I wanted to post on this topic because the underlying UPS and PDU equipment that feeds our power thirsty server and network gear never seems to get much attention. These are the lowly, second hand citizens of our physical infrastructure. The good news is that we’re breaking the silence today! In this post, I’ll shed some insights on how to give these unsung heroes the love and care they deserve.
To set the stage, we’re purely focusing on the management of Schneider Electric (APC) gear, and specifically devices with APC NMC (network management card), Smart Connect, or common management interface ports. I’m sure that other brands have similar management capabilities. If you support alternate brand gear like Eaton, please do read on but you’ll want to contact your Eaton rep or VAR to see what they offer.
Generally speaking, if you have a couple UPSs and PDUs, you’ll probably get away with managing the stand-alone devices on an individual basis. All these devices have a browser based management UI that you can log into and use to configure, manage, operate, and maintain them. You can set up alerts, view power stats, assess health, and a bunch of other stuff. Again, it’s not a big lift to manage them individually if you have just a handful. However, this approach doesn’t scale well when you’ve got a lot of these devices in all kinds of network closets, server rooms, IDF’s, MDF’s, and data centers. Taking it a step further, if you sprinkle these devices at remote sites all over the globe, you’re going to need to think of a better way to tackle this growing problem.
By now, and as you can probably imagine, things start to get super difficult to manage as your environment grows. Often times though, since these devices are generally set and forget until there’s a problem, I’ve seen a lot of admins just turn a blind eye to them. However, the reality is that these devices run embedded operating systems and they expose services to the networks they connect to. These assets do indeed require operational maintenance throughout their lifecycle. It is indeed important to keep their firmware updated, the devices secure from vulnerabilities, their batteries maintained in a healthy state, and their warranties in check. To accomplish all this, we need one, single pane of glass. We need a tool where all these devices are all linked to, from where you can manage all of them centrally. In the Schneider (APC) space, this solution is referred to as Datacenter Infrastructure Management (DCIM) tooling.
Years ago, the preferred tool for this was called APC Data Center Expert. I’m not going to get into it here because I have a love hate relationship with it. It did certainly help manage a lot of distributed devices (loved it), but it was dated, cranky, and usually warranted a call to APC Support after every upgrade (hated it). It was a paid tool as well and just tossing that in here for general awareness.
Fast forwarding to more recent times, Schneider Electric, probably recognizing that they needed a more modern solution, set out to deliver a reasonably good offering in Schneider Electric EcoStruxure IT Expert. This is a modern, SaaS, cloud-based solution that enables monitoring and visibility into your IT physical infrastructure from anywhere. Also, for general awareness, this is not a free service but I would say that the juice is worth the squeeze, in my opinion. It delivers on the centralized, single pane of glass experience and does so with a fairly simple to deploy solution.
Before we get into the solution architecture and high level deployment, let’s talk about what it can do for your distributed power infrastructure. Below is a list of the features and capabilities that I find most useful and you can check out the link above to further dig into any of this.
- Inventory and asset management
- Configuration and day 2 management, including firmware upgrades
- Warranty and service information
- Instant visibility to critical infrastructure health, consumption and metrics, reporting
- Advanced remote monitoring via ExoStruxure IT mobile app
- Integrates with your Identity Provider
- Alarms, notification, and predictive maintenance
- Data driven insights and recommendations
In terms of the solution architecture, it’s not a big deal or overly complicated. It pretty much consists of these main components:
- SaaS web application (your tenant at se.com) that’s hosted in their cloud infrastructure
- Identity Provider like MS Entra is recommended, for user authentication
- A Linux or Windows based VM with line of sight to all the APC gear you want to monitor, for installing the IT Expert Eco (ITE) Gateway application
- IT Expert Eco (ITE) Gateway requires https (TCP, 443) to the SaaS web application
- Schneider Electric and/or APC gear with management interfaces, accessible from the IT Expert Eco (ITE) Gateway appliance using various ports and protocols
To help frame out how all the pieces fit, this is it what it looks like :
SaaS Web App at se.com <—– TCP, 443 —– ITE Gateway VM <—– various ports, protocols —–> PDU and UPS Gear NMC/Smart Ports
With everything up to this point in mind, the remainder of the post is the basic step-by-step. Consider this a general guide though and not specifically tailored for your environment and all its nuances.
