APC XS 1300 Overloading every night at 2:45AM

Here is the situation that I have run into for the past 2 nights:

I leave work and all is well, severs happily humming away everyone has access, life is good. I get in the morning, and the only thing I hear is a loud screech from my APC XS 1300 battery backup with the warning "F01 see manual". I turn off the battery backup, and restart it, everything restarts just fine and all is back to normal for the rest of the day.

All outlets on this UPS are used. the load on the LCD screen shows 4 bars(80% I'm guessing) and the battery is showing a full charge when it starts back up. I have 4 servers, a modem and a switch, a KVM switch and a monitor plugged into it. 3 of the servers are Dell Poweredge 1900, and the other one is a poweredge 840.

I cheched the scheduled tasks on all servers, and the 840 and one 1900 have no scheduled tasks. one has a data sync to run at 1AM and the other has a data backup to run at 11PM. According to the event logs everything shut down at 2:49AM one night and 2:42AM the next night.

I did not install or configure these servers, so I've been learning about them as I go. Sorry I had to write a book. I thank everyone in advance for your help, and if you need more information let me know.
Best,
Jason

Solution 1:

Confirm that it is in fact an overload and not that the UPS simply can't handle the load for some reason. You can use the UPS's built-in test feature or the low-tech method of pulling the plug. My bet is you'll find that if you pull the plug, the same thing happens. (The problem is most likely bad batteries.)

It's failing at 2:45AM because that's when it chooses to run its self-test.

F01 is "on-battery overload" which suggests that the load did get excessive. Are you sure someone (cleaning crew?) isn't plugging something into the UPS at 2:45AM?

Solution 2:

This seems to be a due to an unacknowledged manufacturing defect that affects all BackUps models. It appears that the best solution is to pull the battery, if it is still good, and replace the unit.

http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/901676-apc-overload-with-no-load/

I am having a similar problem with my BackUps XS 1300. The total load is approximately 350 watts, per the UPS's display. When the supply power cuts out, as it has a tendency to do in my neighborhood, the devices all loose power immediatly and the USP shuts down completely. Once the power comes back on (usually about 1 or 2 seconds later), the UPS stays off until I press the power button on the UPS. Then it goes into an alarm and displays "F01". It also shows a bad battery, but the battery is fairly new and tests good in other APC units.

APC has provided no useful help with troubleshooting or correcting this problem.

Solution 3:

An 80% load is almost certainly too much. Each model UPS will have specific recommendations for maximum load but I can tell you from experience that an 80% load is most likely above the recommendations. What's likely happening is that during the nightly backup and sync tasks the servers are drawing more power because the disks and CPUs are consuming more power due to their higher work loads/activity during these tasks. A disk or a CPU draws more power relative to it's activity: more activity = higher power load. If the fans are spinning more/faster due to the increased workload then that's also contributing to the load on the UPS. You should look at the UPS load value when these tasks are running in order to confirm what they are.

Cycling through the display button on that model will allow you to check the current load in Watts. If it's exceeding 80% then I'd say that's your issue. The solution would be to purchase another UPS and distribute the power load between the two.

Here's a link to the documentation for that model:

http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/ASTE-6Z7VAU_R0_EN.pdf

Here's a link to a power calculator that you can use to approximate the size and load capacity of a UPS that will support the equipment you've got connected. You can also use it to calculate your current load by plugging in the numbers from your equipment in order to figure out what your current load actually is.

http://www.csgnetwork.com/upssizecalc.html