Personally I'd suggest using both styles of alerts (for some at least where it makes sense) - mainly for the (albeit rare) cases where a device itself stops reporting sane limits, which I have seen a few times - though tbf not on eaton UPSes.

EG one (non UPS) example of this includes...

Aruba 2530-8-PoEP switch, reporting
HP-ICF-POE-MIB-hpicfPoePethPsePortCurrent  ( .1.3.6.1.4.1.11.2.14.11.1.9.1.1.1.1.X.X )
Reporting  0.12A  in use, but warning threshold of 0.11A  (Really this is 0.6 for POE 802.3at, or 0.35 for 802.3af)

Regards,
James Tandy
TandyUK Servers Limited

Tel: 01903 247 011
Www: http://www.tandyukservers.co.uk
Email: support@tandyukservers.co.uk

TandyUK Servers Limited Registered in England and Wales, Company number 8314911
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Registered Office: Amelia House, Crescent Road, Worthing, BN11 1QR

On 8/24/23 4:18 PM, Ryan, Spencer J. wrote:

I don't have any APC units to test with (we've long ago given up on them and moved to Eaton), but instead of looking for specific values we let the device decide if something is good or bad.

We have three generic alerts that cover all of our devices:

status_event    equals  alert
sensor_value    greater @sensor_limit AND @sensor_limit ne      NULL
sensor_value    less    @sensor_limit_low AND @sensor_limit_low ne      NULL

+1
This is certainly going to be of help for others running this UPS's.

This will throw an alert if any value is out of range high/low, or if a sensor itself is reporting not normal. Every UPS we've seen the output status and battery status go not-normal when input power is lost. Might be worth playing around with and see if you can simplify/genericize your alerting.

I was trying something like this, but was unable to get it to work.  The other issue I have is the UPS has it's internal batteries replaced with a new external pack I made from 16, 12v 50ah batteries.  The unfortunate thing is this causes an alarm about being unable to calculate runtime when on float mode, thus just a normal alarm won't work

We do also have "sensor_value lt 20" with the association of "sensor.sensor_descr equals Battery Runtime Remaining" to alert us to potentially overloaded UPS'es, or batteries going bad that haven't tripped the UPS'es internal failure threshold.

Same issue as above.  The newer APC UPS's have some serial interface between the batteries and there's not manual setting in the ups to set the number of packs anymore.  What's worse is they have no intelligence in the charger, there's not an equalizer across the batteries in series, so it just cooks them, and at 3 years you have to replace them.  Then the connectors they use require you to buy the replacements from the manufacturer at about 3x the normal price.  It's a racket..

I've tried the Tripp-lite/Eaton units before but they do the same thing, and whats worse is if the batteries drain completely and the UPS shuts down, when power is restored it requires a person to power it on.  They will not start up automatically.

It's really a shame no one makes a UPS that is designed for external batteries :(