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UPC Back UP - Auto Shut Down AND Auto Start up After Power is Restored?

I have a Mac Mini Server (Late 2012) with Yosemite. The UPC that it is connected too offers a option to shut down the mini-mac...


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WILL MY MAC STILL AUTOMATICALLY RESTART AFTER POWER FAILURE with the ABOVE shut down sequence in place?


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OR DO I NEEED TO 'UNCHECK' THE Shut Down sequence if the UPC is running low on power and just enable the Auto Start? Do I even need the UPS to shut down my Mac when the power gets low?


Any help will be appreciated.

Mac Mini Server (Late 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Apr 19, 2015 8:35 PM

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7 replies

Apr 19, 2015 11:40 PM in response to Terry_SMC

What are the setting options in UPS for controlling that function?


I'd be sure to have the UPS power auto shut-off set with a reserve

of at least 25%, especially if you choose auto-start, so there may

be some time for the battery to recharge, or so the unit may be able

to protect the Mac should another outage occur shortly after the first.


Depending on how you use your computer, and the capacity of the UPS

(duration of runtime on battery power) your settings will vary. As my Mac

has an APC UPS unit of limited power reserve, I am sure to not let it sit

there & waste the battery until near zero, because recharge takes hours.


Are you using the Mini Server, as a Server? (One of mine is a Server, &

the same vintage as yours, but not in-use as such, at the present time.)


With mine, since I don't want to have them on and off again if I am not

there to be sure things are correct (poor power grid here, and no means

of communicating an outage to the provider, since all phones die, too)

my settings are quite different where I am now, in a city that is backward.


Mine is set to shut off and not auto-start on resumption of grid power.


Across both possible choices of these settings, be sure there is a

continuity so at least until you can be there and test it yourself, it

would not be restart. Not unless there is adequate power reserves.


You could test the UPS (as I've had to do, after finding a new unit that

was fully charged, fail and crash my Mac) by putting a load on it, then

pull the AC power to the UPS, so it reacts like the power went out. To

see if I could kill my UPS (without mac attached) I repeatedly put the

power to the UPS and removed power, for quite some time. This, after

the unit failed under load, with a full 24 hour charge, in first-use, new.

My choice was to put a 1,000watt halogen light on the UPS, to try &

make the switching circuit permanently fail under warranty, so I could

drive it back to town (120 miles) and get another. It didn't fail, though...


My older Mini has the UPS control over power to both Mini Macs; it is

set to shut down at 30% power, and when I am not going to be in the

area (out of town a day or two) I shut down my computers since I am

in the present company of idiot urbanites whose power grid is worse

than what I'd been accustomed to in a somewhat rural AK location.

Not being able to report outages or call 9-1-1 is an urban mystery here.😐

Apr 20, 2015 7:55 AM in response to Terry_SMC

You would want one of the shutdown options enabled - it does not matter which, this would allow the server to shutdown tidily before the power completely runs out. The idea being this prevents the chance of hard disk corruption.


The fact these options are showing up suggests you have a USB connection to the UPS.


As per Illaass' post, people have reported that when a Mac shuts down after being effectively told to do so by the UPS, then it will not subsequently restart. If true the theory is that this is because it is considered a 'normal' shutdown and hence the option to restart after a power failure does not apply.


I did send Apple an 'enhancement' request regarding this issue and their initial reply implied they felt it worked as it was supposed to and would restart. Personally I am still highly dubious about this and replied to them as such.


There used to be an accessory for Macs which used an external hardware device to force turning the Mac on, if I remember correctly this only used to be possible with old Macs that used ADB (Apple Desktop Bus) keyboards and not newer Macs with USB keyboards so a very long time ago. The ADB keyboard had a physical power button on it, and this device emulated that button. USB keyboards have no power button.


It therefore seems to be a possible catch-22, either a tidy shutdown preventing corruption or a run till the battery is flat and then it will restart later as this is considered a power failure.


My enhancement request was that there should be a third type of shutdown - a shutdown not due to a normal shutdown, nor due to a power failure but a shutdown as requested (effectively) by a UPS. Then when power is restored or some other signal occurs it starts the Mac up. Of course if the Mac shuts down before the UPS goes flat and power is really restored before the UPS goes flat then it might be that power never completely disappears as far as the Mac is concerned. There would be nothing Apple or the Mac could do about that, it may be the UPS could treat the restoration of power as a reason to first cycle power to its outputs which would then trigger the Mac.


'Real' servers often have a 'lights out' management function, the old lamented Xserve had this feature but not Mac Pro or Mac mini computers. It maybe 'real' servers with such a feature could be monitoring a UPS even when turned 'off'. This might explain why Windows people claim they can do this with their 'real' servers.


As a general comment, I spec up a UPS system with a run-time i.e. battery capacity sufficient to outlast average power cuts, e.g. 45 minutes.

Apr 20, 2015 8:10 AM in response to John Lockwood

Thanks for this. I think you are right. We had a old X-Serve with lights out and never had a issue starting after power failure and auto shut down by the UPC. At this point, I really need to the server to AUTO start after power failure more so that a tidy shut down. It's on RAID so I do have another back up of my HD should it be corrupted and also a external Time Machine backup to restore from should there be any issue. Hope Apple makes a option for this like they did with their older servers.

UPC Back UP - Auto Shut Down AND Auto Start up After Power is Restored?

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