Dear lazyweb, what UPS should I buy?
Category musings
Since converting my home server to Linux in December, it's been rebooted 5 times. Or, more accurately, it's been powered back on 5 times... each "outage" has been caused by lightning, despite surge protection supposedly provided by the power strip the server is plugged into. Thanks to fsck (the X equivalent of chkdsk), I haven't lost any data, and, with one exception (when I was three time zones away for two weeks), it's not been a significant inconvenience to limp into the spare bedroom and push the power button, but it'd still be nice to not have the server go down each time Thor decides to pay us a visit. So I'm curious what brands/models of UPS you would recommend. It doesn't need to keep the juice flowing for days, just keep one server, a cable modem and a wireless router alive during these periodic half-second power outages. Any ideas?
Since converting my home server to Linux in December, it's been rebooted 5 times. Or, more accurately, it's been powered back on 5 times... each "outage" has been caused by lightning, despite surge protection supposedly provided by the power strip the server is plugged into. Thanks to fsck (the X equivalent of chkdsk), I haven't lost any data, and, with one exception (when I was three time zones away for two weeks), it's not been a significant inconvenience to limp into the spare bedroom and push the power button, but it'd still be nice to not have the server go down each time Thor decides to pay us a visit. So I'm curious what brands/models of UPS you would recommend. It doesn't need to keep the juice flowing for days, just keep one server, a cable modem and a wireless router alive during these periodic half-second power outages. Any ideas?
Comments
(but I work for APC so take my opinion with a grain of salt
Posted by Pedro Quaresma At 05:43:34 AM On 07/07/2008 | - Website - |
My home office servers, network switches, routers, and phones are all on UPS's that really only need to perform two functions. Hold power until the LP Gas fired 12kw generator out back kicks on (about 45 seconds) and stabilize power during brownouts or when on generator power (small generators are prone to very sloppy power output as they react to changes in load).
Since you're not running a generator, you're really looking for only a few features:
1. It needs to hold power long enough for a graceful shutdown if its more that just a fluctuation.
2. It needs to clean up power that comes in. (Poor power is the #1 cause of hardware failure. You want a UPS that does AVR (Automatic Voltage Regulation) so that you equipment is always getting a wonderful smooth 60hz AC current as close to 120v as possible.
3. When it drains, and power comes back, it should turn back on so that your server also turns back on. (your server can be set to turn on when power is restored in the bios setting)
I assume you're talking 1 linux server -- assuming its not a monster -- you're not powering your monitor with it, and a cable modem and maybe a firewall, a small switch, and/or a wifi bridge.
I'm having great success with this model:
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You can pick it up in office stores well under $200 and it should more than handle the load you're drawing.
Posted by Andrew Pollack At 11:30:57 PM On 07/05/2008 | - Website - |
Posted by Vitor Pereira At 06:15:01 AM On 07/06/2008 | - Website - |