[HN Gopher] I don't think the cheapest APC Back-UPS units can be...
___________________________________________________________________
I don't think the cheapest APC Back-UPS units can be monitored
except in Windows
Author : trelane
Score : 140 points
Date : 2024-02-23 14:10 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (strugglers.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (strugglers.net)
| ethbr1 wrote:
| >> _TL;DR: Despite otherwise seeming to work correctly, I can't
| monitor a Back-UPS BX1600MI in Linux without seeing a constant
| stream of spurious battery detach /reattach and power
| fail/restore events that last less than 2 seconds each._
|
| It sounds like the Windows software probably debounces the
| incoming events, only bubbling up those that are sufficiently
| time-stable, to account for bargain sensor false positives?
|
| _Edit:_ Looks like the apcupsd collection also has some EEPROM
| programming utilities... (for supported devices)
| http://www.apcupsd.org/manual/#configuration-directives-used...
| bell-cot wrote:
| I'd bet you're right. Experience at $Job is that certain cheapo
| UPS's can be miserably twitchy about detecting power problems
| and switching to their inverters. After a week of the clickity-
| clicks of the cut-over relays - $Employee and his office mates
| may ask for the UPS to be removed.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > Our power grid is very reliable. Looking at availability
| information from "uptimed", my home file server has been powered
| on for 99.97% of the time in the last 14 years. That includes
| time spent moving house and a day when the house power was off
| for several hours while the kitchen was refitted!
|
| > However, in December 2023 a fault with our electric oven popped
| the breaker for the sockets causing everything to be harshly
| powered off. My fileserver took it badly and one drive died. That
| wasn't a huge issue as it has a redundant filesystem, but I
| didn't like it.
|
| > I decided I could afford to treat myself to a relatively cheap
| UPS.
|
| Just from that, I'd say he for-sure should have avoided UPS's,
| and gotten a "real" surge protector. The "shockwave" from that
| high-amperage short is far more likely to have done the damage
| than the mere loss of power. And the output of cheap UPS's is
| often far worse than the input.
|
| [Edit: And _good_ surge protection is never a feature of cheap
| UPS 's.]
| jeffbee wrote:
| The quoted material sounds like a poor analysis. It doesn't
| take into account all the times the UPS would have failed while
| the grid was fine. UPSs are not pure goods with no downsides
| that merely add to availability. Commercial UPS are very
| unreliable, bordering on a scam.
| Symbiote wrote:
| It also doesn't account for the fire risk -- a cheap UPS is
| much more likely to catch fire than a PC / NAS.
| WWLink wrote:
| Yea, a disturbing amount of reviews on amazon for the lower
| end (still 1350/1500VA though!) UPSes contain words like
| "smoke" and "fire".
|
| My own experience with UPSes didn't involve smoke or fires,
| but it did involve remote equipment going offline for
| months until I had time to make a trip out to replace the
| UPS with a surge protector.
| gnuser wrote:
| Sine-Wave UPSs are the only thing I allow in my DCs for a
| reason! (don't forget the generators either!!!)
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Pure Sine-wave UPSs are massive overkill and offer no
| advantage for any normal consumer.
|
| If you have incredibly power-sensitive $100k equipment that
| needs protecting, _maybe_. But not for normal consumer
| electronics. None of them are that picky about the power.
| kcb wrote:
| That's not my experience. Modern power supplies in desktop
| PCs either don't work or trip up non Pure Sine wave UPSs. I
| don't know the technical specifics but it has to do with
| Active PFC on power supplies.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I've used square wave UPSs on my PCs for as long as I can
| remember with power supplies from varying manufacturers,
| I have never had a problem. I have heard this before but
| I suspect it's either a myth or it only was ever a
| problem with very rare combinations of poorly-made UPSs
| and poorly-made power supplies.
| wzdd wrote:
| I was forced to change UPS relatively recently (a few
| years ago) because the cheap but not bargain-basement PSU
| on my computer didn't work with the non-sine-wave output
| of my UPS. Call them poorly-made if you like, but either
| I got unlucky or they're fairly common.
|
| Power supplies tend not to advertise their compatibility
| with non-sinewave power, but UPSes will certainly make it
| clear if they produce sinewave output. So the safe option
| is to get the UPS which gives the PSU what it's
| expecting.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| I did a deep dive into this when buying a UPS last year,
| and ended up with a sine wave ups. But just now I couldn't
| find my sources for why I made that choice. I believe it
| was something to do with the new ATX 3.0 PSU standard.
|
| I did find this older thread[1], but the answer is more of
| a "maybe if your PC or server is using an active PFC PSU."
| However, this is out of date (2015), and may no longer be
| correct.
|
| Cyberpower's website says PSU with active PFC require pure
| sine wave.[2] But that might be marketing. IDK, seems like
| it something that may need to be tested to be sure.
|
| [1] https://superuser.com/questions/912679/when-do-i-need-
| a-pure... [2] https://www.cyberpower.com/global/en/product/
| series/pfc_sine...
