News
Oct
16
UPS Battery Compliance
Posted by Nick Claxson on 16 October 2019 06:20 PM
https://www.apc.com/us/en/who-we-are/sustainability/battery-safety/battery-compliance.jsp

From the sealed lead acid batteries in most of our UPSs to the lithium ion batteries in our mobile battery packs, many APC products contain batteries. The following information will help you manage the complex regulations that apply to batteries. Contact our Support Team if you require additional information.

Safety Data Sheets (SDSs) - SDS documents (formerly referred to as MSDS) contain safety information about materials, their physical, chemical and toxicological properties, applicable regulatory information, and recommendations to ensure their safe handling. Below are links to the SDSs for APC battery products.

APC is providing battery SDS and the following battery product information sheets as a service to its customers. The products addressed in these information sheets are generally viewed as “articles” that are exempt from requirements for Safety Data Sheets such as the Hazard Communication Standard of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and similar requirements in other countries. In particular, these products are manufactured according to a specific design, have an end-use dependent upon such design, and do not normally release more than trace amounts of hazardous chemicals.

Material Content – regulations, such as the EU Revised Battery Directive 2006/66/EC and Amendment 2013/56/EU and the Brazil CONAMA Battery resolution, limit the concentration of certain substances in batteries. APC only authorizes the use of batteries that meet these limits. APC conducts destructive and non-destructive analyses on samples of incoming batteries to confirm supplier declarations. Applicable certifications and test reports are available upon request.

  • Mercury (Hg) content less than : 5 ppm or 0.0005 % by weight
  • Cadmium (Cd) content less than : 20 ppm or 0.0020 % by weight
  • Lead (Pb) content less than : 40 ppm or 0.0040 % by weight (not including battery chemistry)

Safe Packaging and Shipping – Batteries are regulated as Dangerous Goods under the IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations.  APC designs our battery products and their packaging to ensure that they are safe to transport.  For more information see our safe packaging and shipping instructions.
APC battery products associated marketing materials include statements that batteries must be recycled. In addition, we provide a process for the safe return and recycling of batteries. Typically, this includes providing locations where spent batteries can be sent or dropped off and then sent at our expense to responsible battery recyclers. Please note that local rules limit or define the level of battery recycling service that APC can provide. For more information, see our Product Recycling.


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Aug
16

Schneider have published an answer to the above question here:  https://www.apc.com/uk/en/faqs/index?page=content&id=FA380980&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US

 

To summarise, They DO NOT use them.


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Feb
5
[Core Network] Service Alert 5th February 2019
Posted by David Croft on 05 February 2019 12:37 PM
This is an incident notification regarding an outage on our core network.

Date: Tuesday, 5th February 2019
Start time: 11:00 GMT
End time: 11:13 GMT

Services affected:

Internet connectivity (external)

Report:

During this window packet loss and high latency were experienced to
multiple destinations by ISPs worldwide.

The root cause was multiple device failures at Tier 1 network service
provider CenturyLink.

The impact of this outage was not limited to our network and ISPs
worldwide were affected during reconvergence.

Connectivity to IP Voice services and directly peered networks was not impacted.

External notes appear below.

Regards,

David Croft


02/05/2019 11:49:06 GMT - The IP NOC has engaged an equipment vendor,
Tier III Technical Support, and Operations Engineering to investigate
multiple devices that went down. Stability is being validated after
most of the devices recovered without any intervention.

02/05/2019 11:19:42 GMT - On February 05, 2018 at 11:00 GMT,
CenturyLink identified a service impact in between in all markets
network wide. The IP NOC is engaged and currently investigating the
suspected equipment issue. Please be advised that updates for this
event will be relayed at a minimum of hourly unless otherwise noted.
The information conveyed hereafter is associated to live
troubleshooting effort and as the discovery process evolves through to
service resolution, ticket closure, or post incident review, details
may evolve.
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Dec
19
[Core Network] Informational Notice 18th December 2018 - Barclays - Update 1
Posted by David Croft on 19 December 2018 11:31 AM
This issue was resolved at 20:00 last night by Barclays rerouting
their network traffic.

Customers should now be able to successfully access barclays.net.

Regards

David Croft

On Tue, 18 Dec 2018 at 16:31, David Croft <david.croft at comtec.com> wrote:
>
> A number of customers have reported an inability to access
> https://cashmanagement.barclays.net/ since the weekend
>
> We have conclusively proved that there is no issue on our network,
> even going as far as to packet capture at all of our border routers
> which has verified that absolutely no response is being received from
> 157.83.99.50 to the TCP SYN packets which initiate the connection.
>
> We have been in contact with Barclays's DDoS protection provider
> Akamai/Prolexic who, while unable to divulge the exact problem due to
> the nature of their business, have also absolutely confirmed that the
> issue is not on their network but with Barclays.
>
> We have reached out to Barclays through multiple channels in an
> attempt to reach an network engineer in the correct department to
> diagnose and fix this problem however as yet they have not been
> responsive.
>
> Regards
>
> David Croft
>
> --
> For urgent operational issues please always contact noc at comtec.com
> or 0845 899 1423 and not any named individual.
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Dec
18
[Core Network] Informational Notice 18th December 2018 - Barclays
Posted by David Croft on 18 December 2018 04:31 PM
A number of customers have reported an inability to access
https://cashmanagement.barclays.net/ since the weekend

We have conclusively proved that there is no issue on our network,
even going as far as to packet capture at all of our border routers
which has verified that absolutely no response is being received from
157.83.99.50 to the TCP SYN packets which initiate the connection.

We have been in contact with Barclays's DDoS protection provider
Akamai/Prolexic who, while unable to divulge the exact problem due to
the nature of their business, have also absolutely confirmed that the
issue is not on their network but with Barclays.

We have reached out to Barclays through multiple channels in an
attempt to reach an network engineer in the correct department to
diagnose and fix this problem however as yet they have not been
responsive.

Regards

David Croft
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Nov
18
[Shared Web Hosting] Final notice of withdrawal of PHP 5
Posted by David Croft on 18 November 2018 09:31 AM
This is an advisory notice to customers still running on PHP 5 versions.

Start date: Saturday, 29th December 2018
Start time: 00:00 GMT (UTC+0000)
End date: Sunday, 30th December 2018
End time: 23:59 GMT (UTC+0000)

Purpose:

As previously announced, all PHP 5 versions are end of life and PHP
5.6 will stop receiving security updates after 31st December 2018 [1].

All remaining websites on shared hosting running PHP 5.6 will be
upgraded to PHP 7 during this maintenance window.

Customers with dedicated servers will not be affected, although they
are strongly advised to upgrade as PHP 5.6 will receive no further
security support and we will be unable to support it.

Services affected:

Shared web hosting customers running PHP 5 versions.

Impact:

HIGH - Customer websites will be upgraded to PHP 7 and this will
entail a short outage of the website as well as potential ongoing
disruption if the software is not compatible with PHP 7.

As this contains a major software version upgrade, this e-mail serves
as 30 days notice of a change to the technical functionality of the
Service that does not diminish the Service under clause 2.5 of the
Master Services Agreement.

Action Required:

We recommend that customers verify in advance that their software is
compatible with PHP 7 and if necessary upgrade it [2].

Regards,

David

[1] https://secure.php.net/supported-versions.php
[2] https://secure.php.net/manual/en/migration70.php
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