1

Have a UPS that is approx. 9 months old. Recently had a powercut and in the Powerchute network shutdown logs states when the power went out and then report as low battery event, and our VM get shutdown. According to the data logs on the Management card of UPS, the batter goes from 100% capacity to 30.00% straight away which doesn’t make sense… The current load is 18%.

I have a call with APC and they have mentioned the following "

Computer/Server power supplies draw only a fraction of their full capacity during it’s steady state(normal operation) and the UPS is at Online mode, When the UPS switches to On-Battery mode in response to power cut or any electrical event, PFC power supplies have the potential to draw their full capability during initial inrush. ““Inrush”” or ““Inrush Current”” refers to the maximum instantaneous input current drawn by an electrical device when first turned on. That’s why the battery charge of your UPS went down from 100% to 30%.

How would a server psu know its on battery, if its still getting power it doesn’t care does it??

Can anyone agree with this/understand this?

I was thought it maybe a dodgy battery. Thoughts?

thanks

2 Spice ups
2

This problem is a battery issue not a power issue. What is the load in WATTS on the UPS? for that drastic change the battery needs to be replaced and if this is a new device they should be able to replace it.

3

If they still refuse, plan on using Eaton as they are pretty good as well.

2 Spice ups
4

thanks for the quick reply. Do you agree with what they say?

5

I don’t agree with their assesment, what did they do on the call to troubleshoot?

6

it states the following

UPS Status Smart-UPS 2200 Last Battery Transfer:Detection of low utility voltage

Battery Temperature:25.2°C

Runtime Remaining: 1hour 4min

UPS Input Input Voltage:240.4 VAC@ 49.9 Hz

UPS Output Output Voltage:240.4 VAC@ 49.9 Hz

Load Current:1.6 Amps

Output VA:16.9 %

Output Watts:16.9 %

Output Efficiency:96.0 %

Output Energy Usage:2827.96 kWh

Battery Status State of Charge:100.0 %

Battery Voltage:54.5 VDC

7

Could it be that you have a 20amp UPS and a 15amp outlet? The battery doesn’t complain but when there is a draw like charging the battery at the same time as the units are being powered it gripes? Check that the blades are normal or 20amp 120v. Then also check the breaker to see if it’s 15amp or 20amp.

8

I’m a long time Schneider Electric APC customer and that answer sounds fishy.

They are confusing the “inrush” of power when you power on something with your situation where servers are already powered on and running when the power is cut… your servers didn’t all power on simultaneously causing an abnormal spike in current draw from the UPS.

Technically your server’s are ALWAYS running on battery power. They don’t fail over, that’s the job of the UPS and is how it provides power conditioning as well as battery backup. There should be absolutely zero difference from the clients point of view when connected to the UPS during a power event… that’s why you have software like PowerChute to automate a safe shutdown because the client doesn’t have any intelligence into how much battery is remaining and when it should execute a graceful shutdown.

I think you should call and either escalate the issue or ask to speak with their manager.

1 Spice up
9

Hi Tony,

I think I located the case for your call in. Is this in regards to an SMT2200RMI2U? If so, it sounds like you have a server with multiple supplies and two were plugged into this UPS and two in another UPS. Really, the only time we might see an increase in power draw from the servers would be when they are shutting down. I have seen instances where customers will have all of their servers shutdown at the same time and that can overload a UPS. It does not sound like that is the case though from your description. At 18% load, you should have approximately 50 minutes of run time.

I would recommend testing this when you have a moment by turning off the PowerChute software, unplugging the unit and letting it run on battery while watching the load, battery capacity and run time on the network management card you have installed in the unit. Typically only a bad battery or possibly a bad connection on the battery would drop the capacity that quickly. If you would please ensure all the battery connections are tight before running the unit on battery, I would appreciate it. Take note of the run time, load capacity and battery capacity when the unit first goes to battery, five minutes after going to battery and every five minutes after that. If you find the run time is fine on the unit, it may be something in the software that needs to be tweaked. If the run time is low for the load though, the battery most likely needs to be replaced. If I located the correct case for you, this unit was purchased in October 2016. If that is correct, then it would be within warranty and your local APC help desk should be able to assist you with any warranty battery replacements you may need.

Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance,

Patricia

10

If what the APC person right now is saying, then yes it makes sense. You cannot have 2 power supplies of one server on the same UPS, it will do what is doing right now.

11

Based on my experienced with UPS, few things that you need to take in consideration.

  1. How many devices are plug into the UPS

  2. How much power each device is pulling

  3. battery age, it maybe 9 months but it maybe already swallow…

  4. How long was the power outage.

to answer your questions,

  1. The server doesn’t know where is getting its power. ( If you can I would plug one power cord to the UPS and the other to the wall or second UPS)

  2. Agree half way, based on the status of the UPS. Maybe its not charging correctly or maybe not all batteries are working.

  3. I would suggest to add another UPS and plug on server power cord to one and the second power cord to the 2nd UPS.

Basically, Overall is down to more testing process. redesign your UPS plan. In our case in our data Center we have UPS for our serves, usually they come with 2 power supplies, so we connect one to the UPS and one to the building wall. Then we have a generator that backups the building power that kick in seconds after power goes off.

in our IDFs we balance our switches to 2 or 3 batteries based on the quantity of switches…

hope this info help you.