Power Tip #1: Ensure That You Are Receiving Alerts on Critical Events:

Posted on August 24, 2020 by Gento

Raritan's PX3 PDUs monitor a variety of electrical and environmental parameters. You can receive alerts on anything that gets monitored – inlet data, outlet data, circuit breaker status, unbalanced loads, and power factor, to name a few. To configure and receive alerts successfully, you need to ensure the following actions have been completed: 

1. Configure Alert Delivery Mechanism – how to set up and receive your alerts: SNMP and/or SMTP.

a. If you prefer your alerts to be sent to an SNMP manager tool, you need to enable: Device Settings > SNMP > Enable SNMP Notifications

It is important to note that this setting is different from the SNMP Agent setting. You won't be receiving SNMP alerts even if you have enabled SNMP v1/ v2c if you don't explicitly enable SNMP Notifications.

Example of SNMP Configuration Illustrated Below.

b. If you prefer your alerts delivered as emails, you need to enable: Device Settings > SMTP Server

The best practice is to create a separate service account for all PDUs to use as 'Sender Email Address' to clearly identify alerts from PDUs. Service accounts are recommended in most organizations for audit trail purposes as well.

Example of SMTP Server Configuration Illustrated Below.

2. Configure Thresholds to trigger events - It is important to note that only a handful of thresholds are enabled by default, so if additional thresholds parameters are needed, you must ensure they are checked off. Depending on the PX3 series, you can set thresholds for inlet/ line, branch circuit, or outlet parameters like current, voltage, power, and energy. The following example explains how to set the thresholds for inlet current of a 16A PDU:

•    Inlet > Thresholds
•    Select RMS Current
•    Upper Warning – make sure it is enabled and enter 12A, for example, if you'd like to receive a warning alert when the inlet current exceeds 8A so you can take the necessary precautionary actions to avoid overloading the PDU.
•    Upper Critical - make sure it is enabled and enter 14A, for example, if you'd like to receive a second alert when the inlet current exceeds 14A so you can act immediately and proactively avert tripping the upstream breaker.

Example of Active Energy Chart Illustrated Below.

3.Setup Event Rules – This is the final step to tie an event to an alert. An event rule consists of two parts:

Event: This is the situation where the PX3 or a device connected to it meets a specific condition. For example, the inlet's voltage reaches the warning level.

Action: This is the response to the event. For example, the PX3 notifies the system administrator of the event via email.

Example of Event Rules Configuration Illustrated Below.

To learn more about how to ensure that you are receiving alerts on critical events watch our previously recorded webinar, here.