[Beowulf] ***UNCHECKED*** Re: OT, RAID controller replacement batteries?

[Skylar Thompson]

On Wed, Nov 04, 2020 at 09:54:36AM -0800, David Mathog wrote:
> 
> on Mon, 2 Nov 2020 12:31:39 Skylar Thompson wrote:
> 
> > We've had the same problems, one somewhat-effective trick has been to
> > scavenge working batteries from systems we're sending to surplus so we have
> > our own supply of batteries to swap in. The failure rate is marginally
> > better than the batteries we've bought from Amazon/Newegg/eBay (as you
> > note, not great).
> 
> Did you try the no name ones too or only the ancient "New" Dell batteries?
> Buying those Dells is a bit like purchasing OEM tires for a car with 60k
> miles on them - it is the right tire, but...
> 
> Given the amount of iffy stuff floating around on ebay my first thought was
> that the Dell ones were probably fakes, but assuming the images are of the
> actual battery, why create a "new" product with a decade old time stamp?
> 
> This is yet another one of those situations where a manufacturer's custom
> batteries eventually cause grief.  From the form factor, voltage, and specs,
> these batteries appear to be very similar to a phone lithium ion
> battery, but with a different connector.  Basically like this:
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/LG-LGIP-520B-Lithium-Phone-Battery/dp/B0015A4TQK/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=3.7v+lithium+ion+battery&qid=1604510929
> 
> The NU209 has a 5 pin connector, and the card can identify the battery.
> There must be some electronics in there (besides +,-, and Thermistor pins,
> although there could be two or more ground pins.)

These were all the ancient "like-new brand-name" Dell batteries, figure I
don't want to be the one that sets off the FM200 when the really dodgy
battery catches fire...

For a lot of our nodes, the local disks see very limited use so we have
some nodes that just don't have write-cache enabled on their local disks.
In other cases, it's the nail in the coffin that lets us actually justify
hardware retirement with a lab.

-- 
Skylar