A UPS is a device used to electrically protect equipment. On the back, there are outlets for the machines I want to protect. It embarks a lot of surge protection components and there is a battery inside so when there is a power outage, my devices are still running.
These devices are not meant to hold charge for long periods of time. It can handle a few minutes depending on the load. It is very useful when there are voltage peaks, micro power-cuts and such. When there is a big outage, it holds enough charge for me to shut down my machines gracefully, which is a lot better than brutally shutting down, especially for devices like my NAS where there are mechanical drives constantly accessed.
This model, the SMT1000I belongs to the smart UPS line of product from APC. It means that on the back, it is possible to put a management card. This card is network-accessible and embarks a web interface where I can configure a lot of things related to the UPS, update the firmware, execute tests and more. The card can also be configured by a proprietary serial connection, for which I need a special cable from APC.
There is the console port for serial configuration, two USB ports, universal I/O to put various sensors and an ethernet port. I only use the ethernet connection to access the web interface of the card.
When I log in, the home page is displayed. There is a small summary of the state of the UPS, including alarms. Here I can see that no alarms are present, and that the last event that happened is a self test of the UPS.
The UPS Status page tells me every information I need regarding its current state. There are crucial informations here like the temperature, battery remaining time, input and output voltages, current, etc.
The about section tells information concerning the UPS, but it is not like the status page. Here, the information concerns the UPS itself, like serial number, firmware version, etc.
Here I can manually run tests on the UPS. The alarms tests make sure the audible alarm (beeping) works by making it sound while there is actually no problem. The self tests puts the UPS on its battery for a few seconds to make sure the battery works properly. By default, the UPS tests itself regularly using an automatic timer, as shown on the home page.
The runtime calibration is not really a test. When run, it puts the UPS on battery until the battery reaches a very low state. This helps the battery know better how much time it can handle when the power is lost. It has to be done with a load of 30% or more and when the battery is fully charged.
The outlets are on the back of the UPS. On mine, there are 8 of them and all have surge protection and battery backup. They belong to the same group called outlet group 1. On other models, there can be several outlet groups and other configurations. For instance, on some models, only one group has battery backup and the others only have surge protection.
On the back, next to the outlets, there is also a DSL plug, to which I can pass a DSL phone line to protect our landline from surges. I don't have a landline so I don't use it.
I can also deactivate or activate the outputs in the configuration section of the card. This has to be done for when I have to update the UPS' firmware.
There are two seperate firmware updates I can do. There is the network card firmware update, which requires the card to restart to apply it. It is a simple update and usually done without hassle. This is not the update I will talk about here.
The update I will talk about here is the update of the UPS firmware. It requires all outlet groups, only one in my case, to be shut off. When the UPS applies the update, I cannot do anything on it and it takes quite some time. The screen displays that the update is in progress, and all the leds turn on.
When it is done, I can turn on the outlets and power my machines back on.
In this section the network card gives some information about itself and the UPS. The important information here is the version in which each firmware is. This helps me know wether I have to update or not. There is also the card uptime, which can also be monitored via SNMP, including other information (more on this in the Centreon project).
