Planned 12 Hour Power Outage: What to do.

[Anonymous user]

Hi All,

We have a Symmetra RM 6000 that all our servers are on. We are having a planned outage by our power company of 12 hours overnight and wondering what the best thing to do is. I plan on shutting all our servers down and powering off, so they will be very little pulling power from the UPS, but I was wondering if it was best to leave the UPS on, put in bypass, or shut it off.

Or does it make a difference

Many Thanks,

CWH

[BillP]

Hi claytonh - We'd suggest you power down the UPS completely and then dis-engage any battery modules. If you have any extended run frames, don't forget to dis-engage the batteries on those as well. To dis-engage, just slide them out a few inches so they are not connected to the frame.

During any extended (let's say more then 2 hours) power down or storage of the UPS, if you leave them connected, they will discharge into the UPS and you'll have dead batteries.

[Anonymous user]

Let me ask a stupid question then. How do I power it down? Is it the Input Circuit Breaker in the back or is it something through the software interface?

[BillP · Accepted solution]

After you power your servers down and nothing else is relying on output from the UPS, go ahead and turn off the System Enable switch on the front of the UPS. You'll need to take the bezel off and you'll see this switch right near the intelligence modules on the right hand side behind that bezel. Then, just dis-engage the batteries as I noted. To turn back on, insert the batteries first and make sure they are fully seated and then turn system enable on. To have the output turned on once the UPS electronics turn back on, you'll need to use either the front powerview display or management card to turn the UPS output on. If in the NMC, you'll see it under Control most likely and then on the front powerview display, it is under the control menu too.

here is the operator's guide for reference: http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/ASTE-6Z3QGM/ASTE-6Z3QGM_R2_EN.pdf