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Well they did specify it was for datacenter use.
| criley2 wrote:
| We recently upgraded to a whole house surge protector installed
| at the panel. They're not that expensive ($100-$200 around me,
| depending) and with the reduced quality of power we're seeing
| lately here and the damage it has done to our circuit breakers,
| it's become a necessity.
| da768 wrote:
| And after the UPS will inevitably fail to power on, he'll
| probably want to add an automatic transfer switch to the mix.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Can you be more precise about how a high-amperage short circuit
| can produce a "shockwave" of a form that would be ameliorated
| by a "real" surge protector?
| bell-cot wrote:
| > Can you be more precise...
|
| Apologies - I know enough to do long-winded hand-waving on
| the subject...but if you want precise and concise (and really
| accurate), you'll need to ask a real electrical engineer.
| javawizard wrote:
| This Wikipedia article may point you in the right direction:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltage_spike
|
| I'm not an electrician by any means so take everything I saw
| with a grain of salt, but: in general, electricity flowing
| through a system has some amount of "inertia" (the technical
| term for this is inductance), and shutting off a circuit
| breaker will cause a brief voltage spike upstream of the
| breaker due to the flow of electrical current suddenly being
| forced to stop.
|
| Have you ever unplugged a running appliance from the wall and
| noticed a brief spark at the plug? That's the same effect:
| motors in general have high inductance and try quite hard to
| fight changes in current.
|
| It's bad enough that when designing circuits that switch
| power to inductive loads like motors, you have to include a
| flyback diode (read: one way valve) to allow a path for
| electricity to continue to flow internal to the load when the
| power is switched off, otherwise it will generate a voltage
| spike high enough to damage the switching circuit.
|
| Put another way: it's not the "high amperage short circuit"
| that causes the voltage spike; it's the rapid stop to said
| high current that happens when the circuit breaker realizes
| what's going on and trips.
| Saris wrote:
| I'm curious how a voltage spike would have gotten through the
| computer PSU conversion to DC, and then only damaged 1 drive
| somehow?
| dijit wrote:
| it hit all the drives, but it'll affect things unevenly
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I assume the drive failed due to the power cycle, not due to
| electrical damage.
|
| Especially if it was 14 years old.
| justinclift wrote:
| As a side note with UPS's, it can somewhat informative to look at
| the pricing for their replacement batteries.
|
| At least here in Australia, replacement batteries for some of the
| common UPS's (for desktop usage) cost nearly as much as the UPS
| itself.
| alright2565 wrote:
| From my own adventure in this area, the battery is very
| standard and IMO reasonably priced. What gets expensive is
| shipping it, since lead is so heavy. I remember having trouble
| finding local sellers for them that would have avoided the
| shipping cost.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| I've found home security companies to be a good source,
| either of the batteries themselves or at least a local
| supplier who can get what you need.
| TMWNN wrote:
| Also consider how the size of the UPS affects the battery
| replacement cost. I purchased my most recent UPS, refurbished
| by CyberPower, from its eBay store
| <https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_ssn=cyberpower>. For a few
| dollars more I could have bought a larger size, but
|
| * I didn't need more capacity (the one I bought will power the
| server it serves for an hour, far more time than I need or
| want) and, more to the point,
|
| * The larger-size model has two batteries to replace,
| significantly increasing the cost.
| Libcat99 wrote:
| I wish the battery layout/ amp hours was more obvious in UPS
| sales listings. The watts/VA are always front and center, but
| generally I want to know runtime which is harder to find and
| compare.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I never buy APC replacement batteries - third party batteries
| are much cheaper, and seem to work just as well based on
| testing by the UPS itself.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| I own two Back-UPS 1400VA units, one monitored with apcupsd and
| the other with a MikroTik router - so I guess it's just the newer
| units that have this issue?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >I then asked about this on the apcupsd mailing list. The first
| response:
|
| "Something's wrong with your..."
|
| "Returning to my thread on the apcupsd mailing list, I asked
| again if there was actually anyone out there who had one of these
| working with non-Windows."
|
| Linux's reputation in a nutshell. It just works after you spend
| days checking if you have a bad device and another on the mailing
| list. And then you are forced to find a working alternative.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Hardware validation is time consuming, boring, and expensive.
|
| Not surprising that given a mostly volunteer effort... it just
| doesn't happen. Or vendors self-certify their own gear.
| thayne wrote:
| It's not like Microsoft or Apple do that either. But Vendors
| are more thorough with testing on those OSes.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Uhhh... what? Both Apple and Microsoft have hardware
| certification programs which require review.
|
| https://mfi.apple.com/
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-
| hardware/design/co...
| thayne wrote:
| As far as I know, the actual testing is done by the
| vendor. It might get reviewed by an MS or Apple imployee,
| but that isn't the same thing as actively testing the
| hardware themselves. Or providing software to work with
| third party hardware.
|
| It's a chicken and egg problem. Hardware vendors don't
| worry about linux compatibility, at least for
| consumer/desktop products because the market share is
| low. But one reason lack of good hardware support hinders
| adoption of linux on desktop.
| gpderetta wrote:
| typically you check for linux compatibility before buying the
| actual hardware/software.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _There's an entry in nut's hardware compatibility list for
| "Back-UPS (USB)" of "supported, based on publicly available
| protocol". I made the order._
| gpderetta wrote:
| Well, good point. In addition of wrong or incomplete
| compatibility lists, sometimes internal details of products
| change without even changing SKUs, breaking compatibility.
| angry_moose wrote:
| I probably spent 20 hours this week trying to get a not-that-
| obscure piece of software that explicitly states "Debian 12"
| support on their website working on a freshly-installed (as
| in - install Debian 12, update system, install software); and
| it still just doesn't work. After hammering my way through 4
| different errors, and hopelessly out of date (and wrong)
| documentation, I finally got them to issue a refund this
| morning.
