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Looking for a Better Back-Up Power Solution?
ThisIsFred asks: "I maintain a small network (about 1500 users, 9 servers in four locations), and happen to be in an area where the power company's quality of service could be better. Reliability has been slowly improving over the past few years, but we still experience dozens of outages during the course of the year. Unfortunately, all of our un-interruptible power supplies give in after about two years of service, regardless of the brand I buy. I have stacks of lead-acid batteries waiting to get hauled away by a subcontractor licensed to dispose of hazardous materials. This is an expensive service, my employer doesn't want to allocate funds for it every two years. I don't like having to give up space for the storage of dead batteries, and I don't like wasting my time replacing them. Should my employer be responsible for the disposal fees? Shouldn't vendors selling new UPS units be legally required to take back old batteries, like with auto batteries? And what sort of solution should I be looking at that is lower maintenance? Currently I am using smaller, standalone units (1400 VA), because it is really hard for me to secure the funds for something more expensive. I'd like to see what other folks do. I trust examples based on Slashdot's real experience more than some vendor's sales pitch. I need to put together a good argument for the next budget review."
once the company realizes that keeping the servers powered 24x7 regardless of cost is important push them to auto on generators. We have one here, power went out and the only light on in our section of the grid was our sign. We instantly turned around and spun it as uptime is important to our customers etc...
I don't know how many batteries you have, but here in Georgia, battery distributors (Voltex, Interstate, etc) are *required* to accept batteries for disposal, at no charge. In fact, at places like Sears, they charge you a core charge if you don't bring a battery in. Something like $7.
You might have to pay someone to haul them to the distributor, but that's just a labor charge.
There you go: just move the operation to Georgia.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Second, some manufacturers do take back the battery. APC includes a pre-paid UPS return for spent batteries. I don't know if it's true for every battery they sell but it is for all I've looked at.
Third, many recyclers take batteries. My city recycling center has a place to recycle lead-acid batteries for free.
Remember that deep-discharging is very hard on lead-acid. If you only need to prevent data loss then set up a quick auto shutdown on the UPS protected machines. If you need long run time consider an extended-run UPS with a large enough battery that they don't end up deep discharging. (I know, they won't spring for the $$$)
Alternately, get some sort of generator that fits your situation so the UPS is only running a short time and not deep discharging. (I know, they won't spring for the $$$)
You may want to review the OSHA and environmental laws - not to be a whistle blower but just to point out the potential risk of keeping stacks of dead lead-acid batteries around. We have to include ours on an annual report to the city.
Although you (or most likely "they") won't like the answers all you can do is document the frequency of power failure, the resulting annual costs, backup options and associated costs and any relevant regulations of which you are aware. (I just found out we had to add a backup battery to our PBX due to an employment regulation requiring access to 911 even in a power outage.)
They may not decide (their job based on your input combined with other knowledge) to give you what you want but you will have done your job.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
at least that's how it goes here(generally)... ..but then again I'm in Finland.
how hard can it be to check from the local environment activists whats the state of affairs in your local country/state? not that hard. please do it.
once again you'll only get the answers that slashdotters think that the state of the affairs SHOULD be, not necessarely what they are in reality.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The phone company uses 48 volt DC batteries for all their comptuters. For this reason most equipment intended for the server room has the option of either AC (120/220V,50/60hz), or DC (48 volts) power supplies. Good batteries will last for years in this application. This system when done properly will run for days without any Mains power, and you are connected directly to the batteries at all time so there is no switching issues.
Note that you won't save money in the short run. However if your power is as bad as you say it might in the long run. In any case it is far more dangerious than normal mains power, despite less voltage. Still when 99.999% reliability isn't good enough it is your only choice.
As my dad always said, good ideas cost money.
I filled my truck bed, drove 30 miles, and got $40.00.. (paid for my gas and lunch and a bit more to boot)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
1: Have you looked into refurbishing the batteries? Type "Battery Desulphation" into Google, and you migh find some ways to re-use the batteries you got.
2: Hazardous waste disposal fees? Bullshit. Batteries are chock full of recyclable lead, and should NEVER be "disposed of" except to make new batteries. Look up "recycling, batteries" in your local yellow pages, and I think you may have some luck. Definitely think local on this - shipping any distance will kill you.
