It started with a single loud beep from my UPS. The thunderstorm outside had caused a short power fluctuation but I wasn’t really worried. After all the server is connected to the UPS so that I don’t have to worry about such things.
As my desktop was still happily running (without assistance from the UPS) I continued playing my computer game. But when I tried to save the score the next time the machine suddenly hung. I blamed the problem on the game itself and decided to login from another computer to kill the game’s process. Only when I took off my headphones I noticed something was wrong: I could no longer hear the humming of the server’s fans. 🙁
I remembered the beep and pressed the power button of the server which immediately sprung to life. I pulled the power cable of the UPS to confirm my findings, got another loud beep and the server powered down right away. It seems that the battery of the UPS had finally broken down which is no big surprise after roughly seven years of service. I only wish I had figured that out in a less inconvenient way.
I ordered a new battery in the meantime which will hopefully be delivered later this week. With the new battery the UPS should be good for a few more years.