|
| "Linux Compatibility" often means "someone got it working
| once 6 years ago, on an extremely out of date version of the
| OS, but its probably still fine".
| graemep wrote:
| Not often. I have nit rub into that problem, ever.
| dingnuts wrote:
| This is why you do an internet search instead of just
| looking at what the vendor says, and/or look at what the
| vendor actually ships for support. If you see something
| like a binary blob, run away. If you see stuff shipped
| upstream, go ahead.
|
| As a counterpoint to your experience, I've had great luck
| buying laptops off of Canonical's approved hardware list.
|
| As a corollary, I've had worse luck buying computers that
| come with Linux pre-installed, only to discover that the
| pre-installed distribution is very specifically and
| carefully configured and includes proprietary bits and it's
| impossible to install any other Linux on the device or
| upgrade it.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Once you learn a few soft guidelines _(not rules, nothing is
| perfect)_ , you don't really even need to research.
|
| Intel/AMD: probably fine. Realtek: works, one driver codebase
| for everything means weirdness is likely. Broadcom: don't
| even bother. Nvidia/mobile: what kernel/stack are you
| intending to use?
|
| I haven't had to care about compatibility with _desktop_ or
| _server_ components in over a decade.
|
| It's fingerprint readers and dual-GPU laptops that really bum
| a lot of people out.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Ah, yeah, the typical " _you_ should had checked for the
| compatibility, it 's you who are the problem, not Linux".
|
| And yes, I never check for Windows compatibility before
| buying the actual hardware/software. Not even /s.
| graemep wrote:
| Lots of devices do not support Windows. I am typing this in
| an ARM based tablet that does not,but does run Linux. Can
| you install Windows on all Chrome books, or Apple Macs?
|
| I do not usually check for hardware compatibility with
| Linux either. The only things I have checked that I have
| bought in the last few years have been graphics cards and
| USB wifi, and the latter was just a matter of reading
| product descriptions.
|
| A lot of software I use either does not run on Windows, or
| is harder to install or is less mature on Windows.
| Obviously lots of server side stuff, but even some desktop
| stuff I would be doubtful about because the bulk of users
| are on Linux.
| jrockway wrote:
| The post you're replying to doesn't say that Windows runs
| on everything. He's saying that every piece of commercial
| software runs on Windows, and that every widget has a
| Windows driver. I have found this to be quite true. If
| you have Windows, you can impulse-buy pretty much
| anything and end up OK.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| And look how you immediately pivoted from the
| compatibility _with Windows_ to the compatibility _with
| running Windows_.
|
| > The only things I have checked
|
| That's great but nobody needs to check if it's compatible
| with Windows. The whole step - it's just not needed.
|
| So if the "everything just works in Linux!" people say
| "oh you should had just checked" then the former was
| clearly not in a good faith or outright delusional.
|
| > A lot of software I use either does not run on Windows,
| or is harder to install or is less mature on Windows.
| Obviously lots of server side stuff, but even some
| desktop stuff I would be doubtful about because the bulk
| of users are on Linux.
|
| And most of the people houses and people themselves can't
| _run_ the welding equipment, so what? How from discussing
| compatibility of widgets and gadgets of a regular Joe you
| moved on to a highly specialized and a very narrow scope
| of the server software?
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Seriously? When buying a car, do you not look for features
| you want?
| lbotos wrote:
| I mean -- I built a PC a few months ago and formatting the
| windows disk from a non windows env was not trivial.
|
| So yes, Linux is still not on par with Windows in many ways,
| but boy oh boy was it weirder than it should have been to
| format a USB drive to install windows.
|
| I lost a solid 6 hours to that try, yay it work, wait I'm
| getting a nonsensical error at a strange screen. Retry with
| different flags, with different hardware, etc etc etc.
| skirmish wrote:
| Ditto, I was building a Windows desktop and spent hours
| faffing around attempting to follow official Microsoft
| instructions even with another Windows computer available; in
| desperation tried Rufus Installer, worked on the first
| attempt. Then months later was building another desktop and
| went straight to Ventoy installed from Linux and just
| dropping a downloaded ISO on the USB stick -- worked
| immediately.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Or...
|
| Don't buy a consumer grade UPS if you want to monitor it
| properly.
| nickt wrote:
| Any suggestions?
|
| Is there a power delivery equivalent of Ubiquti (I know we've
| discussed their shortcomings here) that offer better than
| consumer grade for less than enterprise prices?
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Yeah, go with APC, just not their consumer grade stuff.
| amluto wrote:
| Or get something sold for off-grid use instead of as a
| UPS. Ecoflow is one of many vendors.
| monitron wrote:
| I am having good luck with Eaton so far. Rock solid and
| their network monitoring is noticeably less painful to use
| than APC's!
| schlauerfox wrote:
| We have widely deployed the workstation devices and have
| had no maintenance issues. we installed ~10 9PX models
| and have had 2 fail suddenly and completely just out of
| warranty and one with a failed battery charger, also just
| out of warranty, and a gigabit management card that works
| for a week or so then goes offline and requires local
| reboot from console but we have about 10 deployed with no
| issues too, so buy extended support because their support
| team is good but useless if you don't pay the protection
| money. We also had a rack PDU just die right out side
| it's warranty phase and we only bought 6. Not great
| quality it seems but it does the job. We had one install
| of a full rack UPS and it's been running for more than 7
| years, but you have to keep the maintenance up and
| schedule battery swaps. They do make a really nice 1U
| lithium-ION ups also which is neat. The IPM software is a
| little janky but also works well.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Not just that, but also "this is all your fault for buying
| cheap trash!"
