What to look for in a UPS?

krishna

I work for a small charity. We run a windows server. The building we are in seems to be subject to a lot of power failures and this is causing havoc with our server/network.

We clearly need to get a UPS, but what do we need to look for? Any recommendations? Not expecting to be able to run everything off it. Would just like something to protect us against spikes, cover us for momentary power failures and ideally something that can organise a proper shutdown of the server if there is a longer power failure. That would need to be able to do it unattended since the power failures often seem to happen when we are not around.

nickcardwell

what make of machine is the windows server running on?
also number of disks in the machine.

Most ups come with software that plugs into the usb /serial port. If it detects its running on battery, it will inform the computer. When its gone down to a certain % it will inform the computer to shut down.

totalsolutions

What to look for in a UPS? electrons ??


Look at APC or Powerware or google ups.
They are very heavy units that use 12v lead acid batteries to generate 230v ac. The mains keeps them charged and when it dissapears it keeps running because of the batteries are really running the show, until they are fully drained. So the bigger the unit the longer they will last. How long is you brownout? How much kit do you want to keep going. They will last a few minutes to much more. Youn only need to keep the server up so it can shut down with software monitoring supplied.

krishna

nickcardwell wrote: »

what make of machine is the windows server running on?
also number of disks in the machine.

It's a Dell server running Windows Server 2003 small business edition. There's a two disk RAID.

krishna

totalsolutions wrote: »

What to look for in a UPS? electrons ??

:rotfl:

totalsolutions wrote: »

How long is you brownout?

Don't actually know as I am not generally around when it happens. I was thinking in terms of 20mins of battery time to run the server (like you say nothing else really needs to be protected). We have had power outages in the middle of the nightly backup which seemed to play havoc with the back up software too. But I am assuming that if you require an unattended shut down it will go ahead, cancelling the backup?

snapdragon69

Based on common assumptions, an APC 1500 or something should be more than adequate for the server and a display. (APC is the make). To be more scientific, add the rated wattage of everything that you want on the UPS together, then get one with a KVA rating which is at leat 1.4x this wattage (in Watts)

So if your stuff is 980W, get at least a 1400KVA UPS

John_Gray

Our charity just bought a MGE Evolution 3000 kVA UPS for our fairly hefty Dell terminal server running Windows Server 2003 R2. It also runs a smaller Evesham Windows Server 2003. The stats show it is running at about 13% capacity (hence overconfigured, deliberately) and will 'last' just under 45 minutes in the event of a power-out (before which, of course, it will gracefully shut down the servers). Cost us about £800, if I remember correctly.

(The servers cost about £2800 and ~£1000, respectively.)

krishna

John_Gray wrote: »

Our charity just bought a MGE Evolution 3000 kVA UPS ...
Cost us about £800, if I remember correctly.

Think that is outside the range of what we can afford. I was thinking more in terms of around £200. Best I've found so far is APC Smart-UPS SC 1500VA for around £213 delivered (Amazon marketplace, but new product). Our server is rated at £420W, monitor at 24W. I suspect we could probably get away with a lower spec UPS, but I can't seem to find one of them for much less than £200 anyway, unless the spec is much much lower.