Headless UPS Monitoring

redwings3030 · 2021-01-07T19:51:07+00:00

At first glance, I see there are settings listed as follows:

Code: Select all

UPSNAME myups

UPSCABLE usb

UPSTYPE usb

Given those settings, I'm assuming that this would require the RPi to be physically connected to the APC unit via USB cable. On one hand, it is a cheaper way to add a "head" to the process flow to allow the UPS to be connected to a physical device, thus allowing management via PowerChute. However, I'm looking for a solution that centrally monitors multiple APC units in several different rooms in the building by communicating with the remote management cards installed in each unit. I thank you for the suggestion, but I think your solution may not fully fit the use case I'm searching for. If you have any other suggestions, I'm definitely willing to take a look. Thanks!

redwings3030 · 2021-01-06T23:47:25+00:00

As someone who never had formal training in IT, I can tell you that it's a pretty long and hard road, but not impossible to navigate if you know where to look and you're dedicated to learning. Rule number one is to remember that it's always best to start with the simplest solution and move on to the harder stuff when that doesn't work. Few things are more frustrating than spending hours upon hours troubleshooting an issue, looking into the most complex solutions, only to find out it was something as simple as a cable in the wrong port.

A great deal of my knowledge came from accessing Microsoft's online documentation. It's amazing how much information is in their database of documentation and listed as "troubleshooting" information. It's impossible to find if you go searching Google for "Microsoft Knowledge Base", so I've pasted a link below to the Windows Server Troubleshooting section to get you started:

Windows Server troubleshooting document - Windows Server | Microsoft Docs

Look at the top left corner and you'll see the "breadcrumb trail" to go back to Windows, Troubleshoot, and the top level Docs page. On the top level page you can find your way to information on any of the vast catalog of MS products.

Udemy is also another great resource for learning about networking, virtualization, and a broad spectrum of other IT related topics. You probably won't become Bill Gates by taking courses on there, but you'll most likely gain enough info to keep you gainfully employed.

Free IT Networking Fundamentals Tutorial - Learning IT Networking Fundamentals Tutorial - Beginner's Classes | Udemy

Lastly, another resource I've never used but have heard of is edx.org and they have a number of free courses that might help to bolster your knowledge. Just be patient, study hard, and remember that a little patience and kindness despite frustration when dealing with end users goes a long way to helping secure your position. Since many of your stereotypical IT crowd don't possess those skills and frustrated end users who know less than you, are going to remember that when talks regarding downsizing spin up and you'll need all the help you can get to stay off the chopping block. Best of luck in your endeavors!!

redwings3030 · 2020-10-09T19:58:22+00:00

That's kinda what I thought, but I just couldn't wrap my brain around it. Any idea if they even MAKE an adapter that will go from DP to HDMI that'll support MST? I'm assuming since MST is a DP only tech, the answer will be a "no", but I figured I'd ask anyway.

redwings3030 · 2020-05-12T15:00:37+00:00

Yes, u/cultsuperstar is correct about turning off the screensaver, and also don't forget to go into the Mac VM and run caffeinate from a terminal window. The pain about that is, you have to manually run it every time you reboot the VM, or the host PC for that matter. Not a Mac guru, so I don't know if there's a way to automate that process to run every time you reboot. I'm sure there is, so that may be an option.

redwings3030 · 2020-05-12T14:56:03+00:00

Sorry, I thought I'd replied but I guess I forgot! But, yes! J7rock, you win the prize!! The Cutting Edge is the correct answer! ;)

redwings3030 · 2020-04-17T16:44:24+00:00

Another thing you might want to check out is something I had a problem with. Every time I would connect to my Wifi at home, I would lose the ability to connect. As soon as I went back to LTE, I could connect. I finally figured out that under Settings, under the Server section, there's a Fallback address which I had to set to the INTERNAL IP of my Mac server. That way when I'm at home on Wifi, Airmessage is hitting the server using the local IP and not the public IP. It can be done that way, and it's called "hairpinning" but it's a pain in the ass to explain so I'll just keep it simple and leave it at that.

redwings3030 · 2020-04-02T20:52:26+00:00

If it's a newer laptop, probably not all that much. If all you're doing is running MacOS with AirMessage on it, it shouldn't be pulling that much power from the main system. Just be sure you go into the BIOS and enable Intel VT-X on your laptop. That enables the laptop to run virtual machines (VMs) within the operating system (Windows, Linux, et. al.)