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I have what was the cheapest APC UPS years ago and the macOS
| software works fine.
|
| Doesn't help anyone running Linux though. :/
| e40 wrote:
| I have an APC on macOS, too, and as of a couple of OS
| iterations ago it recognizes it natively. I used to run apcupsd
| on macOS, but it was quite tricky to keep it working, due to
| the USB interface. This was on an older Mac than I'm using now
| (the trashcan Mac Pro), but it mostly worked and I would always
| have an indication when it stopped working as the icon in the
| menubar would change. I think the usual issue was so lock file
| was owned by root and couldn't be deleted.
| dooglius wrote:
| If the vendor gives a proprietary Windows application for
| monitoring then... of course? What did you expect?
| criddell wrote:
| There's a USB standard for HID power devices. I would expect
| basic functionality from any UPS with a USB port.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| I have one of these APC Back-UPS 900 (BR900GI) here, and they
| work perfectly. Fully supported under apcupsd, that device has
| saved my bacon quite a few times. The only thing is that you MUST
| use the USB cable they provide.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Doesn't that kind of prove they're messed up, if no other USB
| cable works?
| rincebrain wrote:
| APC doing horrible things with "standard" cables isn't new,
| though - they used a nonstandard null modem serial cable back
| in the day, such that if you tried to connect to the UPS
| using a standard null modem cable, it'd trigger shutting off
| the UPS.
|
| This isn't to say it's good, just that it's not new.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Mine has a usb-A to rj45 cable with a ferrite bead on it,
| as far as I can tell it just wires the four USB wires (no
| ground) to the pins with spaces in between. I have never
| understood why they do this.
|
| It works perfectly with apcupsd though, even showing up in
| my desktop power settings as a UPS.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| This, 100%.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| They might be repurposing the same chassis for both USB
| and Ethernet-based UPSes.
| yanellena wrote:
| Usually the APC UPS's with a network connection have a
| separate slot in card which has a network connection and
| an additional serial connection on it.
| hackmiester wrote:
| The pro series literally still has this exact connector
| today, with the same behavior.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| APC was the only UPS company to have their device drivers
| natively included with Windows 95.
|
| That was before USB was available so they used regular
| COM port communication, I'm not surprised with that early
| foothold there was no reason to change and sufficient
| force to continue ever since.
|
| At the time it seemed like the un-necessarily non-
| standard RS-232 cable was just to create a "profit
| center" from the cables themselves, along with the non-
| standard replacement batteries. They sure would have been
| a lot quicker to market and had lower up-front
| engineering costs if they had used standard batteries
| from the beginning.
|
| It's good to recognize early when excessively high TCO is
| the primary feature around which a product (or company)
| is designed. There can be significant PR effort from the
| beginning to divert any perception of anti-consumer
| attitude.
|
| Lots of stealth can be involved to muddy the comparison
| with alternatives which offer normal TCO or well-
| engineered low-target TCO.
| ronniefalcon wrote:
| sysadmin right of passage #4
| unwind wrote:
| It's _rite_ of passage [1], apologies if that was a typo
| or auto-correct etc.
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rite_of_passage
| ronniefalcon wrote:
| are you a bot or do you do this in your spare time?
| soneil wrote:
| That's always drove me nuts because the underlying issue is
| a great idea, frustrated by its implementation.
|
| The serial port serves dual-purpose. Along-side the obvious
| serial, you can also provide some inputs by grounding
| certain pins, and some outputs by sinking current from
| others. This has got me through some unorthodox
| integrations by having the UPS signal that it's on battery
| by having these "simple signals" close a contact/relay on
| the load. It's not quite a full suite of dry contacts, but
| it's pretty serviceable.
|
| The problem is that 9 pins doesn't leave many spare, so to
| achieve this they've repurposed some. I really wish they'd
| implemented this as an alternate mode so you'd, for example
| short tx to rx to change the behaviour - instead of having
| the 'alternate behaviour' sitting on standard DTR/RTS pins.
|
| Getting industrial interfaces at SOHO prices was awesome.
| The unintended consequences .. less so.
| csnover wrote:
| It's baffling. When APC first added native USB support to
| their Smart-UPS series, they chose a standard USB-B port.
| When they introduced "SmartConnect" a few years ago, this
| port was replaced by a USB-A port which requires a non-
| compliant USB-A male-to-male cable for monitoring. The only
| 'good' reason I can think of for this change is that
| someone realised that these new cloud-connected UPSes would
| be easily bricked by some bad firmware update (since
| apparently that's a feature now), and wanted to use USB
| thumb drives as a recovery mechanism, but I have no idea. I
| think even though they have a built-in Ethernet port now,
| one still needs to buy their network management card for
| non-cloud remote management, so it could just as easily be
| another attempt at some weird vendor lock-in.
| rcxdude wrote:
| The connector on the back is essentially a non-standard
| serial connector, and the USB cable is a USB-serial adaptor.
