From shott at snf.stanford.edu  Sat Nov 16 08:23:54 2002
From: shott at snf.stanford.edu (John Shott)
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 08:23:54 -0800
Subject: APC UPS units ...
Message-ID: <3DD6711A.7A1B9EF@snf.stanford.edu>

As you likely recall, we recently had a brief period during which people were
unable to enable/disable some pieces of equipment on Coral.  This turned out
to be due to a failure of the APC battery backup UPS that we use on the
system.

More detailed study showed that the internal sealed lead acid batteries had
gotten weak.  When I measured them they had an open-circuit voltage of
appoximately ... they are supposed to be 12+ volts.  In general, many of the
APC units run a self-test every two weeks ... unfortunately, many of our UPS
units are inspected only rarely.  So, I'll bet that this unit showed a problem
for some time ... that we never saw.  According to APC technical folks, if the
internal battery voltage falls below 11 volts, the APC will shutdown and not
restart ... this, of course, ultimately resulted in the Walker computer
shutting down.

Replacement of the batteries fixed the situation ... and walker is back in
business.

However, I suggest that our Christmas shutdown might be a good time to check
some of our other  APC units.  If people would send me location, model number,
and serial number, I will try to assemble a list of these units.

I also found that Stanford has an account with a company called Insight that
represents APC and sells us APC stuff for about 10% less than APC will ...
well, their price on replacement batteries, at least, was 10% less.  Plus the
batteries come with a prepaid mailer so that the old battery can be shipped
back to APC for recycling.

The Insight Contact information is:

Insight US (includes TC Computers)
6820 South Harl Ave.
Tempe, Arizona
U.S.A. 85283

TEL: 800.467.4448 (800-INSIGHT)
TEL: 480.333.3001 (General Information)

The person that I dealt with, and is, I think, the Stanford account rep is:

Jonathan Naumann                                                               
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE                                                              
1-800-INSIGHT x5956                                                            
Mailstop: AA0901                                                               
fax: (480)760-9345