Recently I had an issue on my APC smart-ups, since it signaled broken battery on the fresh replaced one (6-7 months).
I can remember using apcupsd on my proxmox host to calibrate battery after I changed it but, somehow, now I can’t find the command, as it seems it have vanished.
Since I don’t want to install any non open source software on my proxmox cluster just to run some calibration test, I searched online and I found an article on APC website, that explained the “manual calibration test” that seems to be mandatory for “SU” series of Smart-UPS.
It is very simple as follows:
- Remove USB cable and shut down ups software (otherwise you’ll experience shutdown of your infrastructure connected to that UPS)
- Ensure to have stable load >30% (+/- 5% seems tolerated)
- Pull out the plug of UPS / cut power to UPS
- Wait until UPS shuts off cutting power to the load
- Wait for power cycle of UPS or turn it on again manually
I was lucky I had all servers with redundant power and an host that has to bi dismantled that absorbed quite a good amount of power. And it worked like a charm, the battery was now accepted as good, the test lasted longer than 10 minutes ensuring me that I had enough power for a clean shutdown in case of a power failure.
I’m publishing this because I know I’ll need this again and just to leave a note to the future me.