Recommended UPS for Home Server(s)?

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NeverDie

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I'm still putting the server together (heck, not even all the parts have yet arrived), so I don't yet have any load measurements. So, yes, I realize I'm jumping the gun by asking the question now, but I'm trying to get ahead of the curve if I can.

Any consensus as to what the "must have" features are or which UPS's best fit the bill?

Since most modern power supplies have power factor correction, I'm guessing that means a UPS that simulates a sine-wave upon power failure is pretty much required?

I've heard good things about this UPS: Amazon.com: CyberPower PR1500LCD Smart App Sinewave UPS 1500VA 1050W SNMP/HTTP Mini-Tower: Electronics

I did read this thread: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/anyone-recommend-a-good-ups.844/
which asked a similar question to what I'm asking here. That person got an Eaton UPS, but it turned out to be loud. Sorry, but I don't want anything loud. For our household here, the UPS needs to be either silent or else pretty darn close to silent (definitely less than 20dba).
 
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cesmith9999

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the issue is fans... I have a 1500 cyber power that is the UPS for my dell T110 and SGI 3016 chassis and 24 port switch. it draws 210 watts. but it has a fan on it. which means that it is the loudest part of that configuration.

Chris
 

rubylaser

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How many watts do you think you'll need (or how much runtime)? Or, what hardware are you putting together that you want to hook up to this UPS? Cyberpower makes some nice, less expensive UPS's like this if you don't want/need to spend over $300 for a home UPS. Also, do you want rack mountable or is a standalone like the one you linked to okay?
 

Angus

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I've always had good luck with Refurb UPS's with new batteries..

I find you can get true online UPS's for comparable prices to the cheaper line interactive ones..

Right now running a Liebert 3000 and a 1500 no issues at all work great...

Although if concerned about fan noise the online models I've seen could be louder due to the fan being on and the invertor always working.
 

halfelite

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I went with a cyberpower 1500avr for my home NAS with all 20 drives spinning runtime is at 30 minutes give or take which is plenty of time for my home use.
 

NeverDie

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How many watts do you think you'll need (or how much runtime)? Or, what hardware are you putting together that you want to hook up to this UPS? Cyberpower makes some nice, less expensive UPS's like this if you don't want/need to spend over $300 for a home UPS. Also, do you want rack mountable or is a standalone like the one you linked to okay?
  • No rack.
  • My very crude estimate of worst-case maximum power consumption: 300 watts.
  • My wild guess as to a safe, minimum required runtime: 5 minutes. That way, if a power failure lasts more than a short while, the server should initiate and complete an orderly shutdown as quickly as possible in the remaining runtime.

Assuming an orderly shutdown, how do I get the server to subsequently automatically boot up again after power has been restored? Depending on remaining battery capacity, it might be safest to not boot up again until after the battery has done some recharging first.
 
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Chuntzu

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There was some cheap dell ones on eBay a little while back I ended up buying 2 of the 220v versions super cheap. They were brand new never opened.
 

chinesestunna

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Here's a few observations I made during my search for a UPS for my home server:
  • Power Rating - the rated VA or Wattage doesn't really give us a good idea about run time, from my research it seems to be about 5-8 minutes at full load, so if you need longer time to shut everything down, you can get higher rated units. My UPS is a 1000VA unit, normal draw is about 130W with discs spun down, the UPS reports about 25 minutes of run time under those conditions.
  • Sine-Waves - when you mentioned it above, I'm guessing you meant "Pure Sine Wave" vs. simulated when it comes to active PFC PSUs? There's a good amount of sources that recommend getting pure sine wave units for active PFC PSUs but they don't seem to be required. My UPS isn't not pure sine wave and it's held up great during a few outages over last 2 years.
  • Orderly shutdown - I don't have a good solution for this, I have my system configured to start shutdown at 50% battery so there's a good 10 minute window if it was just a quick blackout, the server would stay up instead of starting shutdown as power has been restored already
 

NeverDie

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  • Sine-Waves - when you mentioned it above, I'm guessing you meant "Pure Sine Wave" vs. simulated when it comes to active PFC PSUs?
Yes, that's what I meant. Thanks for asking.

The non-PFC PSU's I've tested seem to work fine on the cheaper, simulated sinewave (not pure sinewave) UPS's. I don't know (and haven't tried) what happens or might go wrong if a PFC PSU is run from a simulated sinewave UPS. If I don't actually need a pure sinewave UPS for a PFC PSU, it would be good to know, because the pure sinewave UPS's are definitely more expensive.
 
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chinesestunna

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Thanks for asking. Yes, that's what I meant.