3: Having dismissed the whole "hazardous waste" thing above, I will now state that batteries are indeed hazardous. Or at least not something you want just sitting around. Your boss is being foolish if he thinks that by "not budgeting" for disposal, that makes the issue go away. Batteries can leak acid and give off explosive hydrogen. If something bad happens, your Boss will like paying the cost of that problem even less than your current problem.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I give my batteries to an auto-repair garage and he gets PAID to give them to someone else.
So you're getting skrewed.
And as far as the 2 year problem... I replace all batteries once a year. Its just the way it is. To make it easier on yourself just try using UPS units with larger batteries (less number of batteries but larger units).
Get paid to code OSS
one thing: how dead are the batteries? if they'll hold any charge at all, you may just be able to sell them on ebay, make a few bucks. at least you may have a bit more cash to spend on the disposall of the really dead batteries. one other hting a friend of mine does is wire his ups's to deep cycle car batteries, they don't mind deep discharging , and you can almost always return the dead ones after you buy replacements, also, they'll increase the uptime of your ups (he has four deep cycles which will run his whole system for a day and a half or so on a 3kw apc ups)
anyway, just some cognitive fodder.
Cogito Eggo Sum, I think therefore I'm a waffle
What you might want for this is external batteries. More on this in another post, maybe.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
You can't de-sulfate a gel cell. Or any other kind of SLA (sealed lead-acid) battery, for that matter.
I remember seeing some UPS's that didn't use batteries, they used a rotating mass to store energy. I don't remember who made them or how good they worked but do remember seeing them in a catalog. I'm sure a little googling with the right keywords would return something.
Trolling/deep cycle batteries are available retail for rather reasonable sums. Some of them are sealed, but some are not; a non-sealed battery allows you to check it for water level and state of charge (via the specific gravity of the electrolyte). Plus, they usually offer several times the AH rating of the little gray things (good if outages may be extended). The UPS will feed quite nicely from most any 12-volt DC source.
If you decide to hook up something like this, you'll have three issues:
It's up for you to research and present to your boss for a decision. I have a little UPS which had dead batteries and the honkin' hunka lead that I hooked up in their place carried me nicely through last August's blackout, but your results may differ.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Find a secluded field in the middle of nowhere, and bring a shovel... maybe a few friends.
:)
Either way, if anyone catches you claim you were digging up bodies for some sort of ritual, you'll do less time that way.
Success is as dangerous as failure, hope as hollow as fear.
The reason you are having these troubles is not only is your boss uninformed, but, apparently, so are you. Let me give you some information which will help you understand the problems you are having.
Lead acid batteries, as a general rule, only provide 50% of their capacity before destroying themselves trying to meet your needs. UPS's are emergency power sources ONLY. If you are using them to power stuff through power outages lasting more than a minute or two more than once or twice a year, then you are not using them correctly. If you use them until you drain the battery past 50% then the batteries are going to DIE horrible creeping death.
Furthermore, if you overburden a UPS and it doesn't shut down because you're pulling too much amperage you may end up boiling the battery, which does not only reduce its life significantly, but "Vents With Flame" (to put it mildly).
In your situation, UPSs can ONLY be used to keep the power on long enough to power off the servers/workstations (ie, less than a minute, maybe two) or until an external generator kicks in.
Again let me reiterate.
UPSs are NOT "Powers out. Hope it comes on before the UPS runs out."
UPSs are instead "OH @#$%! THE POWER'S GONE! [SHUT EVERYTHING DOWN | START THE GENERATOR]!!!"
Therefore if your boss does not understand the necessity of a generator, then you must convince him to purchase UPSs that are rated to last at least twice as long as you could possibly leave the computers on after the power goes out. Ideally you'll also get UPSs which are rated at twice the current you might be pulling so you don't heat up the battery while you are shutting down (a power hungry operation for most servers: shutting down)
Lastly, concerning waste. Most battery centers accept and recycle old lead acid batteries for free. Check out batteriesplus.com for locations near you of a company I use and trust. Buy your replacements from them and they'll gladly recycle your old ones. Even if you don't purchase from them they generally accept them anyway.
Do a cost/performance analysis on a generator. Tell them that batteries last twice as long (or longer) if you use them properly and get a generator. Show them that it's probably cheaper to get appropiately sized UPS unit(s) and a generator than it is to buy a bunch of small UPSs and no generator. Also demonstrate how it will benefit your customers, and how this should be sold to them.
