I had trouble like this years ago. Seems that some UPSes only recognize sine-wave AC power, whereas some UPSes provice something more like sawtooth or square-wave AC power. Inserting a Variac (very inefficient) between the generator and the sensitive UPSes fixed the problem. Dave Hilton SysAdmin Entelos Dum Spiro, Spero -----Original Message----- From: Mike Lewinski [mailto:mike@rockynet.com] Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 10:54 AM To: Brian (nanog-list) Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: UPS and generator interaction? Brian (nanog-list) wrote:

Does anyone know of a way to get a UPS to trigger a generator to start, and to switch over to the generator power automatically or does

this type of thing just not exist?

What Patrick said. But, on a minor note that probably won't affect your Symmetra but I'm posting in case anyone else here can shed light on.... we had a power event this AM. The transfer switch did it's magic and all was good... Except for two new APC1400's- they failed once the batteries drained. I triple-checked that they were on the right panel, played with sensitivity, even tried daisy-chaining one off a good working 2200. Nothing I did would convince the two 1400s they had power. Once the house power was restored they came back to life and look normal. I later learned that two of our colo customers with APC1400s had the same problem :( Other models (even a couple non-essential lower-end, dumb APC 450s and 650s) didn't blink at the generator power. Mike