On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 20:09:43 +1030, Tim <ignored_mailbox@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Fri, 2008-03-28 at 07:47 -0800, dwight at supercomputer.org wrote: > > I can't tell you how many UPS's I've seen that are supposedly good, > > but have 5+ year old batteries in them. > > How many let you hot swap a battery? Surely that's a requirement, to be > able to change an aging component, without having to power down the > computer that it's supply. It is supposed to be an *uninterrupted* > power supply. That is not its purpose. It is to provide you with time to cleanly shut down the system to avoid damage. If you want constant uptime you need a backup power source as well. At that point you are probably going to be buying something other than a consumer UPS which could potentially have a way to swap batteries under load. > But out of the small number of consumer aimed UPSs that I've actually > been able to see, they're virtually a sealed box. That's because for consumers, there isn't any point to having that feature. They don't need 100% uptime, they just need some time to clean up what they are doing before the power fails. (And a UPS will help protect the power supply from crappy power and possibly lengthen its life.)