| You can probably make another work, but only by making an
| adaptor cable yourself. They have some models where the USB-
| serial adaptor is integrated into the unit, which is
| generally a bit easier to use and a more typical approach.
|
| (Generally, such a protocol is a better option from a
| compatibility point of view: it's usually fairly easy to
| reverse engineer. It would be interesting to sniff what the
| windows software is doing to work out what protocol or
| behaviour difference is responsible)
| consp wrote:
| The fun part is that there are at least two different, non
| standard, DB9 serial configurations.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| The more-fun part is that using the wrong one can
| instruct an APC UPS to shut down immediately.
|
| (I'm not convinced that anyone has ever been behind the
| wheel of the ship that is called APC.)
| mr_person wrote:
| I have lost 3 different usb-to-serial adapters to an old
| server room APC, probably for this reason
| tempest_ wrote:
| I just bought batteries for a 20 year old UPS, still chugs
| along, network interface is base 10!
| StillBored wrote:
| I had a 20 year old APC start misbehaving on me a few months
| back, and new batteries didn't fix it. After messing up the
| repair on the first one, a second one started doing the exact
| same thing, and I immediately took it apart and, now an
| expert on how not to fix them and what the root cause was, I
| swapped every cap on the board that my ESR meter claimed was
| bad. It's now back in operation, and while I was testing it,
| I realized it's so inefficient that about 10% of its max
| rating is just going up in heat. The replacement for the
| first one, I assumed, would be much more efficient, and it
| is, but it's still dumping about 7% of its energy into
| heating the transformer.
|
| OTOH, the older UPS behaves much better with apcupsd, going
| so far as giving me the firmware versions, battery
| replacement times, better power monitoring/etc. While the new
| one works its missing most of what the older UPS could do
| (although its not a APC).
|
| So, i'm sorta on the fence about just using "backup
| generators" from Amazon/etc because one of the ones I have
| has about 5x the capacity of the new UPS and seems to be able
| to switch without the computer plugging into it having an
| issue. Plus, its power waste is less than 1%.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| I've had an AMD based home server a decade ago. Connected an HP
| printer, and it would frequently cause disconnect and reconnect
| events in dmesg, sometimes ending up in some error state when
| Linux would just give up trying to identify the device. After
| trying different ports and cables I eventually, out of
| desperation, threw in an unpowered old USB 2.0 hub and lo and
| behold, the connection to the printer was rock solid.
| spintin wrote:
| It's better to just build your own with a 12v charger, a few 12v
| lead acid deep discharge batteries in parallel and a 9-18v -> 12v
| aligner.
|
| If you live in EU go with 110-220v charger so your setup can
| outlive a brownout.
| alright2565 wrote:
| How do you power a PC off this setup? Mine has a C14 inlet.
| shrubble wrote:
| Just a warning: there are differences in the output from UPSes
| with the cheaper ones' output not working well with higher
| efficiency power supplies. Better UPSes will output less 'jagged'
| AC.
| krunck wrote:
| Yeah, I ran into this once. You want to find ones that state
| they have true sine wave output.
| folmar wrote:
| If you do you shopping around getting clear sine output does
| not increase the price usually, or maybe a few percent.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Is it me or going cheap on _anything_ power-related seems like a
| _terrible_ idea ?
| Borg3 wrote:
| Yeah, it is. I own two good old APC SmartUPS 1000 (one for
| desktop and second for server). They are absolutly reliable,
| quiet and output Sine when on battery. Good old reliable tech,
| easly monitored using apcupsd for example.
| aaronmdjones wrote:
| I have my APC Back-UPS CS650 (BK650EI) plugged into my router
| (running OpenWrt) which works fine with Network-UPS Tools. The
| router shares the UPS status with the whole LAN, and the machines
| on the LAN that are powered by the UPS will shut down
| automatically when the UPS battery goes critical.
| zzzeek wrote:
| I had some battery issues with my previous BackUPS 750 but once I
| got a new battery, things were fine with apcupsd. Have been on a
| BackUPS-Pro 1500 S for a couple of years now also using apcupsd
| and zero problems. it legitimately records a low power event when
| my Brother printer first starts up, switches to battery then
| comes right back. Similar happens when it's stormy here and power
| lines are going down and being re-routed.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| Can anyone recommend a good modern UPS? It seems like Lithium Ion
| would have the best power density, but perhaps lead-acid is
| actually better for this application? Good surge protection would
| also be great. It would be nice if there existed a UPS brand that
| is like Anker for USB cables and power adapters or Brother for
| printers.
| mplewis wrote:
| I have had good luck with my refurbished APC BR line from
| ExcessUPS.
| slashink wrote:
| The Cyberpower series sold at Costco is unironically good. No
| frills or cool stuff, UI from 1995 but supports USB monitoring
| out of the box and just... works. I was about to make the
| brother comparison but after reading your entire comment
| realize you already did it.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| In general, a UPS is just supposed to buy you time to assess
| the situation and shut things down gracefully. Power density
| doesn't come into the equation at all. It's just supposed to
| give you an hour to figure out what you need to do. It's all
| about the lifetime of the battery. I go with Cyberpower.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I put an oversized UPS with extended battery pack on my
| network gear (Cable modem, Router, ethernet switch and Wifi
| nodes) to give me almost 8 hours of runtime in a power
| outage. I've found, however, that the cable company's UPS
| only lasts around 6 hours since that's how long it takes for
| the internet to go out and the cable modem to lose carrier.
