How to Survive a power outage?

[Netdawg]

Greetings. I am a complete newbie to Shoretel. I'm two weeks into production with my first site. The system seems great, but I have one major concern. The night before rolling out the system, we had bad weather and there was an extended power outage. My Shoretel server sucked all the juice out of the ups, went down, and didn't come back up when power was restore. Shoretel switches came back, PoE switches came back and all phones were stuck in Requesting Service. I powered the server back up, but the phones didn't come out of Requesting Service. Only after I restarted all the phones did the system come back correctly. So, now I live in fear that a power outage will take my server down and the phones won't come back correctly when power is restored. Is the only answer to try and keep the server running with a really big UPS. What if my server crashes and someone unplugs a phone. How do you experienced admins handle this?

[Forum]

Requesting service has NOTHING to do with your server. It means teh phones lost connectivity to the Shoregear switch that connects it. The Shoretel server primary duties are: Shoreware Director (Configuration), AA's, VM's, and WG support. If the server is off, calls will continue, you just won;t have all the 'extra' features.

Consider shutting down the server before all the juice is gone. If you have a nicer APC, have it boot it back up when the power comes back on line. Make sure the SG switches and the PoE switch have adequate backup power. More then likely, the PoE switch is managable. learn how to reboot it remotely.

Ideally:
Power out +0min= Everything on battery
Power out +10min= server shutdown by APC
Power out +25min= remaining devices shutdown due to low battery condition
When power is restored, have the APC power back up all the devices. Verify system is back online. If phones are at requesting service (timed out waiting for switches), then remotely reboot PoE switch.

Something along those lines...

Most times, I don't have issues like this though. How long was the power out???

[Netdawg]

That makes me feel much better. There was a tornado. So, the power was out for many hours. There was no way to keep everything powered up for that long. Can you give me a recommendation on the APC. I knew the UPS would power down the server, but I didn't know it would power the server back up. It sounds like when the power was restored, the SG switches weren't finished booting before the managed phones booted up. My PoE Switches are managed. So, I can remotely reboot them. Unfortunately, I don't work in the office that has the Shoretel system. The only way I'll know that there is a problem on the phones is when a user calls me. I think I'll isolate the SG switches on it's own UPS to hold those up longer. Thanks for your help.

[eazeaz]

Ups

We also have a 3000 APC just for the shoretel switches, poe switches, etc.

The server itself is on a different UPS with the rest of the file servers.

The system stays up a pretty long time (have not tested minutes yet) with the APC extra battery pack installed.

[LonnieBear]

Our UPS system will power the phones and switches for about 90 minutes. Our office is on the outskirts of San Antonio so we saw a potential for extended power outages. In my experience, the Shoretel phones that are in service when the Shoretel server shuts down will continue to operate as long as the Shoregear and T1 switches remain up. The Shoretel server seems to provide services to get the phones booted, provide directory and status for Call Manager, and for Voicemail and Auto Attendant. When the server is not available, the phones seem to operate normally (without voicemail obviously) if they were already booted. However, we have a live person stationed to answer phones 24/7 and do not use the Auto Attendant.

[drvoip]

I think you have the UPS issues covered. Do you have your call flow arranged for server failure? If you have a Trunk Group with a destination of the AA; it will be unavailable when you have a server go off line. You need to plan an alternative strategy like having a WG be the destination; this WG would always forward to the AA; if the server is down, the WG will fail to the back up Extension which should be a HG to assure that phones ring and people do not get that very scary Backup AA!

[Diane]

We are having a planned power outage this weekend. We have UPS keeping Director and ST switches up, but 550 phones out on the floor will be down. When power upgrade work is complete, the network switches will be powered up and phones will start coming back up -- we think!? Do you see any problems with the scenario?

[rwensmann]

Nope, should come up perfectly.

[activitie]

You may also want to go into the server's BIOS settings and check to make sure the setting for when power is restored is set to turn on.