It seems to be ReadyNAS week at markwilson.it because that’s what I’ve spent the last couple of days working with but the ReadyNAS really is a stonking piece of hardware (think of it as a £150 Linux box with built-in X-RAID) and mine will soon be providing the storage for a Windows Home Server VM (yes, I know the ReadyNAS can do loads of the things that WHS can, but I work with Microsoft products and it’s about time I had a serious look at WHS).

Anyway, my ReadyNASes are running off an APC Smart-UPS 1500 but only one of them has the USB connection to monitor the UPS status. It turns out that’s not a problem as the latest versions of the ReadyNAS software (RAIDiator) allow one ReadyNAS to act as a UPS status server for the others.

I think this needs at least v4.1.5 of RAIDiator (my ReadyNAS “UPS client” shipped with v4.1.4 and I updated it to v4.1.6, meanwhile the “UPS server” is running v4.1.5) but there is an option on the Power page in FrontView (the ReadyNAS web administration console) to define hosts that are allowed to monitor the attached UPS (where a physical connection to the UPS exists).

Similarly, on a ReadyNAS that is not physically connected to a UPS, it is possible to specify the IP address of a ReadyNAS that is connected to the UPS.

With these settings enabled, both ReadyNAS devices can cleanly shutdown in the event of a power failure.

I wonder if my Windows Server 2008 host can also monitor the ReadyNAS and shut itself down in the event of power loss too…