Running a Home-Office Through a UPS

mwagner_00 asks: "After spending lots of money and time, I now have an office in my home. My wife and I both have computers (mine is a high powered gaming rig), and I also have a workbench where I work on other people's PCs. I have a web/email server as well. I would like to protect the investment by running the room's power through a UPS. I have a APC 3000NET that my workplace was going to throw out. The only thing it needs is a good set of batteries. Has anyone tried something like this before? Basically I want to find the breaker for the room, and after the breaker, run the power through the UPS and back out to the room. Is the UPS that I have sufficient to run a whole small office?"

Comments

Re:18 amps

[Bastian]

On top of that, wiring the entire room up to the UPS would result in a crazy waste of the UPS's power.

If the power suddenly goes out, do you really want the lights in the room simultaneously drawing extra power from the UPS and hiding from you a pretty good clue that the power just went out?

This is surely not the way a UPS meant to be used. I've certainly never seen one hooked up this way.

UPS? uninterruptable?? sure

[SillyNickName4me]

For whatever reason, over the last 10 years, I have seen more power failures being caused by a UPS then being handled properly by one.

The idea seems to be good and usefull, but so far reality tells me that those devices do not have the kind of reliability that is needed.

One of my customers has their entire computer room wired up to a HUGE UPS, and has a few smaller ones in place for very important servers. The big UPS is supposed to keep them running for as long as power lasts, the small ones are to allow those servers to properly shutdown when power runs out on the main UPS.

In the last month, they had 2 major failures of the main UPS, resulting in a substantial amount of downtime. They cannot remember the last failure of mains power (I do, and it is a few years ago now)

My own company used to have a very nice IBM AS/400 with UPS (one made specifically for this machine), which failed during the one power failure we have had in the last couple of years here, not to mention it deciding to just switch off a few times over the years.

Another one of my customers runs a bunch of servers with redundant power supplies where each power supply has its own UPS. That setup sees to work a lot better already.

To me the story seems pretty simple:

1. Make sure your software infrastructure can deal well with the consequences of a power failure. Determine what would be an acceptable recovery time in case things go wrong and make sure you have the procedures in place to do such a recovery, and that it is well tested (and retested every so often). There is no amount of hardware redundancy that will be as effective for dealing with the consequences of power failures as this bit of software related efford.
2. Make sure you have redundant power supplies with a seperate UPS for each.
3. Consider a UPS as a means to be able to save your work and properly shutdown your machines. It is not something for actually keeping your machines running during a power failure, if that is really what you need, consider a generator instead.

My Whole-Home UPS Solution

[InitZero]

> Is the UPS that I have sufficient to run a whole small office?

        Yes.
        I, too, had a surplus UPS about the size of yours. When I
was in my apartment, it sat in the same room as my computers.
The UPS was loud, ugly and produced lots of heat. (Much like
a girl I used to date... but that's an another story for
another day.) It protected my computer equipment but not my
TiVo or home stereo equipment because they were in another
room. So, I had to have a seperate UPS for them.
        When I bought a house, I didn't want UPSes spread all over
the place nor did I want the heat or sound inside the house.
        So, I put the UPS in the garage and then wired UPS outlets
where I needed them. I have a quad-outlet in the office for all
our computer equipment. I have a quad-outlet in the living room
for the TiVo, stereo and TV. My cordless phone and answering
machine also plug into a UPS outlet.
        For nearly five years, this setup has worked great. Every
two or three years, I have to replace the two batteries ($90).
Other than that, it has been great.
        Plus, I have disaster-recovery outlets spread throughout
my house. When last year's hurricanes knocked out power to
my house, I was able to plug the UPS into our small generator.
I didn't run the computers or television (but did keep the
TiVo online so I wouldn't miss my shows) but I was able to
keep some lights on without having extension cords pulled all
over the house.

> I want to find the breaker for the room, and after the
> breaker, run the power through the UPS and back out

        If I were you, I'd run a new circuit. You never really
know what outlets and appliances are where. When I moved
in, the toaster's outlet in the kitchen was on the same
circuit as the outlet on the front porch where I plugged
in my hedge clippers.
        I'm sure there is more on your office circuit than
you know about. It is best to start clean. Plus, electrical
work is really easy if you have attic or basement access.

        Matt