The non-PFC PSU's I've tested seem to work fine on the cheaper, simulated sinewave (not pure sinewave) UPS's.
My PSUs are all active PFC and through 2 simulated sinewave units they've worked fine. Not saying that's 100% perfect or evidence things are guaranteed to work but been fine for me
 

T_Minus

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On-Line or Line Interactive? How much do you want to spend.

The APC RackMount units I've gotten for cheap $200 or < with batteries and without, new batteries ~50 shipped. I have a couple Liebert/Emerson On-Line UPS, and a BNIB TrippLite On-Line UPS for my servers at another location.

Power is something we lose a lot, so I have ~6 rackmount UPS, 1 for each system that's important and probably an extra one :) and another 3 or 4 for desktops/misc.

For my desktop I'm using UPS BackUps w/external runtime battery... only reason I'm running this is because I got it on accident from amazon, opened it up 2 months later and realized I'd ordered the Extended Run Battery pack and NOT the unit, so I had to get the unit tioo :) I have 3 or 4 of the smaller ones of these in use for other computers, switches, etc... they work great.

1 important thing that doesn't get mentioned often. EXERCISE your batteries if you want them to last. I still have a small UPS ~6 year old batteries still lasting 1hr-2hr on my network stuff (cisco router, zyxel router, netgear switch). Most of the UPS I use that get used 5-8 times per-winter (full drains) last 3+ years, not getting used they die in 2-3 years.

The Liebert units are 100% sign-wave and actively filtering power. I also use a TrippLite Line Conditioner in FRONT of the UPS to help it regulate just a little bit, I've done this with cheaper UPS units and cheaper generators to re-charge. My Honda Eu2000i generator can re-charge any UPS w/out one since it's sinewave I've found though.

I have a lot of write-ups on power, ups, home-made backups and more :)
 

mattr

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I use this for my server room: Tripp Lite SMART1300LCDT
Runs about 20% and battery lasts about 25 minutes with FiOS Router, 24 port DGS-1100-24, Cisco SG200-08, HD HomeRun Prime, 21" LCD Monitor and my Plex Media Server/Backup Server: i7-3770, 16GB RAM, 760W PSU, 4 SSDs, 12 HDDs, 6 Fans.
 

TuxDude

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Power Rating - the rated VA or Wattage doesn't really give us a good idea about run time, from my research it seems to be about 5-8 minutes at full load, so if you need longer time to shut everything down, you can get higher rated units. My UPS is a 1000VA unit, normal draw is about 130W with discs spun down, the UPS reports about 25 minutes of run time under those conditions.
Power rating and run-time are really not related at all, though in most smaller UPSs like you would have at home you probably need to get a bigger unit with higher power rating in order to get more run time. The power rating is basically measuring how much power can pass through the UPS - even if your utility power is just fine you probably can't draw 1500W through a 1000W UPS even when the UPS is plugged into a wall outlet rated for 1500W. (If your UPS has a bypass mode then you can draw as much power as the wall-socket will provide, but you lose battery protection in bypass). Run time basically measures how big the batteries in the unit are, and is often expressed as the amount of time it would take to drain the batteries if you were pulling the maximum power rating. So as soon as you get a UPS that allows external battery expansion, you can tune the power rating (size of the base unit) and run-time (number of battery expansion units) independently.
 
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chinesestunna

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Power rating and run-time are really not related at all, though in most smaller UPSs like you would have at home you probably need to get a bigger unit with higher power rating in order to get more run time. The power rating is basically measuring how much power can pass through the UPS - even if your utility power is just fine you probably can't draw 1500W through a 1000W UPS even when the UPS is plugged into a wall outlet rated for 1500W. (If your UPS has a bypass mode then you can draw as much power as the wall-socket will provide, but you lose battery protection in bypass). Run time basically measures how big the batteries in the unit are, and is often expressed as the amount of time it would take to drain the batteries if you were pulling the maximum power rating. So as soon as you get a UPS that allows external battery expansion, you can tune the power rating (size of the base unit) and run-time (number of battery expansion units) independently.
I understand that, my point was most units only post power rating and run time is not as obvious to fine. It is important to get enough power rating to run all the gear, but you have no idea how long it will all run for esp. with your SOHO units. I know a lot of people have rackmount/enterprise grade gear here that has all the specs laid out, I was just provided some perspective as an general observation for consumer units
 

NeverDie

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Before going to bed last night I pulled the trigger on buying the CyberPower PR750LCD: Amazon.com: CyberPower PR750LCD Smart App Sinewave UPS 750VA 525W SNMP/HTTP Mini-Tower: Electronics
because Amazon had only one left in stock with Prime shipping. Now that I'm more awake, I'm realizing I need to buy an add-in card (another $125) to get the network features I thought were already built in. o_O Now I'll need to compare that combined total against some of the more expensive UPS's to see which is the better deal and whether the benefits are actually worth the higher total cost.

