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UPS Setup For a Small/Mid-Size Company?
An anonymous reader writes "We're a small company employing ~30 people and we are becoming increasingly reliant on virtual servers. Unfortunately, the hosts they are on don't have redundant power supplies because we simply don't have the capacity. We currently have one UPS per rack, which gives us about two minutes. This may have been enough time when they were put in — they've been there for some time — but it isn't really enough time to shut everything down in the event of a failure. Domain Controllers alone may take up to 15 minutes. So I'm looking at upgrading the UPSs to ones that would preferably give us around 15 minutes of breathing space and send an email or text alert when a failure is detected. Something that could trigger shutdowns automatically would also be nice. Of course cost is a key factor too. so given all of the above, what does Slashdot recommend?"
Get a generator that can power things from natural gas (or other available resource).
So when the power goes out, it will be seconds before the generator kicks on and the UPS are just there to keep power available until the generator is ready.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I have 2 3000 watt APC SmartUPSes per rack. They have both Serial and USB notification. Since each rack has about 25 servers, I get around 25 to 40 minutes of runtime for each server. So I have a small PC for each rack that monitors those 2 devices. It connects by serial to the upses, and runs CentOS. Then I have APCUPSD installed and configured in multi-ups mode. On each server, I simply install APCUPSD (There is a windows version), and tell it which UPS it is on. I also configure the appropriate shutdown parameters (20 minutes of battery left for non-critical servers, 15 for DC, and 5 for other critical servers. I also hooked each UPS monitor into Nagios and Munin, so I can track each one's power output and time remaining. So far, it's worked great over 2 "brownouts", and 1 total power failure (a test where I simply tripped the appropriate breakers).
The rational behind having dedicated UPS monitors, is that I don't really care if the loose power while running, so I have them set to never shut down from UPS activity. Then, I simply implemented a script that on power restore issues a netboot command to each server under its control (configured with puppet for Linux, AD for Windows). That way, the whole system (all servers) automatically shut down, and turn themselves back on even if they never really lost power... So far, it's worked flawlessly (and with nagios, I get a text message on my cellphone within a minute or two of a UPS switching to battery (we have 2 dedicated internet connections that are on different power sources and different UPSs.
I hope this helps!
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
I use a Su-Kam inverter at home. It powers a whole room, has a clean sine-wave output (unlike traditional UPSes), and its switchover delay is small enough that the SMPS in computers handle the switchover to battery power properly.
It uses two large lead-acid multi-cell batteries (~car batteries) for storing charge. The last time there was a major power cut, it powered my computer systems for 10 hours (yes you read that right... 10 hours.)
I was laughing at the old APC UPS which did 10 minutes before I had to power down.
This is India btw.. power cuts are common.
Banu
It's no act. I am happy to put up photographs of my setup if you want. It's been working well for me the last year, so I don't have issues recommending it. Apart from being a customer, I have no connections to any inverter/battery company. You OTOH are an anonymous coward. Here is my website. Go find more about the shill there.
Banu