Nut upsuser - Aug 2006 - choosing a UPS (in the United States)

I do a bunch of "kindness of strangers" hosting in my basement and my 
three kVA apc unit died recently.  In looking around, it looked like 
Belkin was a reasonable low-end replacement for a few machines.  Then I 
read this mailing list after I purchased one and was gifted another.  It 
looks like people don't like Belkin.  ;-)

So the question is what's a good UPS for running for five machines, 12 
disk drives, and seven CPUs (one being a DEC Alpha)?  No, I haven't 
figured out the power budget.  When I take things down this weekend, I 
will be measuring the power consumption of all the devices.

Power outages around here tend to be fairly frequent but short-lived 
(i.e. under five minutes) as the trees brush across power lines and then 
the circus reset.

Given this kind of power fluctuation, I think I am happy with roughly a 
five or 10 minute runtime with fairly quick shutdown triggers.

assuming that the Belkin units are uncontrollable because the firmware 
and hardware implementation is just awful, what is recommended and 
available here in the states?

thanks for sharing your wisdom.

---eric

On 08/09/2006 12:07 AM, Eric S. Johansson wrote:
> I do a bunch of "kindness of strangers" hosting in my basement
and my
> three kVA apc unit died recently.  In looking around, it looked like 
> Belkin was a reasonable low-end replacement for a few machines.  Then 
> I read this mailing list after I purchased one and was gifted 
> another.  It looks like people don't like Belkin.  ;-)
>
> So the question is what's a good UPS for running for five machines, 12 
> disk drives, and seven CPUs (one being a DEC Alpha)?  No, I haven't 
> figured out the power budget.  When I take things down this weekend, I 
> will be measuring the power consumption of all the devices.
>
> Power outages around here tend to be fairly frequent but short-lived 
> (i.e. under five minutes) as the trees brush across power lines and 
> then the circus reset.
>
> Given this kind of power fluctuation, I think I am happy with roughly 
> a five or 10 minute runtime with fairly quick shutdown triggers.
>
> assuming that the Belkin units are uncontrollable because the firmware 
> and hardware implementation is just awful, what is recommended and 
> available here in the states?
>
> thanks for sharing your wisdom.
I am not living in USA but as I happened to use several dozens of UPSs 
during the last 10 years, I'll just let you know my impressions.
- I've been using different APC units (mostly BK 500EI, BK650EI, 
SmartUPS XL 1000VA), for years with absolutely no problem except for 
batteries dying after 2.5-4 years. Replacement batteries for a SmartUPS 
1000VA= 34 euro.
 - I also have used (monitored from Windows only) MUSTEK POWERMUST 
units. Decent. No problems so far
 - A few months ago I have replaced 2*SmartUPS 1000 VA with one Ablerex 
MARS MS3000RT. It's definitely dumber then APC but with the great help 
of the nut developers, it works OK and does it's job. Taking into 
account that it costs half the price of an APC with the same capacity, 
I'd say it's a decent trade-off
- and last, I have at home (a gift..) one "IUPS 650 Silver Data".
It's
supposed to be French. Just one word: awful. A load of <100W is 
sustained for no more then 3 minutes.

    Anyway, in order to purchase a correct sized UPS, you need to 
evaluate the consumption. And do not forget to leave a decent margin for 
upgrades :)

On Wednesday 09 August 2006 06:37, Eric S. Johansson
wrote:
> I do a bunch of "kindness of strangers" hosting in my basement
and my
> three kVA apc unit died recently.  In looking around, it looked like
> Belkin was a reasonable low-end replacement for a few machines.  Then I
> read this mailing list after I purchased one and was gifted another.  It
> looks like people don't like Belkin.  ;-)
I suggest buying MGE..
2 reasons.
1) They support NUT
2) Their build quality and design seems very good (better than APC).

Ask me again in 6-12 months and I'll tell you if their run times are as 
optimistic as APCs :)

As you might have guessed I don't like APC much - we have had big problems
at
work with poor runtime. Even for supposedly new units the run time was 20%+ 
less than what the web page stated, and it got much worse after a year.

We ship radar systems with radars to a lot of places with really shitty power 
and I definitely don't recommend APC for that sort of thing. That said we 
have a few in places with good power (eg Australia & Europe) and they work 
fine but for places with good power, well.. a UPS isn't a great help :)

That said I haven't used PowerWare or any of those - maybe they're
better.

