APC 10000 - Low battery duration settings

[Anonymous user]

Hello,

I have installed my 3 APC UPS devices into my datacentre and got them onto the network management via their mgt card.  I didnt install the Powerchute software just yet as i am happy enough with the view i can see from the web page.  All i really need from these is snmpc traps, email alerts and logs which all seem to be working.  Basically if the mains power goes off, the generator will run in 60 seconds.  I just need them to run for this time and i have tested this and had no problems.

All i want to do now is make sure the UPS will stay online for at least 30 mins if the mains power was to go off and the generator did not kick in after 60 seconds. In this scenario i would want my UPS to stay on for at least 30 mins as long as they are not overloaded (which would be my fault).  But i dont want them to shut down after say 5 minutes because i have some setting in the configuration which shuts them do (HP UPS do this until you tell them not to).

The UPS are not overloaded - only 35% max load on each.

So i amended the following settings:

Configuration

Shutdown

Low Battery duration      20 minutes

Shutdown delay             960 seconds (max i could put it to which is 16 mins)

Everything is defaults

Is this correct?

thanks,

Kevin

[BillP · Accepted solution]

I would revert the settings back. The way the APC UPS works is it will run as long as possible unless you tell it otherwise.

How much total runtime does your UPS have? The low battery duration refers to the low battery time meaning when the UPS has this much runtime remaining, it will start reporting it has a low battery and continue to run that amount of time and then apply the shutdown delay.

If you're not going to use PowerChute Network Shutdown with this system, you cna just put the low battery duration back to 2 minutes and put the shutdown delay to the default which I think is 90 seconds. So, the UPS will run as long as it can until 2 minutes is left, start announcing a low battery, and then apply a 90 second shutdown delay before turning off.

The only time I'd recommend we start tweaking these settings possibly is if you plan on using PowerChute with some supported systems and need to account for the right amount of time that they need to power off safely.

Let me know if you have additional questions Kevin.