Re: [MLUG] [OT] UPS battery replacements... local? overnight?

[Paul Armor <parmor AT gravity.phys.uwm.edu>]

Hi,

On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Justin Purdy wrote:

> I've been interested in picking up a UPS for my home for a while now.
> Seems like more and more often I've been having power fluctuations,
> and I'm just waiting to come home to a corrupted box. Does anybody
> have any recommendation for this? I've heard a lot about APC, and I
> know they released their PowerChute software for Linux, but I'm
> wondering if anybody has any recommendations over APC.

UPS's are your friend!  Historically I've had good luck with APC.  In our 
group at UWM, we're using a mixture of a large number (50-100, I know, 
large is relative to what?) Tripplite and Powerware/Best Power UPSs, and 
have a few APCs.  I wouldn't worry TOO much about the brand, but would 
research heavily or avoid cheaper brands found at Big Box/B&M stores.

There are lots of nifty features available for UPSs these days, so one can 
spend as much as they want, and get some nifty functionality (network 
attached, remote power control of outlets, monitoring environmental 
stuffs, etc).  One important consideration (IMHO) is do you want an 
offline or online UPS (well explained at 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_power_supply).  I prefer 
online, and that's all we use at work (the few APC units we have being an 
exception), but am too cheap to spring for it at home (at home I use one 
online I salvaged, and 2 offline).

Regarding software, I've not played with the Powerchute or vendor stuffs 
for a while, but instead use NUT (which is bundled for most distros, and 
can be used with everything from a dumb little quasi-smart UPS to our 
500kVA/400kW Powerware 9315... at long as its got a serial/USB or network 
connection it can be monitored/managed.  NUT info can be found at:

http://www.networkupstools.org/.

> Additionally, I'd like to set it up so that when the power comes back
> on after an outage long enough that my box has to shut down, my
> machine will boot itself again - I run a webserver on there, so the
> more it's up, the better. This isn't the same as the BIOS "boot on
> power restore" function, I don't think - but I could be wrong. Any
> tips on that?

Actually, that is theoretically one way to do it... never done something 
like that, but a system's Wake On some event could be used... When 
engineering something like this, remember to take into consideration what 
state everything's in after power is restored... it takes some amount of 
time for the batteries to recharge, what order do machines or equipment 
need to come up in, etc... Not impossible, it just feels that way 
sometimes.

Cheers,
Paul