CS 500 not working

[Anonymous user]

After a recent power outage, my server shutdown ungracefully. The CS 500 had been tested as working but maybe the power outage or old batteries or both caused the issue I am seeing now. With the server plugged into the battery back up side, the battery shows .4 minutes of battery time with full charge. With the server plugged into the non battery backed up side, the battery shows 7.9 minutes of battery left. I have no context for what I am supposed to be seeing but using apcaccess you can see the differences that I see between the server plugged into the battery side and the non-battery side. I have replaced the battery but I'm still seeing this disturbing data which makes me think the UPS is borked, rather than the battery.

diff ~/bad.apcaccess ~/good.apcaccess
1,2c1,2
< APC : 001,044,1107
< DATE : Wed Sep 14 21:45:04 PDT 2011
---

APC : 001,044,1099
DATE : Wed Sep 14 21:51:01 PDT 2011

10,11c10,11
< STARTTIME: Wed Sep 14 21:09:19 PDT 2011
< STATUS : ONLINE LOWBATT
---

STARTTIME: Wed Sep 14 21:50:59 PDT 2011
STATUS : ONLINE

13c13
< LOADPCT : 16.0 Percent Load Capacity
---

LOADPCT : 1.0 Percent Load Capacity

15c15
< TIMELEFT : 0.4 Minutes
---

TIMELEFT : 7.9 Minutes

36c36
< STATFLAG : 0x07000048 Status Flag
---

STATFLAG : 0x07000008 Status Flag

45c45
< END APC : Wed Sep 14 21:45:04 PDT 2011
---

END APC : Wed Sep 14 21:51:47 PDT 2011

[BillP]

Hi Karsten,

I am not familiar with APCAccess but Googling about it showed that it is some kind of a program that works together with APCUPSD. Basically, our UPS would show you the runtime that is available based on the power being drawn by the load attached on all the Battery backup outlets of the UPS. With the new batteries installed, have you tried doing a pull plug test? If yes, was it able to support the load longer than what was shown on the APCAccess which is 0.4 minutes?

[Anonymous user]

Thanks for the reply. I called Technical Support today and they were pretty helpful. I was able to use another tool that comes with the apcupsd called apstest. That will allow you reset the battery date which was suggested by the technical support person. I had replaced the battery so this seemed like a good idea. After resetting the date, the data from apcaccess looked more like what it should (currently reading TIMELEFT : 32.9 Minutes) with 18% load. I will do a plug-pull test this weekend. Thanks for the suggestions and help.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

You are very much welcome. Do let us know the outcome of your test.