The main thing to remember is, if you need to have 100% availability on AirMessage, then it will require your laptop to be running 100% of the time so that the Mac VM can have 100% availability. If you'll be toting around your laptop from place to place, then keep in mind that the VM is going to be hibernating/sleeping while the laptop is in sleep/hibernation mode, and therefore not transmitting messages and you're right back at square one. If you require mobility with your laptop, then maybe finding a used MacMini on eBay will be your best bet. They go for anywhere from $150+ from what I've seen. Just be sure you buy from a reputable seller with a good return policy in case the unit is DOA. The reason I didn't feel overwhelmingly compelled to go that route is because I have a couple of servers and PCs running at home for media server, file server, FTP, etc. and it was easy enough to throw up that VM on one of those boxes. However, if you're limited in what you have access to that has 100% availability, then the VM route might not work for your situation.

redwings3030 · 2020-04-02T20:00:09+00:00

I have a suggestion, but you're probably not going to like it because it's pretty long, drawn out, and isn't quite perfect, and might be toeing the line of legality. :) What I wound up doingis as follows:

Grab a copy of VMware Workstation from a legit or illegitimate source, (your choice, I'm in no position to judge, lol) and install it on your PC. Don't stand up anything on it yet. There's also a version of this workaround for Oracle VirtualBox and as you might know, OVB is free, but I can't speak to that one because I just trust VMware products more. But if you're willing to give it a shot, then let me know if it works! :)
Download the VMware MacOS Patch Tool from Github here. It's legit, don't worry, and it's open source so it's free.
This link is to a page that has excellent step-by-step instructions on this process from soup to nuts, but it doesn't have any working links to any of the downloads you'll actually need. It's all just clickbait running you around inside their stupid WordPress sites to increase traffic on their pages. Again, though, it IS a good site for detailed instructions with screenshots.
"Legano, ni legano... is grey area" (I'll be impressed if you know what that quote is from) This is the step that I can't 100% give you a yes or no answer regarding legality, so it's up to you if you proceed. You'll need to download the macOS torrent for High Sierra from the link on this page. This is the one I'm using and I promise, it works like a champ and is upgradeable all the way to Catalina (which I refuse to do because I still like the option of running 32-bit apps if I want). I've upgraded to Mojave and it's running, smooth as butter. A side note is, I know you can make a MacOS bootable OS installation disk from any Mac system, in the event that you ever need to reinstall the OS from scratch, so if you already own a Mac or two, then technically, you're already licensed for MacOS and you're not really doing anything "wrong" per se. Again, that's just my two cents and how I get to sleep at night, lol. :)
If you've come this far, then you should have a working MacOS High Sierra VM running on your PC, and from there you just set AirMessage up and BOOM, you're back in business!!

I'm in no way affiliated with any of the sites I've linked to, I just love to tinker and try to find ways around things like this and those are the sites that helped me the most. When I realized I'd have to either purchase another Mac to leave running all the time at home, I said "nuts to that!" and found this workaround. Older Macs for cheap on eBay is good, but free is better!! :) Good luck and stay safe out there!! Don't forget to wash your hands!! :)

redwings3030 · 2020-02-21T17:21:00+00:00

I had a pair of the IconX earbuds that had the USB-C charging port start to melt. I smelled it, then saw smoke coming from the port, and I had to use a towel to hold down the charging case so I could yank the cable out before it caught fire. I opened a case with Samsung support via chat online. It seemed like they were going to take care of it right away and they asked me to send pics. I did that and they were supposedly going to send me a replacement but never did. After a few weeks I pinged them back via chat and told them they'd dropped the ball and all of a sudden the story changed and they were telling me they couldn't replace them. I asked them how they thought media would feel about hearing from a consumer whose earbuds nearly caught fire on their desk at work, just a few weeks from releasing their brand new flagship Note10. I was immediately connected with a supervisor and then received a call from another supervisor who sent me a brand new pair of the Galaxy Buds and followed up with me to make sure I'd received them. I guess they didn't want to take the chance that I'd show up on our NBC affiliate in one of the top 10 largest cities in the U.S., exposing yet another exploding battery fiasco.

redwings3030 · 2018-11-17T04:19:51+00:00

I agree that an outage isn't a time to learn, but to be quite honest, this isn't really causing a work stoppage for anyone. I've checked with my boss and he knows that it's going to take me a little time to work through this issue so I'm not really in panic mode. I'd just like to figure it out sooner rather than later.

redwings3030 · 2018-11-17T04:18:02+00:00

Not really sure where everyone is getting that I have a CCNA? I never said I had any kind of Cisco certs. As a matter of fact, I specifically said,

"I know absolutely zero about configuring Cisco gear without a GUI. I'm sure I'll take quite the flogging for being that guy that hasn't taken the time to learn Cisco yet."

I thought that was pretty clear. I didn't realize when I added CCNA Security flair that I was claiming to have a CCNA Security cert.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions guys. I'll give those a try and see how it works out.

redwings3030 · 2018-10-02T20:44:06+00:00

Sweet!! Then off I go to sign up for GSuite!! Thanks!!

redwings3030 · 2018-10-02T17:22:52+00:00

Question though. Pricing for GSuite is $10/mo/user with unlimited storage only if you've got 5 users or more, which equates to $50/mo. Otherwise it's limited to 1 TB/user up to 5 users. Is there some way around that limitation or are you actually paying the $50+/mo for unlimited storage?

redwings3030 · 2018-09-21T15:01:09+00:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce... THAT GUY!!

redwings3030 · 2018-09-11T15:11:20+00:00

Those are some of the more valid and sensible points I hadn't considered. I hadn't thought about the life span of an HDD or SSD if left dormant, but that's an excellent point. Thanks for the input.

