ITnsomnia

At work we use a MGE Comet EX 11 RT UPS with a environment (tempeature/humidity) sensor attached.

Our airconditioning in the server room regularly stops working, making the temperature rise to over 41°C (105°F) … which is BAD. As a result several servers shut themselves down. Ideal server room temperature should be 20°C – 21°C.

I will show you how you can receive a notification by SMS when the temperature reaches its high treshold or when there is a utility failure.

For this we will use:

• a SNMP trap receiver, in this case Trap Receiver
• the MGE UPS Systems web based configuration page
• a SMTP to SMS gateway, in this case Gfi Faxmaker with SMS functionality.

The first thing we’ll do is configure the MGE UPS to send SNMP traps to the Trap Receiver server. This can be done using the web based management page of the UPS. Navigate and logon to your UPS using your webbrowser of choice.

Click on the Notified Applications link under Settings and click on the Add NMS button. Fill in all the fields, most importantly fill in the IP of the server on which you will install Trap Receiver and give the NMS a name.

Now click Save changes and we’re finished with configuring the UPS.

You can configure the temperature high and low values using the Environment > Status > Environment settings page if desired.

 

Let’s install Trap Receiver now, this is a great freeware SNMP Trap Receiving tool. Just download it, extract it and follow the steps in the setup. (Next, next, next …)

Once it is installed it will run as a service. A shortcut for the easy to use configuration tool is placed on the Desktop as well.

I will not go in to detail on how to configure it, there is a good manual with lots of screenshots available on the website.

In short what you need to configure is the necessary e-mail servers and recipients as well as the SNMP traps to watch for. Finally you need to link actions to the traps. In our case the action is to send a SMS message.

To do this, start the Trap Reciver configuration tool located on your desktop. Once its loaded click on the configure button at the bottom Then click on the Email tab followed by the Add button and fill in the correct values.

 

In the SMTP server field type in the IP of your Faxmaker server. In the To field type in your cellphone number followed by your GFI Faxmaker SMS domain for example  +31478548736@smsmaker.com .

Finally type a message (faxmaker ignores the subject for SMS messages). You can use variables like %SPECIFICTYPE%. For the possible variables see the manual.

We will now configure the actions to be taken when a specific SNMP trap is caught. To do this click on the Actions tab and add 2 traps.

The first trap will be for when the temperature reaches its upper limit. For this we will watch Specific Type with a value of 56. Click e-mail and configure it send to your previously added SMS number of e-mail address.

For the utility failure you should add another watch with Specific type with as value 17.

If I’m not mistaken 57 means the temperature is back within acceptable limits and 18 means the utility is restored. All traps will be send and logged so you can monitor them in the Trap Receiver main window.

For testing purposes you can send a utility failure test trap using the MGE UPS configuration website. See the notified applications screenshot above to see the button.