Anyhow, if you look at the "most helpful" Amazon review on that product, the reviewer did a mammoth detailed comparison among a large slew of different UPS's. It's the most exhaustive comparative review I've yet found.
 
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PigLover

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Check ebay for the network card. They show up there pretty often. I think you may be able to do much better than $125.
 

NeverDie

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Power rating and run-time are really not related at all, though in most smaller UPSs like you would have at home you probably need to get a bigger unit with higher power rating in order to get more run time. The power rating is basically measuring how much power can pass through the UPS - even if your utility power is just fine you probably can't draw 1500W through a 1000W UPS even when the UPS is plugged into a wall outlet rated for 1500W. (If your UPS has a bypass mode then you can draw as much power as the wall-socket will provide, but you lose battery protection in bypass). Run time basically measures how big the batteries in the unit are, and is often expressed as the amount of time it would take to drain the batteries if you were pulling the maximum power rating. So as soon as you get a UPS that allows external battery expansion, you can tune the power rating (size of the base unit) and run-time (number of battery expansion units) independently.
That's interesting. First I've heard about external battery expansion units. By "tuning", are you saying there exist UPS's where the wattage can be easily upgraded too, not just additional runtime? After all: plans change, future growth, etc. Upgrade flexibility without being forced to replace would be nice--provided it's cost-effective that is.
 

T_Minus

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You can't upgrade the wattage/power handling. Although most, even home have external battery packs.

Run time is calculated by YOUR load, and the batteries in your UPS. The UPS rated RUN TIME in the docs is most often at capacity... which for 99% means nothing to us as we won't be pulling 900 watts from our 1000 watt UPS.

I think I paid ~$15 for the NIC/Card for my APC units on EBAY. WAY WAY cheaper than new. I did buy a new tripplite unit though before I discovered the magic of ebay enterprise deals and having to check in OFTEN :)
 

NeverDie

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1 important thing that doesn't get mentioned often. EXERCISE your batteries if you want them to last. I still have a small UPS ~6 year old batteries still lasting 1hr-2hr on my network stuff (cisco router, zyxel router, netgear switch). Most of the UPS I use that get used 5-8 times per-winter (full drains) last 3+ years, not getting used they die in 2-3 years.
I haven't heard of that before. Are others here finding that as well? AFAIK, the only way to know for sure how much runtime you have is to do a periodic drain test, so I guess that and exercise would be accomplished simultaneously.

By "full drain", I assume you mean draining it until the voltage reaches 11 point something volts (I'm forgetting what the safe voltage cut-off is), not drain until totally dead, right? From everything I've read, the latter case would destroy an SLA.
 
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T_Minus

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I haven't heard of that before. Are others here find that as well? AFAIK, the only way to know for sure how much runtime you have is to do a periodic drain test, so I guess that and exercise could be done simultaneously.

By "full drain", I assume you mean draining it until the voltage reaches 11 point something volts (I'm forgetting what the safe voltage cut-off is), not drain until totally dead, right? From everything I've read, the latter case would destroy an SLA.
This is NOT for just UPS batteries, I deal with a lot of automotive/atv/off-road vehicles and farm equipment too. Your batteries just simply do not last unless they're utilized. Obviously some fail before others but they need to be used.

I run my UPS until they stop working and they shut-off, they have (or should) built-in protection from draining them too much. I would NEVER be able to keep up with what was near out of power, and what was where... during power outage (at night) I sometimes run the main network UPS until it dies nightly, and then re-charge with the generator the next AM.

You are right though, exercising and seeing how long they last = can be done at once. This is what I do with new/used UPS I get off ebay, I run them for 5hrs to charge and then run 2, dual core 1366 systems w/dual PSU to put a real load on the backup unit. I do this 2-3x on used batteries to see if any life is left in them. If the batteries were $$ (IE: You waste $ buying OEM) then I'd try the welding trick, freezer trick, and others to 'restore' the batteries.

Some batteries are just shit. I had a $200 battery in my ATV (AGM) supposed to last years, died 5 mo after warranty ended, and the ATV is ridden often. Put in another brand this time, and we'll see how it works. I have 2 other AGM batteries for misc (truck size) that have NEVER been charged in ~3 years, and they still work fine for running vehicles, etc.. I REALLY need to power-cycle these, and give them a fresh charge and/or keep them on a trickle in winter.