SUMMARY: T3 array battery (update)

After my first summary post, I received several more pieces of useful 
information.

There actually is a group within Sun which still carries the batteries. 
They will sell the battery, or the whole power supply. Linda is the 
person to contact, at least for my area. She can probably point others 
to their regional sales teams.
  Linda Walbaum  Services Sales Rep  303-272-6777  linda.walbaum@sun.com
  David Hicks    Customer Service Manager          david.hicks@sun.com

Jeff Germain sent me these instructions for resetting the battery life 
counter
  Here are instructions for replacing *just the battery* in a T3 power 
supply.
  These are commands that can be run from the T3 command line that will 
reset
  the battery life counters; otherwise the system doesn't recognize the 
fact
  that the battery was changed.  Note that these commands should only 
be used
  when changing only the battery -- if you change out the whole power 
supply,
  the unit automatically updates the battery settings.

  Here are the commands from the "SunStorEdge T3+ Array Field Service 
Manual":
  >id read u1pcu1             <-- see the settings before doing anything
  >.bat -n u1pcu1             <-- reset the "Battery Install Week"
  >id read u1pcu1             <-- to see what changed
  >.id write busage u1pcu1    <-- calculate the "Battery Warranty Date" 
and
                                  "Battery Life Used"
  >id read u1pcu1             <-- to see what changed

which, by the way, shows the official battery life as 730 days and 12 
hours.

Tim Thomas said the power suplies can be difficult to remove, and a 
special tool exists to pull them.

Alta Technologies shipped their last in-stock battery to me on 
Wednesday and it arrived today. They are getting more batteries in the 
next couple days.

Another vendor emailed me offering whole power supplies:
  West Coast Computer Exchange Inc.
  http://www.wccx.com/
  Cheryl Spencer <cspencer@wccx.com>

I have still not received any response from the "no reply yet" vendors 
I contacted initially.

> I am quite impressed; I got more than three times as many helpful 
> answers as "Out of Office Reply" messages from folks with misconfigured 
> email clients. >8^)
> 
> Information I gleaned from the replies:
> 1) T3 array batteries have a life-cycle timer which causes them to
>    stop after some number of hours of use
> 2) Power Supplies are hot swappable and redundant, so you can
>    theoretically fix them while the unit is running (not tested)
> 3) Sun does not sell the batteries separately any longer
> 4) Sun replaces the entire power supply #300-1454, including the
>    battery, under warranty or service contract (I have neither
>    for this unit)
> 5) several vendors* have or can get the battery pack for $250-$300,
>    though stock seems limited
> 6) some organizations have rebuilt battery packs by buying the
>    individual cells and building their own (I plan to try this)
> 
> 
> * vendors recommended by correspondents:
> 
> (this vendor has replied, and I am purchasing through Alta)
>   Alta Technologies
>   Michael Carter <mike.c@altatechnologies.com>
>   Sun/Cisco/IBM Sales
>   763-475-5327  (direct)
>   800-546-2582  (Ext. 327)
>   763-475-5331 (fax)
>   www.altatechnologies.com
>   AOL instant messenger  mikec at alta
> 
> (contacted, currently out of stock)
>   Computech Systems Corporation
>   11421 NE 120th Street
>   Kirkland, Washington USA 98034
>   Greg King <gregk@computech.com>
>   800-882-0201
>   425-216-0591
> 
> (contacted, no reply yet)
>   Computer Computer
>   http://www.com-com.co.uk/
>   2 Constable Crescent, London, N15 4QZ, UK
>   +44 208 885 9900 (voice)
>   +44 208 880 9122 (fax)
>   ian@com-com.co.uk
> 
> (contacted, no reply yet)
>   Marathon International
>   1274 Anvilwood Ave
>   Sunnyvale, California 94089
>   http://www.marathon-int.com/
>   oem@marathon-int.com
>   800-783-7354
>   408-400-8600 (voice)
>   408-400-8601 (fax)
> 
> and Sun is still working on providing a helpful answer.
> 
> If I get specs on rebuilding the battery packs, I'l post a followup 
> summary.
> 
> Many thanks to:
> Bob Plagens, Peter Krotkov, Mike Carter, Jim Campbell, Luigi Marra,
> Scott Mickey, Matt Garrett, Bob Rahe, Deb Crocker, Eugene Schmidt,
> Mark Walsh, Clovis Souza, Kris Hogg, Michael Stalnaker, and a couple
> of people whose names were non-obvious from their reply.
> 
> I appreciate everyone's assistance! Allan
> 
> Original question follows:
> > Greetings,
> > We have three Sun T3 disk arrays, and one of them has had a failure of 
> > the battery backup (for the cache) in the power supply. The part number 
> > is 370-3956 Battery Pack, NIMH. Sun no longer carries the part, nor any 
> > refurbs. For $200/hr they could come look at the part, and supposedly 
> > fix it. I have no idea how they would fix dead batteries they don't 
> > carry replacements for.
> > 
> > Have any of you bought a replacement battery for a T3 array from a 
> > third-party vendor? If so, can you give me the vendor's name and the 
> > part number they use? Google has zero responses for the Sun part 
> > number, and I can't find specs on the part to start asking battery 
> > vendors about it. The unit is in production, so we want to get a 
> > replacement battery and only take the unit offline once for the repair, 
> > not twice to get specs off the battery and then replace it later.
> > 
> > Thanks, Allan
> _______________________________________________
> sunmanagers mailing list
> sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org
> http://www.sunmanagers.org/mailman/listinfo/sunmanagers
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