Smart-UPS: Battery too low alert spamming

[BillP]

I have multiple Smart-UPS Rack Mounted units and I have had the same problem with them. I will use one of them in this example.

Smart-UPS 3000 RM:

The battery is 100% charged and the load is 43%. The battery run time says 4 minutes available. The unit is spamming the following two emails:

UPS: The Battery Power is too low to support the load...

UPS: A discharged battery condition no longer exists.

The unit is right on the edge and so the condition arises and then clears. It has sent out over 100 emails already. How do I stop this unit from spewing emails? I don't want to "turn them off" because I want the notifications when they are true. Can I adjust the set point for when this alert triggers?

Regards,

J

[BillP]

I have multiple Smart-UPS Rack Mounted units and I have had the same problem with them. I will use one of them in this example.

Smart-UPS 3000 RM:

The battery is 100% charged and the load is 43%. The battery run time says 4 minutes available. The unit is spamming the following two emails:

UPS: The Battery Power is too low to support the load...

UPS: A discharged battery condition no longer exists.

The unit is right on the edge and so the condition arises and then clears. It has sent out over 100 emails already. How do I stop this unit from spewing emails? I don't want to "turn them off" because I want the notifications when they are true. Can I adjust the set point for when this alert triggers?

Regards,

J

[BillP]

Your runtime is low and must be teetering within 2 minutes of your low battery signal time (which is by default 2 minutes). So when your runtime is 2 or 3 minutes, you're getting this message and when it jumps to 5 based on load fluctuations, you probably get the "discharged battery condition no longer exists." This is usually indicative of older batteries.

Anyway, to configure the alerts, I need to know what model management card you have and the firmware version. This is available via the web interface.

Thanks.

[BillP]

Yup!

Go to Administration->Notification and then for this particular event, click on By Event on the left had side under Event Actions. You're going to want to click on Power Events and then they you'll see this event bugging you on the list. Click on it and adjust notification preferences accordingly.

Let me know if you have any trouble with that or have further questions.

[BillP]

Angela,

Thanks for the fast response however my question still remains unanswered.

I know how to go into the settings and adjust them. Currently the settings are as follows:

Repeat interval: 2 Minutes

Repeat Times: 4

This is my standard setting. The problem is, no matter which setting I adjust the issue keeps clearing and returning so I will keep getting spammed by the email. Is there a way to suppress notifications for X amount of time to avoid getting repeat emails every few minutes in this situation?

I realize the fix in this situation is that the battery needs to be replaced however that isn't possible in the near future. And I would like to keep the notification at least once every day/week or so and not have to turn off the notification entirely. Maybe a product feature update?

Considering I have 90+ units, it isn't feasible for me to cost out a new battery for all the units at this time. Or remember the settings of each unit. So I want to maximize my ride through capability for as long as that battery will last. Run to Fail... 

I anticipate a "not possible" response but I wanted to see if there was something I had not thought of. So if that is the case just let me know.

Regards,

J

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hi again,

To begin, AP9617 is discontinued so no updates will be done to this card. Any updates would be applied to AP9630/31 these days but they pretty much work the same way in this department as the AP9617 you have.

With that said, we're going to have to work with what we have on that screen. Perhaps you could delay the notification and see how that works? There should be an option on that screen to delay it for X seconds and you can also maybe adjust the repeat option to see what works. The only other thing would be to disable it completely.

You could also go to that page and use the Hex code for the clearing event (No longer discharged) to disable that from coming which doing that is outlined here in a different example -> Configuring clearing events with APC Network Management Cards | FAQs | Schneider Electric US

This would be one less email..

Lastly, any change you make to this event could be cascaded out to multiple cards using the config.ini. You can put a text file together for the configurations of just these events and push them out to multiple cards.