DSM 7.0 Another DSM7 regression: UPS

[NSquirrel]

With the possibility of power cuts later on this year in the UK, and this is quite possibly muck-raking by the press, I have been thinking about a UPS for my DS218+.
In this thread there is talk of APC units with 'No-Load Shutdown', which is of interest to me even though this is solely for home use. So I have been going through the APC website and specs of the lower end UPS', below around say £200, and it appears to me that all units I have looked at with No-Load Shutdown in their user manuals have been discontinued. (One model, on the APC website, even offered a replacement/alternative. When I went to look at it, it too as been discontinued.)
Any thoughts on this?

 

[pbondurant]

I have no experience of the 'no-load shutdown' feature, but it sounds unnecessary in a typical setup which uses a USB connection to enable the UPS to communicate with the NAS. Most (all?) basic home use APC models have this USB connection and the Syno can make use of it to shut itself down in the event of a power cut.
Unless you have something more specific in mind re the 'No Load' feature?

 

[NSquirrel]

Thanks for your comments pbondurant.

There were comments earlier in this thread about the no-load shutdown facility where of two APC units., one had the facility but the other did not. My comment was saying that, as far as I have seen, the facility has now been dropped completely by APC, which then explains, perhaps, why Synology have dropped it from their UPS control panel user-interface.

As I see it, if you have anything else connected to the mains outputs of the UPS, once the NAS has been shutdown, the rest will still continue to drain the battery, even if slowly. This could mean that the battery may be flat when power is restored and the the UPS itself would not provide further protection until the battery has been recharged.

Most of the UPS' I have looked at have several 'battery-linked' outputs; others are protected from spikes, etc., but they die as soon as the mains source fails. The APC units seemed to shutdown all 'battery-linked' outputs if the load is less than 15W for 15 minutes. The UPS will then restart once mains has been reinstated. For my own use, I contemplated attaching the router and a simple ethernet switch to the UPS or perhaps a mains relay to power off the other device, so that they would be shutdown after the NAS has been shutdown thus preserving the battery charge status.

If I understand the UPS to NAS USB connection correctly, it is a one-way street. The UPS says 'we are now on battery converted mains; perform a safe shutdown of the NAS when you are ready.' It makes me wonder why the lower end UPS devices have more than one battery-linked output?

 

[pbondurant]

Thanks for the clarification.
The feature that turns off the UPS completely after the Syno has shutdown (this seems to be what you want) is, I think, a setting within the UPS monitoring script on the Syno; see eg /uDickBlonovs post #79 in this thread. That setting was removed for a time in DSM7, but seems to have been put back in a recent update.
This 'turn-off-UPS-after-Syno-shutdown' feature is entirely implemented via the logic of the UPS script in the Syno; it's not using the 'no-load shutdown' feature that you mention some APC models have/had.
As such, you should be able to make any USB connected APC UPS shutdown after your Syno shuts down if that's the behaviour you want. I don't think you need a UPS with that 'no-load-shutdown' feature for this to work.

I'm not running DSM7 yet on my Syno so cant directly confirm that the option mentioned in post #79 has indeed returned. But the behaviour you want certainly does work on my DSM6.x Syno with 2 different APC UPS's (a Back-UPS ES 700G and an ES-350).

 

[NSquirrel]

Thanks for your further comments pbondurant

I still have a lot to learn about UPS's, so thank you for your explanation.

>>you should be able to make any USB connected APC UPS shutdown after your Syno shuts down
Surely this has to be dependent upon the s/w in the UPS and nothing I have seen suggests that there is anything in the user manuals to suggest that this still exists. Perhaps I have missed s/w details in the other user manuals? Quite likely!

Btw, once the Syno has shutdown, where is the UPS command shutdown coming from if the only device connected to the UPS is the Syno?

I understood (misunderstood?) that the code removed from DSM 7 and then replaced may only apply to older UPS and hence the omission was spotted. If newer UPS's cannot handle the USB command sent from the Syno and DSM 7 continued not to have it, no one would be the wiser.

I assumed, probably incorrectly, that if 'no-load shutdown' exists, then there is a shutdown command, even if disguised, that the Syno can activate.

