UPS catching fire

[dsm1]

Hi, we had a small fire in our server cabinet which was caused by our UPS. I won't name the manufacturer as their customer service and technicians have been amazing since this happened even though the UPS was about 7 years old. It created quite a lot of smoke which got into our SAN, servers and switches. Other than this there doesn't seem to be damage to the servers etc it was just the UPS that was burnt out.

 

My question is should I look at replacing all if the equipment that may have been damaged by the smoke? The insurance company is coming in soon so I thought it may be good to get some input from other IT profs.

 

Also has anyone ever experienced a UPS catching fire? In our case it wasn't the batteries that exploded but was the circuit board that had burnt out.

[Joanne]

yikes. My UPS has totally failed on me and won't even switch on... might unplug it!

 

As for the assessment I would push the boat and see what they say. I would want anything that was next to the UPS replacing for sure.

[psydii]

Definitely unplug failed UPSs: I've seen similar to dsm1.

 

It wasn't too long ago, but I haven't seen any long term impact on the rest of the kit. Other than the smell and shorting due to soot (if the fire was bad), the real damage to kit that wasn't overheated by the fire is the material used to suppress it. So if it just cooked a PCB and then burnt itself out with little/no charring smoke damge outside the UPS itself, then there is probably nothing else that needs doing.

[Joanne]

removed. Luckily my new one arrived today!

[dsm1]

Thanks Joanne and psydii.

 

I've just had confirmation from our server and san supplier that they will continue to cover the warranty of that equipment - but I need to monitor temps on the equipment just in case the smoke put a film over any heat producing components.

 

We're also having an upgraded UPS sent out free of charge so I'm not sure whether we need to go down the insurance root now. Think we're very lucky that the fire didn't take hold and cause more damage.

[dhicks]

Also has anyone ever experienced a UPS catching fire? In our case it wasn't the batteries that exploded but was the circuit board that had burnt out.

 

Yes - I came in one morning to find our in-rack UPS had tripped the main breaker switch, when I flipped that back on there was a loud bang and (a bit of) smoke came out of the front of the UPS. I was rather under the impression that UPSes shouldn't do that - if they fail they should simply cut off, not make loud bangs.

[southhamster]

Would be interesting to know what the exact fault was.

I've seen batteries in old UPS that looked like they could explode but never had the scare of smoke and fire.

Ultimately anything with lots of power going through it can blow up. The skill of the designer is containing it safely.

I have seen a three phase solar PV inverter burnt out completely - there wasn't much left inside the metal case!