So. Accept this wisdom, and go forth and spread the word. Good luck.
-Adam
You still have to have a UPS to cover the time between the power outage and the time the generators are spooled up and producing power.
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
you could bury them, and they slowly sped up with power on, and at death, the speedup motor became a generator.. I remember pricing one out at the time for work, to keep us juiced for a day would cost 20k + installation...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The parent is absolutely correct. Properly maintained batteries last for MANY years. I've been involved with battery backup systems for more than thirty years. Two year battery life is really bad. SOMETHING'S WRONG.
Are the batteries running hot? ie. Do they feel warm? They shouldn't. Perhaps the float voltage is set too high. I once found a battery charger boiling batteries although it looked like it was set at the right voltage. It was actually tricking the volt meter. It was putting out half wave rectified current. We threw it out and the problem went away.
Are these computer UPSs somehow different than other backup systems? (I can't think how they would be.)
All the original poster referenced was "lead acid" batteries. UPS batteries are not necessarily SLA.
Nor was I implying that desulfation was THE answer, just a possible solution worthy of a couple of minutes of googling.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
We are going to install a backup generator that runs off of natural gas. Here's a link to one...
We are of course going with a different company and generator, but it gives you an idea of price and features. $3500 might be too much for your situation. Keep in mind that you will still want to keep your UPSs in place (for the ~1-3 minutes that these things take to get up to speed)...
But, if you must have power to all of your systems, all of the time, a natural gas generator is probably the way to go. Before you do any of this, you will want to check out how much power you are actually using and how big of a generator you will need...the one linked to should be enough for the 9 servers you need as well as room to upgrade...
As you can tell, most of the natural gas generators also take propane, which is still good if you don't get natural gas service, or as a backup for the natural gas...
To amplify, even at 50% cycle depth you're shortening the life of the battery. Shallow cycles are much better tolerated. You may get hundreds or thousands of cycles from 100% charge to 90% and back, but only dozens to 50% and back.
I'm also not sure how much to trust the charging circuity in UPSes. If you really want maximum life from a battery, for example, the charger should adjust the float voltage depending on the temperature of the battery.
I remember reading some articles about fuel cell installations at sites that are off-grid or have unreliable power. It might be worth looking into.
At some point, a rack of well maintained lead-acid batteries is going to become more economical than throwing out sealed units every two years. For info on battery maintenance, see http://www.usbr.gov/power/data/fist/fist3_6/3_6_co nt.htm
This is what our company does. We bought our generator for Y2K. Turns out, we didn't need it then.. We did need it last year during the summer time, when the east coast electric grid was toast. A slight dimming of the lights, and you can hear the roar of the diesel generator start up. Half an hour later, the power came back on, and the generator shut itself down. The UPSs were only in action for a couple of minutes.
Generators aren't cheap, but they're not incredibly expesive, either, when you factor in the cost of downtime.
With my little 1000VA APC toy, I'm already at the point where my powerhungry G5 can be the only thing on in the neighborhood at times... now I just want it to last longer. :)
Are you planning on having Natural gas tanks on-site? What if whatever knocks out the power (landslide, hurricane, earthquake, etc) also knocks out the local gas service?
Hydrogen is pretty darn safe.
The baloon caused the problems on the Hindenberg!
The witnesses reported a colorfull fireball.. that color was from the paint/balloon!!! They made the skin out of a super flamable material!
Passing out.... use google to verify
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
One important thing to keep ups batteries with a nice long life is good enviromental control. Regulated Humidity, and tempature helps ensure that you battery lasts longer. We have a 35KVA APC unit... APC came out and checked the unit, and after three years, they said our batteries are quite good, but they expect us to have to replace them in 6-18 months. Neat Huh?!?
At my last job, we had four 500KVA units... Yes.. 500 KVA... They were powerware units... They were in fairly good condion except for the batteries. The batteries were in bad condition, and the reason why, the facilities manager forced us to only run one CRAC unit in that room... when the room required three to stay under 70 degrees... so... at the top of the room.. it was 85 degrees... at the ground floor, it was about 75.
The big difference was regulation of the enviroment... When the enviroment is properly regulated, it works well.
