Rackmount 2U UPS recommendations

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whitey

Moderator
Jun 30, 2014
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Hey all, about ready to pull the trigger on a UPS finally, tried of the pwr delivery companies blips taking my sh|t down.

Am I on the right track w/ something like these? All I really need to do is survive 30 second to 1 minute (if that) pwr blips that the stack is not happy w/. 5 mins uptime would be better but not required when pwr loss happens.

Current stack consume a steady 4amp 24/7/365. Guess that may need to be taken into account. Have not ran math to check my sanity but would one of these work?

APC Smart-UPS 1500VA 1000W 120V Rack Mount Power Supply P/N: SMT1500RM2U
Eaton 5P 1000 VA/770 W Line Interactive Rackmount Compact UPS

Both options seem to be in the $400-600 range. Decent/bad/indifferent (expected)? Let me know your thoughts.

Any other recommendations or let me know if I am out in left field all by myself.

TIA, whitey
 

Blinky 42

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Aug 6, 2015
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You are the right track if you just want a minute or 2 of backup with that load. I have a lot of APC's 1500VA units (SmartUPS and BackUPS Pro's) each for ~1 desk forth of stuff (or the Tivo, TV & Stereo) and the beefier stuff downstairs APC 3k or 6k units.

Eaton and APC both high quality - if you can get one with a network card then I would go for that so it can directly email out issues for you.

If your power is browning out a lot I would got for the active ones (SmartUPS on the APC side) that does double-conversion so it cleansup your power all the time, vs the cheaper ones (BackUPS) that just kick in when it goes over/under. Double conversion units cost more and does eat up some power due to the conversion losses, but imo protects the equipment better when sketchy power is a problem.
 

i386

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Mar 18, 2016
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Do you use supermicro b revision or newer chassis? Than you could look at thgeir bbp (battery backup power) modules that can be used instead of a second psu.
Pro: they don't need additional space, support in ipmi (monitoring)
Cons: The bbp modules can't be used for other devices in the rack, not cheap (400+€ new) per module
 

bitrot

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Aug 7, 2017
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I’m a bit confused by the title: are you looking for a PDU or an UPS?

I can recommend the APC Smart UPS 2U series (1000VA - 3000VA), including the 1500VA variant you mentioned. Just make sure you get a model that supports installing an APC network card, as it’s a pretty neat feature to have. Those network cards are expensive retail, but can usually be acquired for cheap on eBay.
 

pricklypunter

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Nov 10, 2015
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I have the APC SmartUPS 15002U sitting at the bottom of my pile o crap...it has been relentlessly looking after my gear during the gazillion brown outs and odd power cut I have suffered over the last year and a half. It just shrugs em off, I don't think my gear has gone down, without help from me anyway, since fitting it. I'm only pulling around 2-2.5A 24/7/365 Also a bit of fan noise is present when it's re-charging, it's not bad though and fairly quick, certainly quieter than most others I have heard in its class. I also have the network module installed. The GUI interface is, shall we say, "hello kitty" and slower than a snail, but it does the job. It's not any worse than other APC gear in that respect. I really can't fault it for the money I paid though, its been rock solid for me :)
 

whitey

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Jun 30, 2014
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I’m a bit confused by the title: are you looking for a PDU or an UPS?

I can recommend the APC Smart UPS 2U series (1000VA - 3000VA), including the 1500VA variant you mentioned. Just make sure you get a model that supports installing an APC network card, as it’s a pretty neat feature to have. Those network cards are expensive retail, but can usually be acquired for cheap on eBay.
Good catch, I meant UPS.
 

whitey

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Jun 30, 2014
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Thanks for the replies all, seems I am headed down the right path.
 

fractal

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Jun 7, 2016
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According to Country Selection Page that unit will supply 500 watts for 26 minutes. That makes it perfect for your application. You may think you only want a few seconds but the general rule of thumb is 20 minutes for shutdown only UPS.
 
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ruffy91

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Oct 6, 2012
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If you only have 1-2 minutes of runtime you have to shutdown your stack every time power drops. Also you would have to wait 3-4 hours until the batteries are recharged before powering on again, because there could be a 2nd drop. Better go for about 5x the time you need to shutdown.
 

dwm

New Member
Dec 9, 2012
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Hi whitey, you're on the right track.

You want pure sine wave output, so if you stray away from the models you mentioned, just make sure you get one with pure sine wave output.

