Can anyone suggest how can UPS maintenance contracts helps n improving the life of a UPS?
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Hi Ruh
It looks like you can buy UPS devices of various sizes but as for the âUPS maintenanceâ I think this is something for large corporate installations where it is not viable to have on site personnel to maintain the UPS system.
Cheers Bob
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Hi Ruh,
Some UPSâs (hmm plural form??) come with monitoring software, and/or there are various open source packages as well.
These typically allow you to monitor various aspects of the UPS, and can - depending on the package (and the price $$) - raise alarms if appropriate.
Or you can roll your own monitors especially if the UPS is (a) networkable, and (b) you can handle SNMP traps and commands. Many moons ago ( 2006 ) I created a package that was used to monitor/manage network switches and UPS used at major events via SNMP, with an attached SMS modem. I will see if I can relocate the codeâŚ
(NB it is all Unix shell scripting)
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Ok I found it⌠I actually went to the ârescuedâ hardware system, and after some skullduggery, rebooted for the first time in YEARS! Found a spare switch, and a Pi 3 with (luckily) an older OS still on it - Version â8 (jessie)â, plugged it all up and crossed fingersâŚ
- it booted
- the version of SSH on the Pi could connect to it (very old key exchange & cipher values)
- I still had the username and password
Here is a photo of the system
On the left is an Advantek Small computer system, with 32M of RAM and 32M of Flash disk, 3 ethernet ports, 2 serial ports, a PS2 kbd/mouse connector and a VGA output.
On the right is the main PSU and the Wavecom SMS modem. (itsâ wallwart psu was buried in the rack somewhere behind the panel). The antenna connected just above the white tape next to the modem - the tape was to make the flashing of the modem LED visible.
The OS was a compressed cutdown version of FreeBSD 4.11, that uncompressed, and booted up from the root of the flash drive, created two in-memory âdisksâ for the /var and /dev directories, and loaded the configurations from a read-only flashdisk /config directory into a working ramdisk directory.
The monitoring daemon scripts were then started, and checked the UPS statuses, the other temperature monitors in a few places and ran a regular ping cycle to check / report on network items presence (or not). Network switches and the UPSâs were setup to generate SNMP trap messages on reboots, link outages, over temp etc. Appropriate reports were sent by SMS to the support team.
Additional scripts allowed for displaying / updating UPS status and alarm trigger points. These could be run from an attached keyboard and monitor, OR from a laptop on the second network.
If the configs were changed, they were re-saved to the R/O config directory by the shutdown script.
And yes the label says â2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Gamesâ, and also â2006 Asian Games (in Doha, Qatar)â. This system was used to monitor the operation of the arena and stage lighting systems at those international events. (FYI - LX is theatre shorthand for âLightingâ )
If anyone is interested, I will put the scripts up on a Drive somewhereâŚ
cheers
Murray
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Hi Ruh,
This could be the solution for managing UPSâs that may suit your needs.
Today I would use a suitable computer (like a Pi 3 or 4), and code like that found here
which can handle the various UPS interfaces, including SNMP. It can be configured to then raise whatever type of alarms needed via whatever messaging system(s) you have available.
But back then ⌠it was âroll your ownâ. And it was fun to see the non-unix types faces when they realised what could be done with simple combinations of basic toolsets (ping, snmpd) and some script (Bourne sh) magic.
On a very small platform for the i386 processors.
Cheers
Murray
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