I got a new toy today. It was kind of heavy @ 27.5 pounds. It doesn’t really do much, but it does give one some peace of mind. And it finally gave me the opportunity to try out one of the popular WHS add-ins that I have been unable to check out previously. If you didn’t look at the post picture or title, I would say read on to find out what I am talking about.
But since the picture and title kind of gives this topic away, just read on to take a closer look at GridJunction, the Windows Home Server Add-in for managing an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) Battery Backup System via the Windows Home Server Console
The UPS I am using? It is an APC BX900R. I purchased it at my local Best Buy for… $15.71. Being that it was on sale combined with the use a gift card, and a couple of Rewards Zone certificates, this turned out to be quite a cheap (inexpensive) toy!
Back to GridJunction. From my repetitive installation opening statement:
Installing the add-in is as simple as any other add-in. Copy the msi installer to your D:SoftwareAdd-ins folder, open the WHS Setting Window in the console and install the software from the Add-ins tab, as shown below.
Reopen the WHS console, click on the Console Settings option, and click on the GridJunction icon. This will bring you to the following window.
As I had just installed the UPS and GridJunction, there was not much (as in nothing) for GridJunction to report as Events in this tab. Moving over to the Actions tab brings up the following settings window, which is where you can configure the actions that GridJunction performs if the power goes out.
Moving over to the Hardware tab, presents you with following screen.
In my case, GridJunction recognized the APC model upon installation, so I submitted the info to GridJunction. A painless and hopefully helpful task to perform. If you purchase a UPS, decide to use GridJunction, and the 2 work together, please submit the info to GridJuction as a helpful service to the community.
When you click on the Hardware Monitor button, you will be presented with the following screen:
This is all cool and everything, but not much of a useful real time monitor in that when this window is open, that is all you can do: watch the graph. It might become a wee bit more useful if it could be opened as a separate window from the console, so that one could do other WHS tasks while monitoring the UPS.
Moving over to the Settings tab provides you with the following 2 options. Turn on whatever ones you wish to.
And finally, the About tab. I always like to see this kind of information and links provided. A very nice plus for GridJunction.
That’s it! Nothing real exciting here. Which is the way it should be for a program such is this. It should just work, which is what it does with the particular UPS I purchased.
Actually, that is not quite all there is. What happens when the power does go out? After all, who cares about any of the above options, screens and related information if nothing happens during a power outage. To simulate such an event, I simply pulled the power cord of the UPS from the wall. The result:
Immediate GridJunction/console reaction:
A few minutes later.
And a few minutes before the lights went out on my WHS and was gracefully shut down. Please note that I changed the default 50% power level to 90%. I do quite a bit of waiting on things to happen during some of these reviews. It was kind of nice to able to speed up the process just a bit!
There was one more message given, however, I could not capture it in the 5 second time frame required before the machine was put into shut down mode. Basically, it said the computer was going to be shut down in 5 seconds due to the power loss.
After plugging the UPS back into the wall, turning my WHS back on, and perusing back to the GridJunction settings screen gave the following Events that had happened.
The final topic to cover is use of scripts, which you can make use from the Actions tab. I did not write/test any scripts, but if you have a desire to any special exit commands during a shut down sequence, I would point you to 2 resources on the GridJunction website:
A Script Topic in the GridJunction forums.
If you need to make custom scripts, these 2 links should get you started.
And that is that. Is this an add-in for you? If you don’t have a UPS, the obvious answer is no. If you do have and GridJunction supports it:
It does exactly what it is intended to do. It is not an exciting add-in, but this type of utility does not require user interaction once setup. The only small gripe I have was mentioned earlier in regards to the real time monitoring graph. Not very useful if that all one can do from the console is watch this graph when it is opened.
In the end, if you do have a supported UPS, just get it, install it, configure it, and forget about it. You may never need to remember anything about it again. Until the lights go out. And before you do buy a UPS for your WHS, check out this link for a current list of supported UPS’s.
About the only other “gripe” I have is that the installed version expires April 29th. I hope the author has a “Final” release by then.
Author: Kentdome Technologies
Version Reviewed: 1.4.0.0 RC
Release: 04March2009
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