-- 
Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer
for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au
"The nice thing about standards is that there
are so many of them to choose from."
  -- Andrew Tanenbaum
GPG Fingerprint - 5596 B766 97C0 0E94 4347 295E E593 DC20 7B3F CE8C
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On 8/8/06, Eric S. Johansson <esj@harvee.org>
wrote:
> I do a bunch of "kindness of strangers" hosting in my basement
and my
> three kVA apc unit died recently.  In looking around, it looked like
> Belkin was a reasonable low-end replacement
IMHO, "low-end" means something to filter power blips less than 10
seconds long. That's what I would use for a desktop machine, but not
any sort of hosting (even if it's not mission-critical).
> So the question is what's a good UPS for running for five machines, 12
> disk drives, and seven CPUs (one being a DEC Alpha)?  No, I haven't
> figured out the power budget.  When I take things down this weekend, I
> will be measuring the power consumption of all the devices.
I don't know your physical setup, but if it were me, I would get a few
rack-mount UPSes instead of putting everything on one big UPS.

Obviously, you don't want to go too crazy on splitting things up,
because the per-unit cost for replacement batteries is generally
higher than half the cost of a battery twice as large.

This also usually gives you more control over switchable outlets, in
case you want to remotely power-cycle one particular server.
> assuming that the Belkin units are uncontrollable because the firmware
> and hardware implementation is just awful, what is recommended and
> available here in the states?
Tripp Lite is in a similar category. Their rackmount stuff looks
decent, but I still haven't had a chance to do full testing with the
2U box that tripplite_usb works with. Their protocol is a bit of a
mess, and if you happen to get something that is slightly newer than
what NUT supports, there will be very little indication on the box as
to what has changed.

If you can't find an MGE unit that suits your needs and/or wallet, I
would recommend either a used Best Power UPS, or an APC. Since you've
checked the list, you have probably seen that Arnaud and his coworkers
at MGE have been very responsive to any issues that crop up. On the
other hand, APC implements most of the same features as MGE, and their
proprietary stuff isn't quite as opaque as some of the other vendors'
hidden features. Some of the APC fixes are very recent, though, and
have not been tested as much.

Froogle lists several MGE distributors in the US, so it's worth another
look.

-- 
- Charles Lepple

Hi Eric,

2006/8/8, Eric S. Johansson <esj@harvee.org>:
>
> I do a bunch of "kindness of strangers" hosting in my basement
and my
> three kVA apc unit died recently.  In looking around, it looked like
> Belkin was a reasonable low-end replacement for a few machines.  Then I
> read this mailing list after I purchased one and was gifted another.  It
> looks like people don't like Belkin.  ;-)
>
> So the question is what's a good UPS for running for five machines, 12
> disk drives, and seven CPUs (one being a DEC Alpha)?  No, I haven't
> figured out the power budget.  When I take things down this weekend, I
> will be measuring the power consumption of all the devices.
>
> Power outages around here tend to be fairly frequent but short-lived
> (i.e. under five minutes) as the trees brush across power lines and then
> the circus reset.
>
> Given this kind of power fluctuation, I think I am happy with roughly a
> five or 10 minute runtime with fairly quick shutdown triggers.
>
> assuming that the Belkin units are uncontrollable because the firmware
> and hardware implementation is just awful, what is recommended and
> available here in the states?
>
> thanks for sharing your wisdom.
>
I think most have been said about the relation between NUT and MGE ;-)

Depending upon your exact power needs, and setup (single vs multi UPS,
rackmount, ...), you might prefer Pulsar Evolution or Pulsar EX RT. If you
need a bit more power and features / QOS, I would recommend the new Pulsar
MX.

You can get a bit of help to make your choice using the UPS Selector:
http://www.mgeups.com/selector/ups/index.php?lang=us

If you have more questions, don't hesitate to contact me back.
But as told, I'll be on holidays for 2 weeks as of tomorrow...

Arnaud
-- 
Linux / Unix Expert - MGE UPS SYSTEMS - R&D Dpt
Network UPS Tools (NUT) Project Leader - http://www.networkupstools.org/
Debian Developer - http://people.debian.org/~aquette/
OpenSource Developer - http://arnaud.quette.free.fr/
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