class_A

I've been meaning to buy a UPS for a while now just to protect my PC's. I'm not looking for massive runtime, just enough so that the machines can cleanly shut themselves down.

I've been looking at the APC range, the Smart-UPS in particular. I'm after brownout, under/over voltage protection and line filtering/cleaning. However, any manufacturer which can interact with upsd over RS-232 or USB would do the job (I'll be connecting to a Linux and a Mac box).

RefurbUPS seem to be a respected seller of refurbished UPS units, but they are in the US and unsuprisingly, shipping to the UK just isn't economical enough for them to offer it Are there any similar businesses here in the UK and if so what has been your experience of them? Or, am I limited to eBay or just buying new?

David_Wallis

Ebay??

only thing is batterys may need replacing, but this can be done yourself.

How many machines? (dont protect monitors / printers if you want a little more runtime)

Aim for the 1kva as a minimum.

class_A

David, just the 2 desktop machines at home; a P3 performing firewall duties (1 HDD) and a dual G4 PowerMac (2 HDD's). We've been having trouble with the mains supply in the area recently and it's cost me two NIC's and a motherboard. Luckily I've enough junk/spares to rebuild for £0.

Do you use APC, MCE or something else in your workplace? APC seem to have a pretty good rep.

Cheers,
Alex

ChrisB

I generally stick to APC these days.

We had an 8KVa BPC (British Power Conversation) and the 3rd party monitoring / managing software was dire. The APC website has a sizing tool so you can look at estimate run times and the like with your equipment.

David_Wallis

Alex, no we arent your 'average' smallish company and we use 60KVA UPS's in most of our comms rooms, Around 80 Amps Per Phase IIRC..

For ours we use GE Digital Energy UPS's and IUS Supplied / Designed Generators / Interlocks.

For small companies / home nothing but APC.. I have two smart UPS 700's at home.. One for my MediaCentre PC Yet to install and one for my desktop - Ok Desk
David

class_A

David, didn't think you worked for a "smallish" company but then again I should have realised that you're probably the kind of guy who would have had a small gas turbine available in case of emergency

I'll hunt out some APC gear. Thanks for all your help!

David_Wallis

We did look at that kind of generator. In case of emergency could happen any time.. sometimes its cool being 24x7x365 but can make downtime either tricky or non existent!

David