I've had good luck with Eaton units, going back to when their UPS where Powerware, and before that Best Power. In fact I'm typing this from a machine that's on an _ancient_ Best Power Fortress 1425 which is probably 20 years old. I have 3 Powerware (now Eaton) units in my rack in the basement, though one is currently not in use.

You didn't mention which operating system(s) are on the hosts you need to protect. On FreeBSD (including FreeNAs) and Linux, you don't really need a network card in the UPS itself. I myself prefer to use NUT software on a host directly connected to the UPS and let other machines that are on that UPS connect to that host via the network. Since it can send email about power status changes, I just have it send SMS (via email gateway which most cell providers have) when a UPS goes on battery or goes back to mains. I also run my own software that uses the API to keep long-term data on battery levels so I can easily see graphically when batteries might need to be replaced and how my power consumption is affected by various things.

Blinky 42 mentioned double conversion units, which are nice but there are drawbacks. For one, they're usually somewhat loud since they need full-time cooling (and in a 2U space, that means 80mm fans). OK if your stuff is not in living space, but might drive you nuts if you're sitting next to it. They also tend to eat batteries faster in my experience. Hence inside the small rack in my office where I am right now, I prefer a line-interactive unit that only rarely turns on a fan and it's quiet (trickle charging). In the basement where my main rack is, I don't care much about noise so double conversion is fine (other than costs) but if the UPS has good voltage regulation and noise suppression you don't typically _need_ double conversion in a home setup. We've often spec'ed double conversion at work but that's mostly just to cover the issues with going to/from generator power. If you're suffering frequent brown-outs at home, and you're in the U.S., I'd start pestering the power company. I've had pretty good luck getting them to visit residences and install power quality monitors to track down problems (I used to work on electric vehicle charging equipment), whether blips, inconsistent service ground, neutral offset, etc.

I get a few 1-second blips a month on average according to my logs, but most are in the summer with the big air conditioning loads coming on and off. Almost no blips in the winter where I am in Michigan (instead we get the occasional multi-hour outages from ice storms and the like). Which seems odd given that I know the utility routinely tests their secondary substation feed where I am, but I trust my logs as they're the only hard evidence I have.
 
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BLinux

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Jul 7, 2016
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i think you're on the right track. i have two of the Smart-UPS 1500VA model you mentioned at the bottom of my rack. replacement batteries are easy to find and not too expensive if you don't insist on "APC" branding. they are expensive to ship due to the battery weight, so if you want to save some cash, look for units that ship without battery, just make sure the cables are in there. then buy the batteries separately so you have a fresh start. otherwise, check your local craigslist or offerup first .. i actually got mine off CL for $800 for 6 units; sold 4 of them for $250 each and kept the 2 units i have. anyway, what i'm trying to say is that you can do better than $400-600.
 

dwm

New Member
Dec 9, 2012
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Michigan
For what it's worth, I find the attached type of graph useful. The data is collected using the NUT API and I store it away for graphing on a web server. This particular graph is for data from an old Powerware 5125 RM. It's worth collecting this kind of data over the long haul IMHO. This is the yearly graph but I can look at monthly, weekly and daily as needed for granularity. I decommissioned an old Intel Atom machine earlier this year, which dropped my power consumption. Recently replaced an old 24-port 1G switch with a 48 1G + 2 SFP+ + 2 10GbaseT switch so my power consumption on this UPS went back up again.

NUT lets you configure shut down wait times after AC power is lost, on a per-client basis. Obviously you want the host that's responsible for talking to the UPS to run longest. Of course if you have a network card in the UPS and it speaks SNMP or some other useful protocol, you can just talk to it from any host (until your switch loses power). If you have non-critical loads that are using a lot of power and can run the NUT client software, you can shut those down sooner to give you more runtime for critical loads. Of course if a lot of that 4A load is for your critical stuff like main switch, you won't get much more useful runtime with this scheme. In my case my main NAS is the biggest power hog and not critical during a power outage (and also the one I definitely want to shut down safely), so I have it start its shutdown 3 minutes after I lose AC power. Then down the chain with more critical loads. So despite my graph showing a bit over 20 minutes of runtime with everything running on this UPS, I usually get over an hour for the critical stuff since the big loads get shut down within 5 minutes. Of course I try to not let it go that long if I'm home since my batteries are lead acid and aren't very happy with deep cycles.
 

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