So this UPS (APC Back-UPS XS 1300) is hooked up to one of our 16-port switches. The UPS started beeping a while back, for about 2 hours, then stopped. The battery indicator said it had NO power, but then all of a sudden it says 50% power. Sometimes it says 75% but normally it stays at 50%. It's probably pretty old so I will be replacing it no matter what, soon. Or recharging it (is that a good idea? I never heard of that until today, I thought they just died).
The question I had is that right now only 1 of our 16-port switches is hooked up to it, directly (sans power-strip). I imagine the ONLY solution I have to replace the UPS is just to unplug the switch, remove the old UPS and plop in a new one real quick and plug back in the switch and hope everything reconnects...??
Presumably during off-hours is "best", but it would be nice to do during business hours; would anyone notice a 10-second blip? What's the common trade-off between courtesy and convenience? Do you commonly disconnect a wire for 5-10 seconds without telling anyone if you need to clean up a messy cable, or test something real quick? If you know that no one is relying on network connectivity for "critical" stuff and that the worst that could happen is someone will have to hit Reload in their browser or wait 10 seconds to finish whatever transaction they were just doing, is that bad or should I really need to come in after-hours to avoid someone else having to hit reload in their browser? Not lazy, I can come in, heh, just wondering if it's really needed if I know what the business is using the network for and confident with what the impact will be.
What's the best practice for needing to power-off a switch that everyone is connected to? Also, we have 4 switches, but only one is on the UPS. Soon all our phones will be VOIP and hooked into one of those other switches.
For the replacement UPS, should I just get an APC 1500 or something and then plug a surge protector into the new UPS and plug all 4 switches into the surge protector? Several are wall-warts, I guess I'll need to take that into consideration. Any problems with using wall-wart removers? And, again, any precautions I should take before just disconnecting the entire network? We've had power outages before and everything came back online with a little nudging (power-cycling stuff in the right order, sometimes twice), but I obviously want to disrupt as little as possible.
thanks! :)