Good/Minimal UPS for serv

  • Thread starter Johnathon Aaron Steel
  • Start date
J

Johnathon Aaron Steel

I am looking to find a good UPS for 2 Dell PowerEdge 2600 servers. I
am torn at what size I should go? Any suggestions?

Thanx

JAS
 
J

Jerry G.

The minimum wattage rating should be at least double of the total load,
including all devices to be connected to the UPS. Consider, that the larger
the UPS, the more stable, and also the more time it will run during a power
failure. Study the spec sheet to find out how long the UPS will run with the
load that you will give it.

I purchase UPS's that will run my computers for at least 1 hour to at
least1.5 hours during a power failure, before it is necessary to do a shut
down. This allows for work to continue. I also do this for all the work
stations that are connected to the server. This allows for more
productivity, and better system protection through the plant.

Take care that the batteries in these UPS's should be changed about every 3
years. We have clients who put in UPS's, and think they will be working
forever. Some have had some big surprises, even though they were warned.

--

Jerry G.
======


I am looking to find a good UPS for 2 Dell PowerEdge 2600 servers. I
am torn at what size I should go? Any suggestions?

Thanx

JAS
 
J

Johnathon Aaron Steel

Ok I am leaning towards a Belkin 1200VA (670 Watts) per server.

Or maybe APC Smart UPS 1500?

Whats your take.
 
B

Bennett Price

Do you know how much current your servers are using? It goes up as you
add hard drives and memory. Are you using 1 or 2 monitors with these 2
servers? Have you thought about how much back up time you want or need?
Excessive time is useless if the lights are out,
heating. cooling, and ventilating for people has ceased, etc. What is
the nature of most (all) outages? 2 seconds, 2 hours, 2 days?
 
C

CBFalconer

Johnathon said:
I am looking to find a good UPS for 2 Dell PowerEdge 2600 servers.
I am torn at what size I should go? Any suggestions?

Your first question is "How long do they have to hold up". The
second question is "How much power do they draw". You answer the
second by installing AC ammeters and voltmeters and actually
measuring it.

Then you are ready to ask your question again.
 
J

Johnathon Aaron Steel

Not to much of a load Its just a data server Its running 2 scsii
drives and a tape drive.the monitor is asmall 14". We get brown outs
and such and the power goes off occasionally.
 
J

Johnathon Aaron Steel

I dont really need a lot of uptime maybe 15-20 minutes. as for the
power I am not 100% what it draws.
 
G

General Schvantzkoph

Ok I am leaning towards a Belkin 1200VA (670 Watts) per server.

Or maybe APC Smart UPS 1500?

Whats your take.

I've always been happy with APCs. Also using a couple of Connext UPSs. I'm
pretty sure that a Connext is just an APC that's been private labled for
CompUSA, the battery inside says APC. I get frequent short power outages
and all of my systems ride them out just fine.
 
F

Fitz

Another UPS for consideration is Cyberpower. I'm running a 825AVR for a
single system that is fairly power hungry (AMD64 3200+ w/1 GB memory, 2 X
10000 RPM SATA harddrives (RAID 0) and an IDE harddrive for backups and
storage. An ATI 9800 Pro video card, DVD burner, front panel LCD, card
reader and floppy. It gives me approx 16 min of battery run time, with
system shutdown set at 8 minutes (automatically backs up data and runs
computer shutdown process). It has it's own system monitoring software, but
is also compatible with Windows if you prefer not to use theirs. The nice
thing is if you call them, you talk to a real person who will help you out
with selection and support.
I live in Alaska, and brownouts, surges and outages are fairly routine.

Fitz
 
J

Johnathon Aaron Steel

Wat watts are the UPS you use General?


I've always been happy with APCs. Also using a couple of Connext UPSs. I'm
pretty sure that a Connext is just an APC that's been private labled for
CompUSA, the battery inside says APC. I get frequent short power outages
and all of my systems ride them out just fine.
 
G

General Schvantzkoph

Wat watts are the UPS you use General?

My UPSs aren't very big. My dual Xeon server has a 900VA/500W UPS on it
and it's doing the job. I can ride out a 30 minute outage. Each of my
machines has it's own UPS and I keep the monitors on my servers powered
off so that they don't shorten the amount of time that the UPS can keep
the machines up. The UPSs all connect to either a serial or USB input so
that Linux can do a graceful shutdown before the UPS's battery runs dry.
You were looking at a 1200VA UPS which is bigger then any of mine so I'd
say it was good enough.
 
C

CBFalconer

*** top-posting fixed ***
Not to much of a load Its just a data server Its running 2 scsii
drives and a tape drive.the monitor is asmall 14". We get brown
outs and such and the power goes off occasionally.

Don't toppost. You mean you don't know. I know this rig draws
about 100 watts, and that my UPS will supply that for 5 to 10
minutes.

You can also measure by timing turns of the watthour meter wheel,
if you are careful and have a suitable means of calibration.
 
B

Bennett Price

Take a look at http://www.apcc.com/tools/ups_selector/index.cfm for a
useful selector guide. If you go with APC, their Smart UPS series
allows use of an optional expander card that will control 2 additional
servers. So instead of buying 2 UPS's, buy one big one plus expander
card. (The UPS needs to send shutdown signals to the servers when its
battery is about run out.)
 

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