[mythtv-users] Way to tell BE came up after power fail?

[Stephen P. Villano]

On 10/29/13 9:06 AM, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 12:18 PM, stinga <stinga+mythtv at wolf-rock.com> wrote:
> ....
>> Go find the cheapest UPS you can and never have it fail on running of juice.
> I am afraid that statement is just not correct.
> UPS's aren't (uninterruptable).  And cheap
> ones especially so.
>
> I have experience with the cheap small
> ones and even large datacenter and
> industrial units with diesel backup.  I have
> seen them all fail (obviously in different
> ways).  Some (especially the cheap ones)
> just decided that today was a good day to
> die (hard).
>
> Now, I will agree that the failure modes and
> the timing or occurrence of the events may
> end up being different, but never say never,
> again.
>
> Gary
> _______________________________________________
>
I know that lesson first hand as well, complete with generator failure
to add icing on top of the cake!
My most infamous failures witnessed was a small home/office UPS filling
the room with smoke, the datacenter UPS battery room being full of dead
batteries and a generator that wouldn't start due to an underground
water leak filling the underground tank -  in the desert! We didn't have
a contingency plan for flooding in the desert.
The simple truth is, hardware fails. Cheap hardware fails faster and on
occasion, in spectacular ways, the more expensive hardware typically
doesn't do so (who wants the FM-200 system to fire? Most certainly no
datacenter hardware vendor!).

One upside to the datacenter failures I've experienced was, monthly
generator tests, replacement of that room full of dead batteries and
improved uptime as a result when power transformers blew out and a
datacenter that provided communications for an entire war stayed online.