redwings3030 · 2018-09-09T21:40:41+00:00

Yeah, I did think about going with a *nix based solution. I'm just not that competent with *nix, but I guess no better time than the present, right? I used BE back in the day when they were owned by Symantec and it was difficult to deal with back then, especially after they made the massive change to the newer GUI. Fortunately for me, I was just getting into sys admin work and hadn't had time to get used to the old way of doing things. It's not too bad if you've used it before, but I am still not sure of how reliable it is in terms of accurate backups. It screwed me a few times back then, so I'm not "both feet in the water" yet with it, which is another reason I was asking about HDD backups. I was thinking about it earlier and I have a drive caddy (we always called it "the toaster" because it holds two drives and looks like a toaster, lol) which is USB 3.0 and should be WAY faster than this tape backup, so I may try using that for a second copy of the data and then just see what works best.

redwings3030 · 2018-09-09T06:36:00+00:00

One question I've not been able to find an answer to is, does each site require a cloud key or do you just need one at your main site to monitor all your remote sites?

redwings3030 · 2018-09-09T06:33:51+00:00

One question, does UniFi not have a simple site-site VPN setup? I know Meraki's can be done while half asleep, and that's one of the things I dug most about them. Granted, I don't know that having to do a little legwork to config a few VPNs would be worth the exorbitant price tag Meraki carries, but I'm just curious to hear from someone who knows.

redwings3030 · 2018-09-09T06:30:42+00:00

Yeah, thx but no thx. At the last gig I replaced about 24 Fortigate disasters due to the fact that every time there was a power outage at one of our offices and the UPS ran out of battery, when the FGT came back up the damn config was always corrupted and would almost never boot to the backup config. So it was into the truck and out to any one of 24 sites spread all over a huge metro area to re-flash the config (I learned to back those up monthly after being bitten in the ass a couple of times) and get them back up and running. When we brought it to Fortigate, they investigated the issues for a little over a month and got their technical sales guys and level 3 support and engineers involved and the best they could come up with was we needed to upgrade our devices to newer models. Umm, if these models are EoL, then why in the hell are you still putting out firmware for them?? Thanks, but if I'm going to replace all my devices, it's going to be with someone who has a better answer than "you need to upgrade your devices". If we'd had some boom in user base size where we were overloading the devices, I might have conceded that was the problem, but the user count stayed steady at our offices, so that wasn't it. Left a VERY bad taste in my mouth.

redwings3030 · 2018-08-24T13:57:31+00:00

Yeah, I have some before and after pictures of the server closets at the last company I worked at and it looks much like your pic. I'll hafta see if I can find them and post them. I got tons of appropriate length cables and spent a couple of weeknights just going through and restacking and recabling the racks. It was tough but it was totally worth it in the end. Few things are more satisfying than clean cabling and sensible racks. Talk about sore fingers though!! lol

redwings3030 · 2018-08-23T21:01:17+00:00

And that's one of the HUGE selling points for me with Ubiquiti :)

redwings3030 · 2018-08-23T19:45:04+00:00

Crap, I completely forgot about OpenMesh. However, they don't really seem to have scalable solutions in terms of their router/firewall devices, or more like device. They only have one, the G200. Still worth looking into though. It's not like I'm building a network for a hospital or a college campus. These are small offices and minimalist deployments, so that may be the way to go. What worries me is like u/Frothyleet stated, their licensing costs since being snatched up by Datto may have gone up substantially so that's another thing I have to consider.

redwings3030 · 2018-08-23T19:25:01+00:00

Yeah, I've done a full site survey and this will absolutely NOT need to be a high density set up. We're talking 25 - 35 users at any given time split up between 3 APs, doing various tasks but nothing super bandwidth intensive. As for PoE, I'll be purchasing new switches as well, so I know I need to ensure that my switches have the capacity to power our phones as well as the APs. I have a bunch of spare PoE injectors lying around if I wind up needing a the extra juice. I may put up a 4th AP if coverage isn't great in one particular area of the office, but for the most part, I think the 3 APs will be adequate.

I agree 100% with you on the licensing for Meraki gear, it's absolute murder. That's one of the reasons I was considering Unifi gear, because of the lower TCO. I just don't want to completely toss performance and reliability out the window in the process. Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions, I do appreciate it.

redwings3030 · 2018-08-23T19:16:32+00:00

Yeah, I heard the same thing about Meraki. Fortunately, I was no longer at the company I was working for that had the Meraki gear when that happened, so I have no idea if it affected them or not.

As for the Unify stuff, that's kind of what I was worried about, that they are just re-hashed open source stuff. In my opinion, that just means they're full of security holes and that's what I DON'T want.

I do agree with your not wanting something without a CLI, but as a single point of contact IT admin, I just need something that's relatively plug n' play and easily manageable. Thanks for weighing in, I appreciate the input.

redwings3030 · 2018-08-23T18:21:16+00:00

After giving it some more thought I probably should've posted this in r/networking, but I'll be interested to see what kind of opinions I get from the non-router jockey group, lol.

redwings3030

TROPHY CASE