Uninterrupted Power Supply Advise

[locrieth]

Hi all,

Just looking for a bit of advice regarding purchasing a UPS for my home server and network. At present I have a Dell R420 with dual 550 Watt PSUs which run a windows server 2016 VM and a Sophos UTM VM, a Cisco SG300 24 POE switch (which runs 3 POE APs and a CCTV IP camera), a Virgin Media SuperHub 3 and a media centre PC (i5 3330 with a bunch of drives).

I've ran a power meter on the mains plug that they come from and it reads about 250 Watts while idling and when i ran prime 95 on both the windows server vm and the media centre they went up to about 325 Watts, so call it about 1.5 Amps.

I've had a couple of trips on the power recently and I'm looking to try and mitigate short power drops, when all I need to do is flick the breakers back on. But if there is a longer power cut, gracefully shutting down the VMs, ESXi and the media centre PC in the battery time.

Any advice on what i should be looking for? I've done a bit of research regarding standby, line interactive, etc and simulated sine wave vs. pure sine wave. What VA /wattage should i be looking at? And are there any brands to avoid or specifically go for, cyberpower seem to be coming across as a good reasonably priced brand?

I don't really want to spend a fortune on one, but don't see the point in scrimping of one if its going to be rubbish.

As always your advice is much appreciated, thanks for reading.

Cheers,

Locrieth

 

[EsaT]

Just forget volt amperes, it's watts which are the important thing.
And in this case it should be something like 400W to cover all situation.
In time of power factor corrections it would have to be insanely reactive load for apparent output power to not be enough, if watt output is enough.

Standby topology is the cheapest and least capable.
Line interactive is better and those usually also have voltage regulation to correct some voltage fluctuations without switching to battery power.

Simulated sinewave is what marketing uses for modified square wave.
Would have to be awfully drunk for these to look even remotely sine wave shaped:
https://www.hardwareinsights.com/database-of-ups-output-waveforms/4/#APC-Schneider-Electric-other

Some old UPSes such high spikes that it would actually start rising near input tolerated by modern active-PFC PSUs.
But in most properly made UPSes voltage is safe and waveform doesn't cause real problems for PCs.
Sine wave output is lot more important for double conversion/online UPSes always powering load from inverter output.


If you want normal UK power plugs to fit that's major factor.
Most UPSes use IEC sockets.
Cyberpower BRICs are one of the few UPSes with UK outlets.
https://www.cyberpower.com/uk/en/product/series/brics_lcd
Out of flat box designs those appear to be also only ones with some ventilation.
Cheap APCs are closed boxes designed to bake cheap capacitors dead.

If you want like five minute operating time with some reserve left, smaller models lack in battery capacity.
Also if battery capacity is tight then aging/wear of battery drops runtime to unusable level faster.
BR1200 seems to have lot bigger battery capacity than smaller models.
BR1000 has only 6 minute runtime for 300W load, while BR1200 has 9 minutes for 360W.

 

[Phil2008]

APC UPS's your mainly paying for the name and the easy replacement batteries..........

I have had a Belkin 1200va with AVR UPS for about 8yrs, running 24/7, have replaced the batteries about 3-4 times and has seen off about 3 pc builds in that time.. It's been a awesme UPS and never has let me down, so dont write off cheap UPS or not very well known UPS's as they can be as good or better then the big name ones

I upgraded the Belkin this time last year to a PowerWalker 2000va/1800Watts Online UPS, this is the spec sheet https://powerwalker.com/?page=produc...122099&lang=en

I paid £350.... Now if you wanted a APC UPS of this spec, it would cost you at least £1000 or not more. I have my whole main room plugged into it with a generator on standby,, so before the UPS runs out of battery power during a powercut (batts lasts about 2-3hrs), I get the UPS plugged into the generator and that sees me though a long extended powercut.

.........But remember a UPS is also a life saver during storms, with its AVR/surge protection constantly monitoring the incoming power. I have had times I have been away from home and there has been a storm, but I know that I can rest easy knowing the UPS is protecting my stuff.

 

[locrieth]

Hey thanks for the responses.

So we've been having a clear out at work and I found a 3000 VA APC UPS, so I got quite excited, as it was going to be written off and I though I had found some replacement battery for £40. Unfortunately I realised that it took 4 of those batteries so the price suddenly jumped up to at least £160 and when I tried to plug it in to see it was dead as a door nail! Then I found a Riello 1100 VTS (1100 VA 880 W) which had an error on power on A53 (I think it was) which turns out was a battery issue, so I ordered some replacement batteries, which cost £60 and everything seems to be up and working, I've put my media centre PC on and its showing 7% load. Just need to get some more Male to Female Kettle leads to plug everything else in and install the software and give it a test. I'm a happy chappy now

Cheers for all your advice.

Locrieth

 

[Phil2008]

No wrories, glad your sorted

Thats the other thing about brands you dont really know, is that the batteries are quite cheap to replace. My UPS takes 4x 12v batts and thats about £80-£100,, not bad considering its a 1800watt UPS.

 

[locrieth]

Hey all,

Quick question now I've connected everything up, has anyone had any experience using Powershield3 or Riello UPSs? My UPS doesn't have a network control card, so I'm going to be using the USB connection. I have My Windows 10 Media PC and a Dell R420 with ESXi 6.7 (running 2 VMs, a windows 2016 server and a Sophos UTM). What I want to achieve is a safe shutdown of the VMs, the ESXi host and the Windows PC. I had a quick look at a document and the first thing it mentioned was the virtual appliance version of powershield won't work on the free version of ESXi, so I'm thinking I'm going to need to connect the USB to the Windows 10 PC and then run some script to shut down the VMs, then the host and then the Windows 10 PC? Does this sound about right? I haven't installed the software yet, so just pondering how it was going to work before I give it a try tonight.

Cheers,

Locrieth