Power cut affected network cabinets - UPS' or something similar possible?

MarcLister

MarcLister

MarcLister

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On Wednesday we had a brief 20 second power cut that caused all the computers at the school to restart. The servers were fine courtesy of the UPS' they are plugged into.

Thursday morning however saw massive network problems; we eventually traced it to the four network cabinets around the school which were in "lit up like Christmas" mode. We restarted them all and everything went back to normal.

I spoke to one of the deputy heads yesterday and she asked if there was anything we could do in terms of power surges AND cuts to try and protect the network cabs from going mental like they did on Thursday.

The network cabinets are just plugged into the mains so I'm wondering if we could protect them by getting some UPS' in or is this overkill for the risk of this happening again in the future.

Considering we have just four network cabinets I think we can afford some decent surge proof gear but I think anything we get to counter power cuts will cost more. So am I barking up the wrong tree or are we woefully under prepared for a repeat power cut?
 
Should be on UPS, no question, the low end switching and routing gear is usually fairly low power (compared to servers) so even a 2U rackmount unit will keep them up for hours...
 
Thanks for the replies. :)

I don't think we need a 2U rackmount unit for each cabinet really; if the computers aren't on because of an extended power cut then there's no use for a network. It's just for when we get power surges or cuts that last a few seconds; long enough to cause problems but not long enough for the school to send everyone home.

What kind of costs would we be looking at for 4 UPS units/rackmount units? I've found some decent looking surge units that are just for single units for about £4 each. So £16 or so will get the network cabinets surge proofed up. :)

Is anything on this OcUK shop page suitable for what we need or is that overkill for us and our four network cabinets?
 
Strange why they didnt just reboot. But I would have mission critical core switches on UPS and Access switches I personally wouldnt bother unless you have the budget.
 
Well at the very low end you can grab a satisfactory desktop UPS for less than £100. How do you feel about that price point?

I'm finding it difficult to judge as I don't think I've bought a switch which cost less than £3k in the last year or two and dual PSUs and power resiliency is standard really...
 
Doesn't sound too bad. I'm just thinking that two of the cabinets are going to be hard to protect with UPS' due to space constraints. One of the cabinets is in the IT room so the UPS would have to live in the cabinet itself and another cabinet is placed immediately behind the school secretary so there's no space there for a UPS.

The single socket surge protectors are going to be fine and I'm sure we can get them as its less than £20. It's the two cabinets that aren't in locked rooms that could be a problem.
 
Well, even for fairly power hungry switches, one of these: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=UP-034-AP&groupid=702&catid=55&subcat=

should do just the job for 5-10mins. If you've got VoIP phones which are powered via ethernet then you might well be able to justify this expense - If a power flicker sent the phones offline, it might not be the best!

Of course, that's the cheapest UPS which is on OCUK, and it really won't do much more than around 10mins. Furthermore I'm not sure if its batteries are hot swappable, so you might want to consider that. However, you've obviously managed thus far without, and so this'll tackle the occasional power supply niggle :)
 
Nice one blueacid. Yeah we've done OK until now so I don't think we need enterprise level stuff but something good enough to cover us for the most likely eventualities. :)
 
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