For my new home lab, I have bought a couple of used APC AP7920 switched PDUs. These are ideal for me as they take a 13-Amp C14 input (often known as a “kettle lead”, colloquially) and provide a maximum of 10A across 8 C13 output sockets.

I also bought a serial cable for them, to connect to the console locally (mainly for recovery purposes).

The serial terminal settings required, from the manual are:

  • 9600bps
  • 8 data bits
  • no parity
  • 1 stop bit
  • no flow control

The default username and password are both apc.

If necessary, to reset the username and password:

  1. With a serial cable connected press the reset button until the status LED (on the etjernet port) flashes orange and green alternately
  2. Press the reset button again
  3. When the PDU restarts log in with the apc username/password combination within 30 seconds
  4. Once logged in, the administrator username and password can be changed and/or the settings reset (System -> Tools -> Reset to Defaults)

minicom and be used to login to the PDU over the serial connection, it needs to be started in with minicom -s to start in configuration mode, or it will try to connect to the default /dev/modem which will fail (presuming that /dev/modem isn’t the serial port the PDU is attached to). Go to Serial port setup to configure the settings per above. Once configured, exit the configuration menu (the return key will exit the serial port configuration menu) and press Ctrl-A followed by m to connect. Ctrl-A followed by z will give the help screen.

I will be configuring the attached, unmanaged, computers to return to a powered-on state in the event of power loss/recovery so they can be remotely powered up by toggling the power state of the APC PDU port. The ports powering the network switch will be configured to come on when power is restored to the PDU itself, all other ports will be kept off until manually powered on.