Resetting battery constant values whilst unit has NMC installed

Anonymous user · ‎2021-07-01

Hello,

We have several SUA3000RMI2U units installed with a AP9630 NMC installed, prior to this we were just using Serial communications to monitor the UPS and we could stop the APC service and run Hyperterminal/Putty to update the battery constant values.

Since installing the NMC we have been unable to update battery constant values either via NMC Serial or via UPS Serial port. The work-a-round is to shutdown the UPS and remove the NMC and communciate via Serial to update the values. As you could imagine, this requires outages to be arranged and causes further down time.

I am hoping that there is a better solution without having to shutdown the UPS and remove the NMC, has anyone else had this issue? I have looked through the CLI manual but could not find any information regarding battery constants updating.

I hope the power of the community would be able to offer some solutions.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Justin

Anonymous user · ‎2021-07-01

I have been successfully removing and re-inserting many different models of NMC card into Smart-UPS that are powered up/online for years now (per Angela N's guidance comments) and as long as its done a certain way it has proven to be safe: I have made a practice of doing the unplugging and re-insertion as quickly and as solidly as possible. IE for removal I undo the screws holding the NMC in, and rather than fiddle with a screwdriver around the edges of the card to pry the card out which might result in the card flopping around in the connector and making/breaking connection erratically, I just grab onto and use the network cable and/or temperature probe cables (IE leave the cables plugged into the card) to pull the card out quickly - there is not much resistance disconnecting the card from the smartslot so no risk of damaging the cables or the RJ connector. On RE-Insertion again I insert the card as quickly as possible into the smartslot - straight in with no hesitation.

See Answer In Context

BillP · ‎2021-07-01

You can just hot-swap (or uninstall/reinstall) the NMC. The Smart UPS user's guides all say to power down and "braindead" the system but I really think they just haven't updated that part in ages. I can't remember the last time I did that to install/uninstall a management card and the risk of anything happening is so slim since all of the more modern UPSs and NMCs, are designed to be hot swappable anyway. I only would suggest following this procedure if there is something odd going on - UPS is smoking, melting, etc and I would hope at that time, you wouldn't be focused on installing the NMC anyway The downtime is not worth it - I agree.

"Updating battery constants" is not an officially recommended procedure so you won't find any documentation about it anywhere besides the internet. The recommended solution is when you replace your batteries, to do a runtime calibration via software/NMC or manually to update the runtime.

Anonymous user · ‎2021-07-01

I have been successfully removing and re-inserting many different models of NMC card into Smart-UPS that are powered up/online for years now (per Angela N's guidance comments) and as long as its done a certain way it has proven to be safe: I have made a practice of doing the unplugging and re-insertion as quickly and as solidly as possible. IE for removal I undo the screws holding the NMC in, and rather than fiddle with a screwdriver around the edges of the card to pry the card out which might result in the card flopping around in the connector and making/breaking connection erratically, I just grab onto and use the network cable and/or temperature probe cables (IE leave the cables plugged into the card) to pull the card out quickly - there is not much resistance disconnecting the card from the smartslot so no risk of damaging the cables or the RJ connector. On RE-Insertion again I insert the card as quickly as possible into the smartslot - straight in with no hesitation.