what kind of UPS will work best?

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

Hi Gary,

  I've owned and worked with at least a dozen different UPS brands.
The best UPS I have - which I have right now powering several systems,
is a Best Power Ferrups FE series.  I don't think they make it anymore,
sorry!

  As for the APC units - the APC standby units are everyone's whore.
I have a collection of them that have failed for a variety of reasons.
They have their problems.

  The worst part about the APC units are the batteries.  If you decide
to go APC, when it comes time to replace the batteries you -must- buy
the most expensive lead acid gel cells you can find.  You cannot put in
the cheap Chinese batteries and have them last.  The reason is that
APC has deliberately calibrated their charging circuitry to fast-charge
the batteries and they use fast charge curves that will destroy the
cheap batteries very quickly.  By contrast most everyone else in the
industry uses feedback circuits that measure how fast the battery is
taking a recharge and will not boil dry the cheap batteries.  Last time
I changed batteries in my Best unit was 9/2004 and they are still going
strong and I used the cheap Chinese batteries.  By contrast all the
APC units I had which I got the same cheap batteries for, have dead
batteries in them now.

  Now, it may be in the brand new APC's they have changed things.  I
noticed in the last new APC unit we sold that APC had switched to
cheaper cells from Better Battery rather than the more spendy cells
from Panasonic that they used in their older UPSes.  But, I still think
there are better deals to be had. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Gary Kline
> Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2007 4:12 PM
> To: FreeBSD Mailing List
> Subject: what kind of UPS will work best?
> 
> 
> 
> 	Hi Folks,
> 	
> 	Recently, a storm happened and the power surge blew me 
> 	off-line.  Time to get serious about buying a UPS that will
> 	handle my four main servers for at-most, a 10-second power
> 	outage.  After that, shut down my computers.  It took me 90 
> 	minutes of up and down and crawling around last time.  That's
> 	the *why*.  Is there a best type to save me from this?  Do any of
> 	these power supplies come with scripts to shutdown a Unix {or
> 	Linux} computer?  Is there a UPS that is designed for heavy use 
> 	and a very short (5- to 10-second) uptime?  I'll need one that can
> 	interface thru the COM ports or the UBS port, if that is how
> 	these devices work. 
> 
> 	tia, 
> 
> 	gary
> 
> 
> -- 
>   Gary Kline  kline at thought.org   www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
>       http://jottings.thought.org   http://transfinite.thought.org
> 
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