simply hitting the cross on the hs3 window good enough?

    Based on this, I can decide what the best way forward is.

    Clearly the UPS is doing enough to tell the server to shutdown but if the above is going to cause me an issue, I may have to run HS3 directly on the server and not via a VM but if this happens, It would essentially be shutting down the server thus closing HS3 without switching off the plug-ins first.

    Thanks in advance!



    #2
    There are a few UPS plugins for HS3 available including BLUPS (free) which should be able to monitor your UPS. You can then use that to decide when to shutdown Homeseer before your UPS power expires. There are also several shutdown plugins for free and I also have an exe which will shutdown Homeseer gracefully (remote from running through Homeseer). Homeseer plugins should shutdown gracefully when Homeseer is asked to shutdown.

    If there is an issue with hardware/shared access to the UPS due to the VM, you could also use CURL (hopefully your UPS monitoring software can trigger an application) on your server to send a JSON command to Homeseer (via its web server) to trigger an event to shutdown Homeseer.
    Jon

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      #3
      Thanks Jon, I had the BLUPS open at 2am when all of this started ! Turns out Hyper-V does not support usb passthrough so the VM won't see the UPS which is connected to the server via usb.

      And having looked into every option, the ups software does not support application trigger so thats out the window.

      Might just be time to switch off hyper-v and jump back to vmware which apparently does support it. Hyper-v was the choice initially 3-4 years ago as there was another server also setup with hyper-v so the theory was with replication and failover, the other one would takeover if something happened to the server.
      That server has been sold so maybe there are no longer any benefits to hyper-v.

      I suppose the question does still stand in regards to shutdown procedure - should I be switching off all plug-ins first and then closing down homeseer?
      I also forgot I had BLShutdown installed so if the above is not required, could I just simply shutdown via blshutdown as soon as I get an email from the UPS to say its on battery?

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        #4
        As I said in my previous post, when you initiate a close of Homeseer, all connected plugins are told to shutdown as well. Provided BLshutdown does not kill Homeseer, you should be good.

        Oracle Virtualbox also allows USB passthrough on its VM's (as another option).




        Jon

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          #5
          Sorry completely missed that line - With all the beeping, flashing lights (one of the hue strips kept switching back on) all night, I'm running on fumes :- )

          I already have a 5 licence VMWare so I'll end up using that but thanks for the suggestion
          I built a W7 and a W10 VM just now so both are ready to go - just need to decide do I ditch W7 once and for all or not and then whether I start moving over to HS4 or wait it out

          There is a business version of the UPS software so I'll check if that is any better at application triggers - if it is, potentially the way around will be IF the vm detects the UPS, the ups software on the VM can close Homeseer after 3 minutes of being on battery and then the VM.
          At 5-7 minutes, shut down the server it sits on.

          Thanks for the replies !

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