2

I have an interesting problem - we are going to test our UPS backup system by pulling the plug in our server room for a short time.

Ideally the UPS will kick in and nothing interesting will happen, but there is of course a slight chance that the UPS will malfunction and our servers will drop dead from the power loss.

My question is - how can I minimize the effects of such a scenario? The machine is a Windows Server 2008R2 with some MS SQL instances - I figured I will put the databases offline and stop the SQL service, but there is still a chance that Windows will decide to mess with system files during the test and then it won't be able to boot properly again.

How can I make sure that Windows Server boots gracefully after a power loss? Thanks for all the ideas!

Rafał Saltarski
  • 133
  • 1
  • 5
  • 2
    http://superuser.com/questions/833552/manually-flushing-write-cache-on-windows Flush the disk cache, probably easier than going through and making sure all disks and raid setups are in the safest cache setting. The disk will still be marked dirty, there will just be less cleanup. You could suspend about 16 processes too, and disable ~6 devices and all the disk, but that would seem inpractical and unreal. I wouldnt really worry about it for the most part the system can hard power off and live again, it happens to people :-). – Psycogeek Jun 16 '15 at 12:07
  • I suppose it's not the end of the world, but I would like to minimize the risk of wasting my Sunday on restoring Windows Server. :-P Thanks a lot for your advice, much appreciated! – Rafał Saltarski Jun 16 '15 at 12:17
  • I am thinking have it process something like Pi or prime, or be doing a memory test (got ecc?), or doing some other non writing process on purpose, so if a tiny glitch in the system happened during the switching, the calculation for prime would be wrong, or whatever. – Psycogeek Jun 16 '15 at 12:43

1 Answers1

1

How about hibernate mode? shutdown /h

BowlesCR
  • 2,697
  • 12
  • 19
  • That defeats the purpose of the UPS test, since - correct me if I'm wrong - the server will be in a state that does not require power? I could also just shut it down and be done with it, but the purpose of the test is to have it powered on constantly. – Rafał Saltarski Jun 16 '15 at 12:54
  • Correct, it will be off. You really can't get both here - the server is either running (and risks crashing at powerfail) or not. If you really want to safely test that the UPS can handle load, I'd shut down the server and instead use some of those 500w painters lights or similar to provide a simulated load. – BowlesCR Jun 16 '15 at 12:58
  • I'll have a hard time getting this idea through the management... ;) But your effort is appreciated and I upvoted your answer, thanks! – Rafał Saltarski Jun 16 '15 at 13:02
  • Management hires people like you so they have someone to blame when their ideas don't work out. – Moab Jun 16 '15 at 13:15