Auto-shutdown of servers (to save the UPS batteries) is a low-budget response to this issue, and probably fits the situation described. A 100%-uptime solution is probably not possible within the available funds.
GE has some microgen fuel cells which convert gas to electricity. So you'd have two different electrical power sources (but it won't save you if there's an earthquake or something that breaks the gas pipe and the powerlines, or someone disconnects a power cord...).
Then there are high-tech flywheels.
Why not pay for hosting and let someone else worry about the power problem? The reason co-location companies exist is so if you are in the range of businesses that can't afford heavy infrastructure costs, but have a definite uptime need then you can pool resources.
You could also think about VPN, if you have 4 locations, is the power situation better elsewhere or are the 4 locations in the same general area? if they are spread out, maybe think about moving your servers to the area with the better power, and having the users vpn from the area with the "bad" power.
- G
"Immolation is the sincerest form of flattery."
I've been there, lived in an apartment with a friend of mine. There were terrible power troubles there, and we had a stack of UPS'es...unfortunately even the stack wasn't enough for the load we were running. The power flickered one night, and we heard a terrible sound behind us, and then a crack-pop...one of the UPS'es literally exploded in flames and sparks shooting through the side vents. Luckly the plug was easily accessable. TO this day I shudder to think what might have happened had we not been home at the time...
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
Generators aren't terribly expensive by any means. If you get one, make sure it's professionally installed. Also hire a real electrician to wire your battery array and server farm. That won't cost a whole lot easier and you'll be adhereing to code. Your only viable option for a seldom-used standby generator is natural gas or propane. Diesel is out of the question simply because you won't be able to use enough diesel to keep what's in the tank fresh and potent. Diesel is the way to go for emergency generators (where you drive it in on a trailer and park it in the alley but it's not good for a standby generator unless you connect it to a supply of diesel that's continually being used and replenished. ie, your company has their own tanks for filling their own vehicles so it's regularly being added cycled. Diesel will lose it's potency over time.
Again, buy telecom-grade hardware. It won't break the bank but it will last a lot longer. It's worth it.
I read a slashdot post where someone suggested connecting sealed car/marine batteries to UPS's as opposed to lead acid batteries. My limited electrical knowledge says all the voltages are correct but it still makes me nervous to try :) I have a couple UPS's with no batteries to try this out with, but I have a hangup about burning my house down. Any suggestions?
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
I had a similar situation with a microwave. I was reheating some macaroni and cheese, when it was ready I opened the microwave... the first hint this was not going to be a good day was, a plume of steam rose from the microwave as I opened the door. I got a towel and took the food out, grabbed a fork, and started to stir the macaroni and cheese. It needed stiring -- the water in it was BOILING, "Odd" I thought. It was about that time I became aware of a grumbling, humming sound. Like a vacum, I looked around, and yep the microwave was humming, odd because it wasn't turned on. Then it began smoking. Ok, time to unplug it, the humming is getting louder, more smoke ... oh shit, the cord to the microwave goes behind the refridgerator. *tries to move it, CANT!* Screams to father on the couch, "DAD! TURN OFF THE HOUSE POWER NOW!!" "what? why?" "JUST DO IT NOW!" The rumbling has crescendoed into a roar now, the kitchen lights are dimming and flickering and I've moved the fridge about 6 inches but will my arm fit? almost, almost! no ... just then the lights go out -- my father got to the breaker box
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
That's not true. A lead acid battery (whether sealed or not)
ideally has almost zero impedance, and unlike NiCd and NiMh,
it's charge level is measured by the voltage across the terminals,
not the charge current delta.
So connecting bigger cells (of the same voltage) works fine,
and will simply yield longer run-time (and longer charge time).
Here's a picture of my 105Ah 24v, deep-cycle battery setup for a
standard APC 1400 UPS.
This UPS even has a handy battery disconnect plug on the
back, which can be used to connect an external battery (double check
the polarity!) provided that the internal battery is removed and it's
connector is short-circuited. No need to modify the UPS at all!
http://sjoholm.com/pictures/ups1.jpg
http://sjoholm.com/pictures/ups2.jpg
That's an upside down plastic toy basket covering the batteries.
A nice side effect is to always have a fully charged 12v (or 24v)
power source available for specialty devices, like the smart-charger
in the picture.