I have three APC PDU AP7900 and I’m about to dispose of one of them. I like to wipe the configuration from equipment prior to disposal. I could not recall the login details for any of my three PDUs. Fortunately, I still had the serial cable required to get into the console. I also had my serial cable for my laptop.
Getting hold of one of these cables is important if you are ever going to own one of these devices. Without one, you will surely find frustration.
You might want to have a paper clip for pressing the reset button. Once you have the serial cable attached, try 9600 baud to connect.
- Press the reset button for 10 seconds
- The light might start pulsing or go out
- Release the reset button and press it again for 1 second
- The light should pulse / go orange
- After a short while (10-20s), the reset will be complete
- Now you can login as apc/apc
When assigning network settings, go into Network | DNS | Advanced | Manual. It’s not very clear that this is where the initial configuration should occur.
I was also concerned, needlessly, that resetting the PDU would power cycle the attached equipment; it did not, but I tried on a separate unit and with a lamp plugged into it first. Then I felt confident about doing the same on my own gear.
I would like to add SSL certificates to the units, but they seem to want very small certs. I think I’d rather just use ssh instead, and rely upon the entries in ~/.ssh/know_hosts. ssh public keys would be better.
A note to myself: Safari likes APC PDU web interfaces better than Chrome or Firefox. Use it first.
