Posted by jpluimers on 2016/08/22
I’ve had a SUA3000XLI for years using the USB cable and default Windows support as PowerChute Personal Edition would fail to recognise it and abort installation (so I could not use APC drivers as described on youtube).
A while ago, Liander – the energy distribution company – wanted to replace both the gas and electricity meters to become “smart” during day time. The server configuration load was heavy enough for Windows to indicate the UPS would last about 30 minutes. At night that’s not much of a problem but during 1 hour replacement day-time it would be a problem.
So I bought a SUA48XLBP battery pack (and a SUA039 cable as the cable wasn’t long enough to keep an inch or so air space between UPS and battery pack) so the battery would last about 3 times as long.
Windows would still show it would last about 30 minutes. Strange. So I started looking around and it appeared the SUA3000XLI needed calibration which requires PowerChute. Since PowerChute won’t work, I was almost back at square 1. Almost, as I know knew it required calibration.
In the past I had come across apcupcd but that was a long time ago when it supported a limited set of operating systems and a limited set of features so I never installed it.
But when searching how to calibrate the without using PowerChute, it quickly appeared that the apctest part of apcupsd can do just that: soft calibrate the UPS/battery combo. There are some steps and prerequisites (the most important ones are to turn off the apcupsd and provide enough load and 100% battery charge at start).
Spoiler: the combined UPS/battery-pack now lasts for almost 2 hours which is long enough.
Installing apcupsd
I’m describing this from a Windows perspective and it’s dead easy:
- download the latest release
- run the installer
- allow the driver to be installed
- indicate it’s OK to install an unsigned driver
- now Windows won’t recognise the UPS any more, but in a few steps the apcupsd and helper program will
- update the configuration file (no changes needed when it’s a USB connected one)
- wait for the service to start
- wait for the apctray helper program to start
- look in the “system tray” for apctray helper program icon
- optionally configure your system to auto-start apctray after logon
The USB connection to the UPS delivers slightly less options than using a serial cable
Using a serial cable instead of a USB one
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Posted in APC Smart-UPS, apcupsd, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, ESXi6, Liander, Power User, UPS, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows XP | 1 Comment »
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