APC 3000 issue

[Anonymous user]

Greetings folks,

I hope I'm posting this to the appropriate group. If not, please let me know.

We have a pair of APC Smart - UPS 3000, firmware rev is ID18UPS 06.5. While performing some maintenance recently, we plugged in a Lenovo laptop running Windows 7 to the serial port of one of the APC units and it immediately shut down. We were able to reproduce the problem after bringing it back online. It seems the laptop is sending a shutdown/terminate signal to the APC unit upon connection??!

Is this a known problem? Firmware update needed? Very strange indeed. We are using 3rd party software/device for the serial port, a USB serial port adapter from Keyspan TripLite.

Thank you in advance for any info.

BuddyD

[Anonymous user]

Greetings folks,

I hope I'm posting this to the appropriate group. If not, please let me know.

We have a pair of APC Smart - UPS 3000, firmware rev is ID18UPS 06.5. While performing some maintenance recently, we plugged in a Lenovo laptop running Windows 7 to the serial port of one of the APC units and it immediately shut down. We were able to reproduce the problem after bringing it back online. It seems the laptop is sending a shutdown/terminate signal to the APC unit upon connection??!

Is this a known problem? Firmware update needed? Very strange indeed. We are using 3rd party software/device for the serial port, a USB serial port adapter from Keyspan TripLite.

Thank you in advance for any info.

BuddyD

[BillP]

Hello,

APC UPSs require proprietary serial cables. When you use standard serial cables, this is the type of behavior you see because of the different pinout in the cable.

It is OK to use the serial to USB adapter but we need to identify the part number of the serial cable you're using between that and the UPS. It should be a DB-9 to RJ-45 cable and the RJ-45 end connects to the port labeled SERIAL on the UPS and the DB-9 to the serial/DB-9 side to your USB to serial adapter. The DB-9 connector on the UPS cable should have a part number engraved into it. Can you confirm what you see there? This UPS requires 940-0625 or 940-1525.

You should have it set up such as Laptop USB port->USB to serial adapter->APC specific serial cable DB-9 side->RJ-45 connector to UPS serial port.

[Anonymous user]

Thank you both Bill P and Angela N !

I looked into this a bit further, we have a network card ( 9630, I believe ) on the units. I also discovered a "strange" looking cable connected to one of the units 940-0299A (?). This is plugged in to a single pin port labelled console.

Is this the correct cable to use for direct access, if necessary?

Thanks again to both of you.

Buddy

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hi

940-0299 is used for direct access to the AP9630 Network Management Card and is only intended for serial communication/configuration to the network card.

What are you trying to do via serial cable by connecting a laptop? If you have a Network Management Card, you'd likely want to set that up and then access it over the network for management and monitoring of the UPS. If you need computers/servers to gracefully shutdown, you'd then use PowerChute Network Shutdown software on them and they would talk over the network to the Network Management Card to keep an eye on UPS status, etc. Typically, you would not be connecting a serial cable beyond briefly for configuring the AP9630 if you needed to via that method and then 940-0299 should be removed.

[Anonymous user]

Hi Angela,

Thanks again for the advice. Yes, we do have the units on the network and they are being monitored (SNMP) and are readily accessible. The serial/console access only comes into play in a worst case scenario but after further discussion here, we don't think it's really necessary. We were more concerned initially with the status of the units and perhaps thought we might have a misconfiguration on the network card.

Thanks again for all your help, much appreciated!