Step 1: Pre-Configuring the APC Hardware and Networking
Log into your NMC web interfaces and ensure the basics are set:
- Identity & Location: Set your unique device password on first logon and populate the Location ID (Configuration > General > Identification). ITE maps this location string straight to your cloud dashboard.
- Network Identity: Assign your static IP, Mask, Gateway (Configuration > Network > TCP/IP > IPv4) and your primary/secondary DNS (Configuration > Network > DNS).
- Management Protocol: Enable SNMPv1 Access (Configuration > Network > SNMPv1 > Access) and establish your community string in Access Control.
- File Transfer and Firmware Protocol: Enable FTP (Configuration > Network > FTP > Access)
If your security policy requires SNMPv3, ensure the encryption settings on the NMC match the Gateway. When configuring AES on the APC NMC, always select AES128 in the ITE Gateway interface. If you have firewalls between your gear and the gateway appliance, you must account for that in any applicable ACLs (see below)
| Source | Destination | Protocol | Port(s) | Description |
| ITE Gateway IP | Device or Device Subnet | UDP | 161 | SNMP Polling |
| ITE Gateway IP | Device or Device Subnet | TCP | 21 and 22 | Firmware / Config File Transfer |
| Device or Device Subnet | ITE Gateway IP | UDP | 162, 1062 | Real-time SNMP Traps |
Step 2: Provisioning the IT Gateway
With your power gear ready to talk, it’s time to configure the ITE Gateway.
Deploy and Access the Gateway Interface – Once the Gateway software is installed on your local Windows or Linux server, open a browser and navigate to https://<Gateway_IP_or_Hostname>/gateway/index.html. Establish your local ITE Gateway admin password.
Define Device Credentials – Before scanning, you must tell the Gateway what strings to use. Go to Device Credentials and select New Credentials. Add your SNMPv1 community string (or SNMPv3 profiles) to match the settings you configured on the NMCs.
Add File Transfer Credentials – Navigate to File Transfer Credentials and select FTP or SCP. Enter the management username and password for your APC cards. This allows ITE to push mass firmware updates directly from the cloud through the gateway.
Run Device Discovery – Go to Discover Devices. Input the specific static IP addresses or the entire management subnet range of your UPS and PDU gear. Click Discover. The gateway will scan the range, match the credentials, and pull the hardware into the local pool.
Register Gateway to the Cloud – Click the Register Gateway button. Log into your centralized EcoStruxure IT organization account. This binds the local gateway token to your cloud tenant, sending all discovered UPS and PDU data straight to your cloud console and mobile app.
Step 3: Verifying Telemetry in the ITE Cloud Console
Once the sync completes, log into the EcoStruxure IT web portal or mobile app to verify your deployment:
- Inventory Validation: Check the Devices tab to ensure your Smart-UPS and Rack PDUs appear with their correct hostnames and location fields.
- Sensor Check: Drill down into a PDU to verify that phase load, breaker states, and total power draw are updating in real time.
- Threshold Tuning: Go to Configuration > Thresholds to set up cloud-managed alert policies for critical events (such as low runtime or high current), bypassing the need to manage individual alert logic on every standalone endpoint.
In summary, and hopefully as you can see, this is not a big deal and actually a project that’s worth it in my opinion. It solves some real challenges and helps you manage a lot of stuff with more efficiency while greatly improving visibility and overall management. It’s not going to break the bank either. Connect with your Schneider Electric rep for more information and start giving these devices the love they deserve!