On 2013-01-30 Dan Keizer wrote:
Funny timing ... I bought two APC 750 units just over a year ago and use them to keep my servers running in the rack.
A week or so ago, one of them started to complain (beeping wildly in the night) and flashing it's lights etc ...
As much as I love APC, I must say their non-Smart lines are generally complete crap now. They live for 2-6 years then fail in strange, different, and noisy ways, creating support nightmares, even after new batteries are put in.
The Smart ones live a lot longer but can still do incredibly wonky things if the batteries are dying/dead. You will sometimes not get any warning via the software or the UPS even though the batteries are gone. In some cases I open up the UPS to find the batteries bulging to insane widths. Moral of the story is set yourself reminders at 3-4 years to start thinking about pro-active battery replacement and/or load testing (apctest in apcupsd in linux is good for this).
I still haven't found a better UPS brand, so I stick mostly with APC Smart.