UPS recommendations

[Admiral Huddy]

as per title..

It's for a windows basic 2003 server. The system is just a couple Xeon processors and 3 HDD in raid 5.. Serving 6 PCs.

Anything under £200?

[Daz]

How many power supplies does it have and what sort of run time are you looking for? Rack mount or tower?

[Mark]

All completely valid questions.

I had a Belkin UPS (yeah, I know, but it was silly cheap and now I know why) for somewhere around 12-18 months before it gave up completely (refused to charge). Meanwhile the APC SmartUPS I've had well over twice as long and has survived numerous power-cuts and being shorted out at least once still works just fine (though I expect to need a new battery within a year or so). It's not a perfect solution (had it cut out once or twice during powercuts), but I think you can probably tell who I'll recommend and who I'll suggest should be nuked from orbit.

Having said that, I know of someone who had an APC battery explode on them. To their credit, APC seemed willing to sort the damage.

[Admiral Huddy]

Originally Posted by Daz

How many power supplies does it have and what sort of run time are you looking for? Rack mount or tower?

The tower itself monitor and router really.. Just enough to keep it going through the night in an event of power loss so it can brought down correctly.

[Zirax]

I have liebert ups's, the 700VA and 1000VA. Both filter the mains to the machine so you get cleaner voltage. These give me about 20mins.

Monitor wise, CRT or LCD? Nothing under £200 will keep it going through the night! Thats mega mega money. I would suggest that you offer a ~200 APC or Liebert solution with software to trigger a safe shutdown (comes with the ups's)

[Desmo]

I was thinking along the same lines as Zirax, although I know bugger all about UPS's

Get something to shut down the machine when the power fails. Getting something to run through the night isn't going to be cheap or easy.

[Feek]

Originally Posted by Desmo

Get something to shut down the machine when the power fails. Getting something to run through the night isn't going to be cheap or easy.

That's what I was going to say, realistically you're looking at about 15-20 minutes run time tops. Most UPSs have an output and monitoring software which will kick off an automatic shut down if the power fails.

[LeperousDust]

Just out of interest isn't that annoying if you have a UPS that could easily last 20 mins, and when the power fails and your now there your computer turns itself off within 5 minutes? Are there settings to change so the computer will hold out in case power returns, and if not shut down before the UPS runs out...?

[Admiral Huddy]

I'm not sure why it's doing this.. It's only a simple piece of code?

[Goose]

I think it's a little more complicated than just waiting, from a code point-of-view anyway. Certain (older) systems need to be down completely and can take ages to shut down if they need to wait for anything to finish. You'd want as much time spare as possible to ensure it does have a chance to do it's thing.

Plus, you won't be 100% certain on how long you have left. And you want as much juice as possible left in the battery, in case the power goes again as soon as everything is running.

I think it's pretty smart to shut down straight away, however I am a programmer so I'm probably being blind and missing something obvious.