DIY - server room clean power and / or backup

[DrStein99]

I only have 5 servers running now, at 5 amps each 500-600 watts. So now there is a storm and the mains power to the house is flickering. This happened 2 years ago and I had to do an insurance claim since 1/2 of all the appliances on in the house no longer worked after that.

I know in data-centers have big expensive certified equipment that is the best of quality. I can not afford that, and I am not running services for hospital and emergency services. I simply want to protect my equipment. I was looking to hook up my own DIY setup with batteries, electric controller, and possibly a backup gas generator. Has anyone done this or read about anything like this?

 

[T_Minus]

We use these to save our electronics:
TRIPP LITE LC1200 UPS Accessories - Newegg.com

They make a smaller wattage unit but I sadly found out after buying and using 2 of them that they don't correct/handle the same as the 1200w+ model units.

We use these to protect our TV, Electric Components in our Oven/Range, as well as our On Demand Hot Water Heater, Cloth Washer and Dish Washer.

I think I have had 3-4 in service non-stop the last 10 years. We've had power go on/off at-least 50 times in that time period, and knock-on wood haven't lost any electronics.


For my servers I use Online UPS Sine Wave units and have a dedicated Honda EU2000i Generator that produces clean sine-wave power that can re-charge my UPS units and/or run the servers temporarily if/when needed. We have another eu2000i we use to power the house, it's awesome! We use 1g of gas per-day and it will run 10-12hrs for our 'house' generator. Can't run microwave or electric dryer but we run the fridge, freezers, plasma tv, lights, office, etc... By far one of the most useful things I've owned.

I have also used the Line COnditioners in front of my UPS so that the older not-so-clean genny power could recharge the batteries

 

[pricklypunter]

Got to love that warranty against a direct lightning strike

 

[Lost-Benji]

I only have 5 servers running now, at 5 amps each 500-600 watts. So now there is a storm and the mains power to the house is flickering. This happened 2 years ago and I had to do an insurance claim since 1/2 of all the appliances on in the house no longer worked after that.

I know in data-centers have big expensive certified equipment that is the best of quality. I can not afford that, and I am not running services for hospital and emergency services. I simply want to protect my equipment. I was looking to hook up my own DIY setup with batteries, electric controller, and possibly a backup gas generator. Has anyone done this or read about anything like this?

G'day. You have asked a question that normally comes with a great deal of detail but haven't provided enough info. More details of your setup is required otherwise, generic responses will flow and will likely not suit your application.

So, that being said, as above suggested, UPS and gen-set is good but capacity and ratings I feel are a little grey.

• Servers - Are they grey/white boxes with single ATX PSU's or are we talking enterprise grade gear with dual supplies. If you have a heap of single supply servers, a big single UPS is best way to go. If mainly enterprise gear with dual supplies, split UPS's are better.
• UPS's - These should always be Double-Online-Conversion as one's budget can afford as do they do cost a lot. Line-Interactive will do fine in most cases or a mixture of both, primary is DOC and a LI as secondary. Sizing, UPS's work usually at best efficiency when run around 75% of their rated output. Running less is fine, just not as efficient but run-times are longer. I always try to size them at 50-75% load with 30 minutes of battery capacity. Plenty of time for genny to be started if auto-start fails or not used.
• Generator's - DO NOT USE CHEAP INVERTER STYLE UNITS ! OK, that being said clearly, a genny should be physically heavy and rated at least 150 - 200% of your normal load. The weight comes from a decent sized alternator section designed to deliver proper and pure sine-wave and have enough mass to handle surges. Inverter styles turds rarely have a hope in hell and produce some very nasty and dirty outputs. The loads that the genny needs to support are very reactive and require strong VA ratings, not peak Watts.
• Power filtration - There are some very good power filter options that should be used on the initial power ingress of the server rack or power box. These should be before the UPS's and servers but after the Genny and mains power. Earthing to proper external earth is a must as well, relying on your mains power earth is a bad idea. Nearby or direct strike will vapourrise cheap and light-duty gear.

 

[DrStein99]

I have 8 servers, across (2) 20 amp breakers, and more on the way. At this point, I feel I need to collect some big sealed lead batteries and learn how to run the power through that.

 

[fractal]

A few rules of thumb I have used over the years.

For bad power use a line conditioner. They handle sags and surges and you never have to buy batteries. You can put on in front of a laser printer or other high power devices. I put one on my new-fangled washing machine when I replaced the previous new-fangled washing machine when they wanted 600 bucks for a new circuit board when we had a spike. You can do this with line conditioners. Putting a UPS in front of your washing machine would be silly. T_Minus has the right idea here.

For intermittent power use a UPS. They too handle sags and surges but you have to buy batteries regularly and they always seem to die just when you need them.

Statistics show that most power failures are either less than 5 minutes or more than 4 hours. Not sure how the figured that out, but it seems true to me. That means unless you plan on having a backup to your batteries (like a genset) all you really want is a way to perform a controlled shutdown should the blackout last more than 5 minutes. Fortunately, all UPS's provide a way to do that, and you can extend that to multiple machines if you are reasonably clever.

Providing more than a half an hour on batteries is going to be expensive. My servers go down in 20 minutes with graceful shutdowns and my internet goes down in an hour.

As usual, ymmv.