rant.. recommend a UPS

Richard King

Richard King

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Richard King
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How can I do any work, when I get a on off power outage every 15 mins, 8 today and counting

anyone recommend a good UPS capable of powering at least 3 high spec computers and monitors
 
Another vote for APC, used them for the 6 months I spent in france when it was a very regular occurance...

As said can spec what you need...
 
BandyQuill said:
depends how long you want to keep them up and running, general practice is to give enough time for the machine to shutdown automatically (or after a specified ammount of time) here at the college weve orerridden the shutdown command on APC UPS's so they stay up now for about 20 mins maximum but thats pushing it...
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indeed.

the real question you should be asking is why is your power going off every 15 mins.
 
the whole village is getting on/off cuts today... the blip is a second, but enough to flip everything off. Annoyingly, it flips the router off to, which screws the phones

I was 1/2 way through a complex PHP file first time today, and the second time I was running a SQL query

The sort of work I am doing makes this really anoying

I will look at the APC site

Thanks for the recomendations
 
I have a little APC 650 which sits quietly under the desk and has worked without complaint for about 8 years now. It has saved me on numerous occasions and allows me to power everything down safely without losing work.
 
Richard King said:
the whole village is getting on/off cuts today...
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Have you reported it? After an afternoon with half-a-dozen blips I phoned and they sent a crew out within 30 minutes to deal with branches, meaning three hours without power that evening :bang:

I got a £40 UPS soon after, which has done its stuff about once per week over the past month (thunderstorms).
 
I work for a company that makes and sells UPS's but we can't sell direct but thru' resellers like Edmonsons, CEF etc.

What are the specs of your PC's (Wattage of the power supplys and other things such as monitors, printers etc etc
 
i had a UPS for many years when I lived in a rural village in norfolk. I had an little APC, give me about 15 minutes up time with two PCs and three monitors (and they were big beefy CRT monitors). Only cost about 120 quid.
 
I'll also recommend APC. You'll want three separate UPSs, a single one that'll power three machines will be massive.

As a rule of thumb they are the heaviest piece of computer kit you'll ever buy. When you lift them you realise they weigh about 2 and a half time what you were expecting.
 
...in our server room we have one which offers about 15 minutes of power for 5 servers. it probably weights close to 100kg. it is HUGE, and the batteries are scary. big thick wires. i've only needed to replace a set once, but it's a bit terrifying in case you get a belt!
 
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cuthbert said:
...in our server room we have one which offers about 15 minutes of power for 5 servers. it probably weights close to 100kg. it is HUGE, and the batteries are scary. big thick wires. i've only needed to replace a set once, but it's a bit terrifying in case you get a belt!
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weve got a diesel genny in the carpark the size of a large estate car :cool:
 
As others have said, UPS's are not for running kit, they are to allow for either the safe shutdown or time for the generators to spin up and cut in.

Repeated cut outs like that are going to tax even the most well spec'ed gear. You need a generator to cope with that.

I have a *little* experience in power protected environments ;-)
 
ups_hydralic_1.jpg
 
photon said:
Have you reported it? After an afternoon with half-a-dozen blips I phoned and they sent a crew out within 30 minutes to deal with branches, meaning three hours without power that evening :bang:

I got a £40 UPS soon after, which has done its stuff about once per week over the past month (thunderstorms).
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Nope - i went to wicks, and got some gear for the studio build.. i it carrys on, I will report it. Today was put on hold :bonk:
 
Richard King said:
the whole village is getting on/off cuts today... the blip is a second, but enough to flip everything off. Annoyingly, it flips the router off to, which screws the phones

I was 1/2 way through a complex PHP file first time today, and the second time I was running a SQL query

The sort of work I am doing makes this really anoying

I will look at the APC site

Thanks for the recomendations
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My village had this a couple of years ago now [which isn't far from you]- they sent someone the following day to the local transformer box [or whatever it's called] & not had a problem since.
 
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It was probably an 11kV local substation that the engineer tended to.
 
Richard King said:
lol - i use a couple of machines at once both with 2 screen setups.
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Hi Richard,

As others have mentioned, the UPS isn't designed to allow you to continue working whilst the power is down - just to give you enough time to gracefully save and shut down all your connected systems.

A single 1500VA APC UPS (other good manufacturers are available I'm sure, but I haven't used them) should be more than capable of running what you have described, but certainly do the calculations to confirm before taking the plunge obviously.

In reality you would have both PC's and probably just your primary monitor on one system connected (or both on one system if you have capacity) and as others have said - just RDP into the other machine and shut it down before shutting down your main PC.

The APC systems do provide software for automated shutdown (as well as there being inbuilt functionality in Windows - assuming that is what you are using). However do be aware that if you want to automatically shut down more than one PC, you will need additional parts at additional cost (add-in card and cables) which will allow you to shut down up to 3 machines IIRC.

Alternatively you could look at scripting the shutdown from the main unit connected to the UPS, but this isn't foolproof!

Cheers,

Paul.
 
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