|
| In the winter months (when we have most of our power
| outages), I pay for a pre-paid cellular SIM for backup. The
| cell tower(s) that serves my area must be on generator, it
| doesn't seem to go down even in long power outages.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| That makes sense, network gear doesn't suck a lot of power.
| For compute though, I always have to have the conversation
| with clients that multiple hours of UPS backup for a server
| rack is crazy expensive. They are usually better off with a
| UPS that can take over while a generator spins up if they
| really need that kind of reliability. I always ask, what
| are the odds that your 8 hour power outage scenario isn't
| from something catastrophic like a flood or a fire, eg, if
| the power is out for that long, something is probably
| literally on fire and you've got bigger problems.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| APC's are good once you get to the 'PRO' line. I would not get
| anything cheaper than that - those ones are poorly made.
| folmar wrote:
| Power density is not a problem usually as you don't care for
| the size and weight, and lead-acid give best bang for buck.
| radicality wrote:
| Are Anker cables considered good? I have a few, but recently
| one of my anker usb-c cables started to only go up to 15W,
| making me think something broke with the usb pd chip.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Yes AFAIK Anker generally has a good reputation, but what
| does that have to do with uninterruptible power supplies?
| ianburrell wrote:
| Anker is good. The limit for USB-C cables is normal ones go
| to 60W, marked ones go to 100W. The cables are passive except
| for the marker chip. It is the charger that does USB-PD. Do
| you have it plugged into regular charger that does 15W, or
| USB-PD charger that does more?
|
| I guess you could have a bad cable where the CC wire has
| broken and can't do USB-PD.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Anker products are generally good (and they were the first to
| make consistently-good cables and chargers -- in the early
| smartphone days, _everything_ non-OEM was junk), but things
| still break eventually.
|
| Their customer service is supposed to be legendary. If you
| drop them a (polite) descriptive note, signed with your name
| and address, I'll bet you a beer that you'll have a new cable
| in your hands by the middle of next week.
| dhd415 wrote:
| I've found my moderately-priced Eaton 5S 1500 unit to perform
| considerably better than any of the non-pro APC models I used
| before it.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Look for used enterprise-grade or at least higher-end office
| grade equipment on eBay and other surplus marketplaces, and
| install new batteries. Cyberpower is a good brand in my
| experience.
|
| The only advantage to buying new is weight. Newer UPSes tend to
| be a lot lighter, but that's often because they cut corners on
| the magnetics and/or use expensive, hard-to-replace lithium
| batteries. Weight is a high priority for the manufacturer to
| optimize, but not for the consumer. When it comes to UPSes, old
| school big-iron transformers and heavy-metal batteries are the
| way to go IMO.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Lead acid is used for most UPSes. Lithium ion is bad battery
| type for UPS since has lower cycles and safety, and power
| density doesn't matter. LiFePO4 would be perfect, with good
| cycles, current, and safety.
|
| But manufacturers don't use it. Maybe they haven't redesigned
| after the price dropped. Or maybe cause prices is still too
| high. I think LiFePO4 would be most useful for rack mounts, or
| small UPSes that aren't possible with lead acid.
| soneil wrote:
| Lithium in smaller UPS is mostly stuck in a marketing gap at
| the moment.
|
| Generally lithium UPS win in a 10-year TCO, but SLA wins in
| up-front costing. Which leaves us with two issues - most
| consumers look at the sticker price not the TCO, and no-one
| wants to market their products as "Our lead acid offer only
| /looks/ cheap, until you see what we charge you for
| consumables!"
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Regular Li ion has more recharge cycles than most lead acid
| batteries that come with UPS. Even high power density liion
| still usually has 4-500 recharge cycles before reaching a
| maximum of 80% SOC vs the original capacity. With smarter
| power management you can get away with much more (for
| example, if you don't fully cycle the battery)
| ssl-3 wrote:
| LiFePO4 can be had in the "portable solar generator" space,
| and some of them have enough input/output capacity to
| function as a usable UPS. All that they lack is comms for
| status and automatic shutdown.
|
| It seems like a fairly recent shift -- heck, the whole solar
| generator concept is a fairly recent shift -- but maybe it's
| an indication that LiFePO4 devices are becoming more common
| in the consumer space.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| After having tried several brands, I like CyberPower for the
| combination of price/performance.
|
| Things may have changed, the APC UPS systems I've used required
| you to power off to replace the batteries. the CyberPower units
| I've used allow for replacing the batteries hot.
|
| I've had terrible results with Tripp Lite UPS systems - where
| they fail for no reason at all, and will not auto power up
| after a power failure.
|
| At a very large size of 30KVA, I've used Eaton UPS systems and
| they have been rock solid.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Eaton/Tripp-Lite have a few Li-ion models:
| https://www.eaton.com/us/en-us/products/backup-power-ups-sur...