 

[DickBlonov]

Thanks for your further comments pbondurant

I still have a lot to learn about UPS's, so thank you for your explanation.

>>you should be able to make any USB connected APC UPS shutdown after your Syno shuts down
Surely this has to be dependent upon the s/w in the UPS and nothing I have seen suggests that there is anything in the user manuals to suggest that this still exists. Perhaps I have missed s/w details in the other user manuals? Quite likely!

Btw, once the Syno has shutdown, where is the UPS command shutdown coming from if the only device connected to the UPS is the Syno?

I understood (misunderstood?) that the code removed from DSM 7 and then replaced may only apply to older UPS and hence the omission was spotted. If newer UPS's cannot handle the USB command sent from the Syno and DSM 7 continued not to have it, no one would be the wiser.

I assumed, probably incorrectly, that if 'no-load shutdown' exists, then there is a shutdown command, even if disguised, that the Syno can activate.

Synology made a change a while back and removed the "shutdown UPS after the system enters standby mode" option (except for Omron UPSs).

Anyway, that option is back with the latest release and should work with any APC UPS.

(pic copied from another post in the thread)

Phil

 

[pbondurant]

>>Surely this has to be dependent upon the s/w in the UPS and nothing I have seen suggests that there is anything in the user manuals to suggest that this still exists. Perhaps I have missed s/w details in the other user manuals? Quite likely!

>>Btw, once the Syno has shutdown, where is the UPS command shutdown coming from if the only device connected to the UPS is the Syno?

The Syno UPS system is actually an implementation of the NUT open source framework (Network UPS Tools - Welcome). This contains several tools and includes a driver that can communicate with many common UPS's, including most of the APC range.
This framework talks to the UPS via the driver and the functionality you're after is implemented by one of the NUT components (UPSMON) sending a command ('upsmon -c fsd') to the UPS. The UPS firmware itself then carries out the final shutdown of the UPS after a suitable period has elapsed since sending the 'shutting down' command to the NAS (in reality, the UPSMON tool runs a bash script that actually shuts down the Syno but thats a detail).

This stuff is unlikely to be featured in any detail in any APC user manuals; these are propietary devices with little technical documentation. They do, however, implement the open source NUT protocols and that is what you need for the functionality you're after to work.

Again, this is a separate mechanism to the 'no-load' functionality; pretty much any USB-connected APC UPS that is on the NUT support list will do what you want.

 

[NSquirrel]

Thanks again. Much of interest to think about and learn. I think that I will have to bite the bullet; make a decision as to which UPS and then go from there.

 

[DickBlonov]

Thanks again. Much of interest to think about and learn. I think that I will have to bite the bullet; make a decision as to which UPS and then go from there.

This list might help you choose.

Phil

 

[NSquirrel]

Great: Thanks for the list, which looks very useful - far more so than the Synology list, which seemed of be somewhat out of date as many UPS's that I looked at were now obsolete.

 

[RonV42]

In the world of UPS I keep things as simple as possible. But now I am getting into these new Lithium Iron Phosphate battery devices from Ecoflow. They have a UPS mode but it takes a chunk of time for the inverter to kick in before the Ecoflow provides power so until the inverter starts the Cyberpower UPS covers that point of time. I am trying to get API access to the Ecoflow since it is Wifi connected to be managed with their App and thinking of writing a custom NUT driver to read the status of the unit.

Mains ---> Ecoflow Delta Pro ---> Cyberpower UPS ---> Network equipment (NAS, Router, Switches)

 

[Jan Janowski]

I haven’t bothered trying to mate any of our 5UPS’s to any of 3 NAS’s, or IT Gear, or TV or Sat gear, here. Considered, but decided not to….
Have whole house backup generator.
As long as NAS, other other devices I want to be connected 24/7, are connected to a UPS….. All UPS has to do is supply power for 30-40 sec, and by that time the generator is up and on line.

If there is extended power outage, then I manually shut down NAS’s remotely, then turn off generator & UPS’s.
That has happened twice since we moved here.

We’ve not noticed any problems with any device connected to UPS’s ‘not liking’ UPS or generator AC power, or issues with UPS’s ‘AVR’ option while on generator… but generator service guy did tweak the LP Gas regulator feeding generator, and updated generator with custom firmware to improve power swing changes.