UPS support for something other than APC??

[jbuszkie]

My old Back-UPS 350 (Which is quickly becoming undersized) is starting to die!  It's shutting down the system almost immediately when I pull the plug.

 

A couple questions..  does the APCUPSD have a command to test the battery?

 

IF I do have to replace, is there support in APCUPSD (or is there en equivalent pachage) for something other than the

way overpriced APC brand of UPS's

 

Thanks,

 

Jim

[prostuff1]

My old Back-UPS 350 (Which is quickly becoming undersized) is starting to die!  It's shutting down the system almost immediately when I pull the plug.

 

A couple questions..  does the APCUPSD have a command to test the battery?

 

IF I do have to replace, is there support in APCUPSD (or is there en equivalent pachage) for something other than the

way overpriced APC brand of UPS's

 

Thanks,

 

Jim

Do a search on the forum, but I don't think anything besides APC are working properly.  All you would have to do is by a new battery for the unit, search ebay for a good price on a battery.

[jbuszkie]

I've replaced the battery not too long ago..  I think the internals are getting flaky..

 

I can get a new battery..  but I'd like to be able to test the old one first.

[JonathanM]

I've replaced the battery not too long ago..  I think the internals are getting flaky..

 

I can get a new battery..  but I'd like to be able to test the old one first.

If you are mechanically inclined, just hook a set of jumper cables to the UPS battery wires and

test using your car battery or a jumpstart box. To properly (and thoroughly) test a UPS, you

need a couple things. First, an appropriately sized dummy load (if you don't know what the

draw of your typical load is, you can just use a couple table lamps with 100W bulbs. 200W

would be pretty much the biggest load I'd use to test a 350VA UPS. Second, you need a power

strip so you can turn off the power to the UPS without breaking the ground connection. It's

not a good idea to just pull the plug to test a UPS, it's much better to switch off the outlet

it's connected to, so the ground path is maintained, especially if you leave the data line

connected to the PC.

 

To test your rig, here is the sequence I would use. Power down the server properly, unplug

the server power from the APC, and plug the server power directly into the wall, but leave the

data connection attached. Plug the APC into a power strip, and plug the lamps into the APC.

Turn on the power strip, turn on the lamps, turn on the server. Wait for the server to boot,

go to the unmenu system info and monitor the UPS status, then turn off the power strip

and observe the UPS status, and the lamps, while the battery runs down.

 

After doing that test with the built in battery, I'd do the same test with a much bigger battery,

and compare the resulting run time. I'm betting that your UPS and battery are just fine, but

the battery just doesn't have the amp hour capacity to keep the server up for more than

a few minutes. You really do need a fairly accurate measure of your servers power needs

in order to make a good decision when choosing a battery backup.

http://www.safehomeproducts.com/shp2/product/kill-a-watt-electrical-usage-power-meter/power-meters/979/979.aspx?source=GoogleBase

This is what I use.

[jbuszkie]

I have a kill-a-watt right on the server so I know I draw about 110 watts with all the disks spun up.

I'll have to see what happend when I power up..  but I believe the back ups es350 was

able to handle 200 Watts.  

 

I just ordered another battery so well see it that's the issue.  

 

I do like the idea of trying with a different battery (jumpstart box).  Maybe I'll try that.

 

Jim

 

 

[jbuszkie]

I've done a couple experiments...

 

MY system shut down because I had less then 5 minutes remaining.

The spec says I should get about 9min @100w. And that's probably with

a brand new battery!  That's not a lot of time!  Especially when I had the shutdown @5 min

remaining! So I think I have a weak battery and an undersized battery!

 

I think it's time to up the battery. (or up the UPS)

 

 

 

[JonathanM]

I've done a couple experiments...

 

MY system shut down because I had less then 5 minutes remaining.

The spec says I should get about 9min @100w. And that's probably with

a brand new battery!  That's not a lot of time!  Especially when I had the shutdown @5 min

remaining! So I think I have a weak battery and an undersized battery!

 

I think it's time to up the battery. (or up the UPS)

 

This is exactly what I figured you would find out. As far as upping the UPS capacity, if you are truly only going to need 100W of power, I see no need to go to a bigger unit. Since you seem unafraid to tinker, I suggest looking into an automotive sized deep cycle battery. That should give you almost an hour or so. Just be careful to not overheat your UPS, either on the recharge or discharge side of the cycle. A UPS that is only designed to charge and discharge a 7 AH battery may need help staying cool if you give it a big gulp sized 40 AH battery like this one http://www.discountpv.com/batteries/ty-12-40.htm

[mbryanr]

Estimation of UPS draw should be based on the following...

 

One issue we face is that in a power-down situation we MUST be able to size the UPS for the peak demand of the server when initially spinning up all its drives at the same time.

 

To shut down the server, all the disks must be cleanly un-mounted. That requires spinning them all up.  The UPS must be able to handle the peak load of initially spinning the all drives up, all at the same time, not just the average load with them all spinning.

 

I have a APC Back-UPS 750VA UPS on my older unRAID server.  It is barely able to handle spinning up the 14 disks mounted in it. (all older non-green disks) It "beeps" telling me it is overloaded for a second or two if I loose power.  It is only able to provide an estimated 7 minutes of run-time.  It is "rated" at a nominal load of 450 Watts and with all its disks spinning during a parity check it is at 53% of its capacity.

 

Joe L.

[jbuszkie]

It's interesting that my "Percent Load Capacity isn't updated until it goes onto battery power!

 

Weird....

[Joe L.]

My old Back-UPS 350 (Which is quickly becoming undersized) is starting to die!  It's shutting down the system almost immediately when I pull the plug.

 

A couple questions..  does the APCUPSD have a command to test the battery?

 

IF I do have to replace, is there support in APCUPSD (or is there en equivalent pachage) for something other than the

way overpriced APC brand of UPS's

 

Thanks,

 

Jim

but only because nobody has taken the time or made the effort it install and configure "nut" , the other UPS package.  I used apcupsd because I had an APC UPS,not for any other reasn

Do a search on the forum, but I don't think anything besides APC are working properly.  All you would have to do is by a new battery for the unit, search ebay for a good price on a battery.

go for it.

[speeding_ant]

I've got a compiled driver for PowerWare Software driven UPS's. 

 

That would include the cheaper Dynamix UPS's etc...