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The Liebert / Vertiv lithium GTX series is nice but very
| pricey. I was shocked at how light a 3000VA unit was.
| SadWebDeveloper wrote:
| I have a BR700G it works flawlessly with apcupsd, minimal to no
| configuration... the cheap units of APC is for really really
| desperate consumers, the battery didn't last more than a year
| from my experience like the BR* ones that usually last 3 years,
| these lines is the better of the both worlds cheap and
| sophisticated enough to work "smart" but as expensive as the
| SMT/SMC units.
|
| Also like everyone say... remember to look for pure sine wave
| output if you are going to "protect" servers, for network
| equipment you could use the pwm based ones.
| rpcope1 wrote:
| Eaton makes much better UPSes at a close price point. I don't
| know why anyone buys APC or things like Cyberpower anymore.
| dhd415 wrote:
| This. I finally switched from using various APC models to an
| Eaton 5S 1500 unit for my desktop and a couple peripherals and
| it's much better while still being comparably priced.
| topspin wrote:
| > Eaton makes much better UPSes
|
| What makes Eaton products better? Sincerely want to know
| anything you can tell me.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I bought one because that's what I could get at Best Buy. This
| was particularly important because being able because being
| able to purchase it at a known physical store near me meant I
| could get it the same day from a relatively trusted vendor, be
| acceptably confident that I wasn't getting a counterfeit, and
| that there was hopefully at least some minimum level of quality
| (read: it probably isn't going to burn down my house).
| macintux wrote:
| I just looked at Eaton's website. They recommended two
| companies near me that carry their products: one doesn't have
| a website (it's not a retail address, maybe just some random
| person's home), the other's website has lorem ipsum text on
| their Eaton partnership page, and their shopping site has no
| Eaton products at all.
|
| So, yeah, it's understandable why people might not be buying
| Eaton.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Sorry, don't have the model numbers handy, but:
|
| We have an Eaton and several APCs, all fairly cheap/lowend. One
| recent power outage, the APCs flipped on but the Eaton just
| turned off...
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I've had an ultra cheap Eaton 5E (900 VA) for a few weeks.
| Because I still don't entirely trust it, I've tried cutting
| the power to it several times (like 10x maybe) and it's been
| fine every single time (it talks to a Debian box with NUT).
| The whole thing was around $80, if it doesn't burn the house
| down, there are no downsides.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I have a 550ES, works fine. Some models will require apcd instead
| of nut, but I have configs for using Proxmox with both here:
| https://github.com/rcarmo/ground-init/tree/main/samples
| throw0101c wrote:
| Note that APC has different lines (at various price points):
|
| * Back-UPS: stand-by, Stepped approximation to a sinewave
|
| * Back-UPS Pro: line interactive, Stepped approximation to a
| sinewave
|
| * Smart-UPS: line interactive, Sine wave
|
| * Smart-UPS Online: double-conversion online, Sine wave
| teddyh wrote:
| I wonder what happened to Eric Raymond's UPSide project1.
|
| 1. <https://gitlab.com/esr/upside>
| liberix wrote:
| I've been monitoring several dozen APC Back-UPS units for more
| than 10 years using apcupsd on Debian without any issues.
|
| There were only a few times (maybe 2 or 3 in all that time) when
| I saw some messages indicating that something was wrong with the
| battery (though they never were as frequent as in the author's
| case). In each of those cases, the messages went away after
| replacing the battery.
| mmphosis wrote:
| We get a lot of power failures. I use laptops, but for other non-
| battery powered equipment, I have a BN1500M2-CA with a raspberry
| pi running debian plugged into one of the USB charging ports and
| the USB Data Port cable connected from the UPS to the raspberry
| pi. It keeps my ISP's 185 watt router going for longer than the
| ISP's switches will stay up when the power is out. I get more
| than 3 hours with the router and a 4K monitor plugged into the
| UPS. I remember seeing NUL characters in the text of an old log,
| but otherwise apcupsd works well: 2024-01-30
| 08:15:13 -0800 Power failure. 2024-01-30 08:15:19 -0800
| Running on UPS batteries. 2024-01-30 08:20:06 -0800 Mains
| returned. No longer on UPS batteries. 2024-01-30 08:20:06
| -0800 Power is back. UPS running on mains. 2024-02-04
| 12:52:58 -0800 Power failure. 2024-02-04 12:53:04 -0800
| Running on UPS batteries. 2024-02-04 12:54:04 -0800 Mains
| returned. No longer on UPS batteries. 2024-02-04 12:54:04
| -0800 Power is back. UPS running on mains. 2024-02-18
| 12:10:13 -0800 UPS Self Test switch to battery. 2024-02-18
| 12:10:21 -0800 UPS Self Test completed: Battery OK
| xp84 wrote:
| > ISP's 185 watt router
|
| Wait, what?
|
| Does it also heat your room? How can it be so power-hungry?
| mmphosis wrote:
| I call it "the chimney."
| p1mrx wrote:
| A Starlink terminal uses less than 185W, and that talks to
| space while melting snow.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I'd bet the power supply is just rated at 185W. No fucking
| way is a router actually drawing that much power.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Carrier grade routers do.
|
| https://www.juniper.net/us/en/products/routers/mx-
| series/mx3...
|
| Random example from a search. According to a calculator I
| plugged a few values in, it's 2880 watts, but not sure I
| computed it correctly.
| djbusby wrote:
| P=I * E
|
| 2880w = 60A * 48VDC
|
| It checks out.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I mean this is hacker news, but no one is talking about
| that beast.
|
| "My vehicle has 3000 horsepower."
|
| "That doesn't sound right."
|
| "Ackshually trains do. Maybe he drives a train."
|
| "..."
| deathanatos wrote:
| My fairly beefy laptop's PSU is rated at 135 W. It includes
| an entire GPU.
