Uninterruptible power supply – recommendations
 

Hi there,
I want to buy an UPS (Uninterruptible power supply) to support 3-4 Linux servers in case the power is down.
It is important that when the power is down, the UPS to shut down the linux servers, so that no data loss occurs.
What would you recommend based on you experience? The server runs rhel3 and will be upgraded to rhel4 soon.

Thanks

I'd say go with APC - the Linux support for their UPSes is excelent

i'm using mge with 2 systems and 2 headless nodes...
it works ok but i need to add the network solutions pack to be efficent...
nova 1100 avr and it gives me approx 16 minutes...
not for servers but has enough power to handle 2...
for the price, is quite good...
www.mgeups.com

Looking for recommendations for a similar setup myself, so am bumping this rather than starting a new thread ...

I'm in the UK, and UPS units seem pretty reasonable just now, e.g. around £50 incl tax for an APC Back-UPS CS 350VA. A couple of questions for those with knowledge or experience please:

1. Although the example model above has 4 outlets, will 350VA be sufficient for 4 reasonably hungry (450-550w PSU) servers, or will it melt quickly? I suspect the latter, in which case, what is the minimum rating I should consider for such an installation?

2. In practice, how often could I expect to have to replace the battery in this unit (or similar)?

3. My installation suffers frequent short outages (possibly due to load shedding), but rarely anything more than around 5 minutes at most, so I don't need anything hardcore. Anything that will enable me to initiate graceful shutdown after 5-10 minutes' (or less if necessary) outage would be good. With this in mind, should I be considering anything radically different from the APC model mentioned above?

Thanks for reading, and for any input :)

neiljt
APC has an online selector guide which will give you an idea what you will need. You can not plug 4 computers into a single 350VA UPS it will overload the unit. IMO you will need at a min a 650VA unit for each server.

Thanks, Michael. I just took APC's selector for a spin, but suspect slight "over-speccing" - it recommends (for best value) one of these (summary: 5000VA, £1615.61 incl tax). I might build my own wind-turbine.

I think I prefer your per-server solution, which although less tidy (4 units), seems like a more economical approach!

I have 2 old APC UPSs, they work very well with my linux boxes. One of them will run 3 of my machines for about 25 minutes on battery, if I just keep the server on and turn off the monitors, it'll last around 4 hours. Cool thing was, I got them for 5 bucks at a yard sale! The guy selling them didn't know what they were.