Re: UPS failure modes (was: fire at NAC)

[Alex Rubenstein <alex () nac net>]

On Thu, 29 May 2003, Simon Lockhart wrote:

> On Thu May 29, 2003 at 04:29:13PM -0400, Alex Rubenstein wrote:
> > From folks I've talked to (engineers and industry people), Powerware seems
> > to be known as the UPS that just works. I've yet to talk to one person who
> > had a powerware die on them. Myself included.
>
> We are a Powerware house. We had a large number of 3kVA and 6kVA units in
> our previous data centre (no-one would stump up the cash for a large unit
> so we had to buy them as we needed them). After about 5 years (very rough
> figure), we've now had 3 or 4 units fail, sometimes in the UPS, sometimes
> in the bypass unit. They all seem to be component failures (in the case
> of the bypass unit, a leg broke off a small capacitor). I don't think we've
> replaced any of the batteries in that time and they're still all holding charge
> well, even at full load.

Perhaps I should have been clear. In my entire post,
        sed s/powerware/powerware 9315/g


> At our new site we have some 50kVA and 80kVA units that we inherited from the
> previous owners. One is already exhibiting the signs of a failing fan, but
> we have no idea what their history is before we moved in.

Well, fans would fall under maintenance, no? Perhaps, also, someone is not
changing filters, or whatnot.




-- Alex Rubenstein, AR97, K2AHR, alex () nac net, latency, Al Reuben --
--    Net Access Corporation, 800-NET-ME-36, http://www.nac.net   --