BUILD UPS tip

[jgreco]

Sorry if not clear, I should have not have brought up ecc ram. If the ups is low quality, with all the redundancy in the world, your data won't be safe. I don't know which UPS to buy because "the manufacturer" keeps cutting corners and masking inferior product as same model and price. I have searched and found like 4 brand names people got working. I don't care about brand names but I have to look because I don't want to buy incompatible hardware.

Even a low quality UPS protects against certain types of problems, such as momentary outages. That can be sufficient until the generator backup kicks in.

The problem is that UPS functionality is the big question. "4 brand names people got working" is probably a sideways way to look at it. All UPS's work with FreeNAS - they provide power when the power goes out. It is a question of the finer points. For example, here, we've got a bunch of gear protected by APC SMT's. These have been very pleasant to work with, but they do not work with NUT unless you also happen to have the network management card, so they're probably a nonstarter for home FreeNAS users.

On power loss, the unit has an idea of what its expected runtime is, and will start doing what's called load shedding. It can turn off sets of outlets to help maintain uptime on others, and eventually it will reach a point where it either gets a command from the control host to shut down, or signals the supported hosts that a low battery shutdown is imminent. On restoration of power, the unit will wait until the batteries are sufficiently recharged, and then powers the load back on. Getting all of this right is not total rocket science, but it is functionality that is missing in the lower quality (lower price) units. It is the edge cases in particular that foul up the works, such as, what does the UPS do if it and the hosts have agreed to dump, and then power returns?

 

[wrath]

I'm going with CP850PFCLCD. If I had bigger budget I would have gone for Eaton 5SC750 or Eaton 5P750 (double the price, better nut support). The Eaton 5S1000LCD is attractive but has no pure sine wave for active pfc based SeaSonic SS-400FL2. In case of power failure I will wait until the cyberpower UPS turns off and then restart server.

 

[pclausen]

If you replace the batteries in those SU units and get flashing battery bar graph, you need to recalibrate the battery constant. Tech support used to be able to walk the customer through putting the unit in factory mode and resetting it via CLI, but they stopped doing that a few years ago and would only send out a serial key fob.

Ok, I got a 1400 watt and a 3000 watt Smart UPS that is doing exactly this. (flashing battery bar graph). Both have Ethernet card in them and I tried doing the "battery calibration test" but it didn't fix the issue.

Does this "serial fob key" just short a few pins on the RJ-9 serial connector? If so, which ones? Or, better yet, what is the procedure to put the unit into "factory mode" and correct this situation?

Thanks

 

[pclausen]

This program:

http://apc-fix.com/apcfix

Fixed my battery constant instantly. Cool little utility.

 

[DrumNBisco]

sorry for not replying sooner, the serial key fob sends a few commands to put it in factory mode and change the battery constant. Glad you were able to find a utility that can do the same thing.