Last night was the third Sunday in four where my UPS has woken me up with beeping. Each time, it seems to suddenly decide that while the load is unchanged, and the charge percentage is unchanged, the projected lifetime in the event of a power loss has suddenly changed from 100 minutes to 0 minutes. This is more than likely an indication that the batteries are failing, and it’s time to replace them. The UPS does some sort of self test once a week, and evidently this one does these tests at 1:30am on Sundays. There doesn’t seem to be any way to turn off these tests or reschedule them.
I spent a hell of a lot on this UPS, wanting one with a lot of capacity and which had replaceable batteries, because my previous one hadn’t let me know that the batteries were getting old until our power went out one day and the charge hadn’t lasted long enough to get down to the computer room to shut down my servers. I can’t remember what I paid for it, but the current equivalent model retails for around $600, so it was probably up in that range. Replacement batteries seem to be around $50 with $20 shipping, and plus then I’d have three small lead acid batteries to dispose of somehow.
On the other hand, I’ve migrated a lot of the things I wanted a Linux server for from my home to my colo box. I’m starting to question if I even need a 24×7 server in the home. Maybe rather than spending all that money on a UPS, I should just move the last remaining things (the mail server and the personal web pages) to the colo box and shut down my home server. It’s a shame to trash a $600 UPS for want for $60 in batteries, but maybe I can eBay it.