Anyone using a UPS?

[peterkrogh]

Alan,
Any info here on battery life will be anecdotal, and therefore not terribly useful (unless someone can point to a study somewhere that is comprehensive).

I really do like the idea of a car battery, but don't know what kinds of issues may be involved, other than voltage.  The battery on my server UPS is starting to fail, so maybe I try this sooner rather than later.
Peter

[danaltick]

Well, I guess I'll throw my 2 cents in here for what it's worth.  I don't use UPS's, never have.  I figure I'm probably not going to be at home anyway when the power goes out, so spending a lot of money on one that will last longer won't do me any good.  To put one on each PC on my LAN would be somewhat expensive.  I've always placed my priority and resources into regularly scheduled backups, both onsite and off, and very good surge protection that is well grounded.  Good surge protectors are not that expensive.  O/S's are also much more stable today than they used to be.  They can withstand sudden power outtages much better today than just a few years ago.

Don't misunderstand me here though, for corporate servers or mission critical systems, you definitely shouuld have a UPS, but for small DAM systems whose focus is more on redundancy and offsite storage, I can't really justify the expense and overhead.

Dan

[DJ Webb]

Hey Daniel.

The whole point of UPS is that they give you the time to shut down your systems (PC, NAS, etc) safely during a power outage.

My NAS and my UPS communicate so that if/when I lose power the UPS first warns the NAS that its on batteries, if after a set amount of time (or a set amount of battery life remains) power hasn't been restored the NAS shuts itself down automatically. I don't have to do anything.

I think most UPS you buy come with the software to enable this. You just plug the UPS into the main system its protecting via USB.

Putting a UPS on every single device you own would be expensive but don't write them off because you think they are only useful if you're around when the power goes.

[danaltick]

DJ,

Thanks for letting me know that.

Dan