Power supply monitoring with PRTG
- PRTG informs you about the status of your power systems
- PRTG can monitor your Power Distribution Units (PDU) via SNMP
- PRTG can monitor your power consumption
The need for monitoring power
Electrical and power systems, like monitoring, are often overlooked as being an important part of the infrastructure. A backup power system at a minimum in form of an Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) is a must to keep your systems operational in the event of an outage. Most power outages are fairly short, about 75% are less than 20 minutes (Ref). For critical systems, a UPS should be able to keep you going for 30 minutes or more. This would allow you to get through most outages without interruption, also allow you enough time to start shutting down systems when the battery charge drops to a critical level.
A UPS combined with a generator for extended outages is desirable for critical systems, though often cost prohibitive. Unless you are monitoring your power systems, you may still be caught off guard and have systems go offline without a graceful shutdown.
Power conditioning device management
Most power systems, UPSs, Power Distribution Units (PDU) include management systems that allow them to be monitored. PRTG Network Monitor can keep you on top of the status of your power systems and informs you how they are performing. If your UPS support standard SNMP (RFC1628/UPS-MIB) is enabled, PRTG should detect them and create sensors to monitor their status.
PRTG sensors for UPS monitoring
What is a sensor?
In PRTG, “sensors” are the basic monitoring elements. One sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, e.g. the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, the free space of a disk drive. On average you need about 5-10 sensors per device or one sensor per switch port.
For generic UPSs, the PRTG sensors monitor (elements monitored varies based on what the manufacturer presents):
- Battery status (normal, low, depleted)
- Remaining runtime, time on battery
- Input/output voltage
- Input out-of-tolerance count (brown-out or high/low voltage events)
- Active alarm count
- Output source (normal, bypass, battery, [voltage] boost/reduce)
- Self-test result (pass, warning, error, aborted, etc. if supported)
A sneak peek at monitoring with PRTG
SNMP Traffic
PRTG "Sunburst" view
Overview of all devices
PRTG sensors for PDU monitoring
Power Distribution Units (PDU) often have a management interface as well. By enabling access through a protocol like SNMP, you can monitor many aspects of the health of the PDU itself, and often the power draw of each of the plugs which means you can also keep track of how much power each of your devices consumes over time.
iSNMP stands for Simple Network Monitoring Protocol. Its usefulness in network administration comes from the fact that it allows information to be collected about network-connected devices in a standardized way across a large variety of hardware and software types. SNMP is a protocol for management information transfer in networks, for use in LANs especially, depending on the chosen version.
Read more
PDUs usually presents information like (again depending upon manufacturer):
- Status
- Input/output voltage
- Input phase
- Socket/plug status (on/off)
- Socket/plug current
By using PRTG sensors or templates, you can create a sensor on your power equipment to keep track of status and performance. PRTG will alert you to power related events, outages and status of equipment. In addition, by selectively setting thresholds for warnings and errors, PRTG can also alert you to problems with batteries that need replacement or heavy loads where your batteries would not meet your runtime requirements.
A monitoring tool like PRTG should be part of your power backup and monitoring strategy. Monitoring and staying aware of the status of your power systems is crucial to reducing unplanned outages and help you achieve 100% uptime.
PRTG has a large complement of sensors that cover a wide range of devices, servers, and protocols. It allows you to stay on top of what is going on in your infrastructure 24/7. PRTG is a great tool to assist you achieving 100% uptime.
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“Fantastic network and infrastructure monitoring solution that is easy to deploy and easier still to use. Simply the best available.”
“Software is absolutely perfect, Support is superior. Meets all needs and requirements, This is a must have solution if you are needing any form of monitoring.”
“The tool excels at its primary focus of being a unified infrastructure management and network monitoring service.”
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“We can all work with greater peace of mind knowing that our systems are constantly
being monitored.”
Markus Puke, Network Administrator, Schüchtermann Klinik, Germany
Keep a constant eye on your UPS
– even while on the go
PRTG can be started within minutes and it's compatible with many mobile devices.
The following blog articles provide
more information about UPS monitoring
Want to read more about hardware monitoring?
Router monitoring
PRTG monitors your routers. In the event of error messages, high bandwidth use, or suspicious traffic, the notification system of PRTG automatically sounds the alarm. Learn more about router monitoring here.
Server room monitoring
PRTG ensures reliable monitoring of server rooms. Monitor temperature fluctuations, humidity, and power outages. More on server room monitoring.
Server monitoring
Whether you’re dealing with a web, database, or mail server: PRTG server monitoring lets you keep an eye on all the key values concerning the availability and performance of your servers. With PRTG, you will increase the stability of your IT infrastructure.
Your investment in quality of service:
PRTG pays for itself in no time
The costs for a one-year PRTG license usually pay for themselves within a few weeks.
PRTG improves the reliability of your
IT infrastructure
PRTG saves network
management costs
PRTG saves time spent on
network management
Over 95% of our customers recommend PRTG
Paessler AG worldwide trialled PRTG in over 600 IT departments.
The aim was to tune the network monitoring software closer to the needs of the administrators.
The result of the survey: over 95% of the participants would recommend PRTG - or already had.
PAESSLER AG –
German quality engineering
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PRTG |
Network Monitoring Software - Version 21.1.66.1664 (March 23th, 2021) |
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Hosting |
Download for Windows and hosted version available |
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Up to 100 sensors for free (Price List) |
Unified Monitoring |
Network devices, bandwidth, servers, applications, virtual environments, remote systems, IoT, and more |
Supported Vendors & Applications |
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