|
| My own router's PSU is rated at 36 W, for comparison.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I've seen people running routers on beefy machines that can
| certainly pull down hundreds of watts. Even more if it's an
| older machine.
| mmphosis wrote:
| You are correct. The input on the wall wart is 100-120vac
| 1.5a (150watt to 180watt) but the output is _only_ 12.0vdc
| 4.6a: 55.2 watts
|
| The "xFi Advanced Gateway (XB7)" router is definitely warm
| to somewhat hot on the outside. The AC here varies from
| 118vac to as high as 126vac (maximum rating.) Right now
| it's at 122vac. I think my 185 watt number might have been
| 123.3vac x 1.5a, or maybe it was the previous "xFi Advanced
| Gateway (XB6)" which was also a chimney.
|
| I am not an ISP. We work remotely -- there is no fiber here
| yet.
| blibble wrote:
| for comparison my top of the range i9 gaming pc uses 62W
| idle
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Yeah so that means _at most_ it can pull 1.5A. So
| realistically it probably runs at like 20W or likely even
| less.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| It sounds like OP works at or is an ISP.
| tristor wrote:
| I would never buy a cheap UPS. The one time I did so many years
| ago, it ended up catching fire. UPS fires are the most common
| cause of datacenter fires, and that's the "good" stuff. Adding a
| UPS is not a zero-risk action that has only upsides. You need to
| actually think about it.
|
| At home, I have had a single rack w/ network and server gear for
| more than a decade and I always run two good quality UPS, that I
| run a test on annually, tied to two different circuits. My setup
| now is a bit annoying because I'm renting currently, but when I
| owned a home prior to my recent move I had an electrician run two
| 20A Dual Function (AFCI+GFCI) circuits with hospital grade
| outlets to power the two UPSes in the same room but on separate
| circuits and breakers at the panel. I don't think that's
| overkill, but I think anything more would be overkill at home.
| When I buy a house again, I intend to do the same.
|
| Since buying better quality UPS and testing them regularly so I
| can replace batteries when needed I haven't had any fires, but
| using batteries past their useful lifespan can greatly increase
| risk of fire. Expect that you should replace the batteries every
| 3-5 years, and that they will cost nearly as much as the UPS
| itself. If you're not comfortable with that, invest in a quality
| surge protector instead and figure out how to deal with failures.
| UPS batteries are a big fire risk, so you need to understand it
| and work to contain it. Also, keep a good dry fire extinguisher
| near your rackmount equipment and get it tested annually.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Can't you buy a UPS with a LiFePO battery, or find an old lead
| acid one and do a battery swap?
| cptskippy wrote:
| UPSes with dead lead acid batteries are a dime a dozen.
| People don't realize or don't both servicing the batteries
| and toss them out all the time.
| russdill wrote:
| I love hooking up large lead acid batteries to old UPSes,
| there's no reason to be limited by the original battery
| capacity.
|
| However...I discovered why some APC UPSes are sealed and
| the battery cannot be accessed. I was converting one such
| UPS which had no monitor interface. Having already opened
| it up to splice in an external battery, I noticed an empty
| header for a serial port. Cool. Plugged that into my PC and
| flash/bang/smoke. Fortunately my PC had a good path to
| ground and was not damaged. But the UPS had some pretty
| large burn marks at various points in the PCB and was
| certainly dead.
|
| It took me a bit to figure out what I did wrong. The reason
| it went bang is directly related to why there's no user
| access to the battery, and why there's no external
| monitoring port. They went cheap on the electronics and did
| not include an isolation transformer. Any points within the
| UPS which are "ground", including the battery negative
| terminal, are actually referenced to the full bridge
| rectifier, which provides a direct path to live. Ahh...I'm
| just very glad I didn't touch any of the battery terminals
| while I had the thing plugged in.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Nonsense. UPS's don't pose any sort of serious fire risk. UPSs
| starting on fire are exceedingly rare. Sure, it's probably
| happened. People get hit by lightning too.
| silon42 wrote:
| I'd guess they are certainly safer than a laptop, but it
| depends on a manufacturer... (I've seen lots of "balooned"
| laptops, including many Macs)
| tristor wrote:
| Not to be snarky, but UPS fires are one of the leading causes
| of datacenter fires:
| https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=UPS+Fire+datacenter&ia=web
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Right and data center fires are extremely rare. Think of
| how many UPSs are in the wild. The failure by fire rate is
| probably something like 0.000001%.
| Grazester wrote:
| After using hundreds, hundreds of very cheap to huge expensive
| APC UPS' I can say I have never experienced a fire. They have
| all used lead acid batteries, some as heavy as 50lbs. I have
| even had to cut UPS' open to remove swollen batteries.
| dheera wrote:
| Is this specific to Lithium battery UPS units?
|
| For home use I bought a lead acid UPS specifically to avoid a
| fire. For a 5 hour power outage it makes no difference to me if
| the UPS powers my machine for 5 minutes or 20 minutes; as long
| as I can save my stuff and shut down it works for me.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| > I had an electrician run two 20A Dual Function (AFCI+GFCI)
| circuits
|
| Don't do this. This is a terrible idea if you intend to run a
| UPS.
|
| > with hospital grade outlets
|
| Complete overkill and waste of money
|
| > UPS batteries are a big fire risk
|
| No they aren't.
|
| Judging by all these incorrect assumptions about electrical,
| I'd suggest stopping while you're ahead before you burn your
| own house down.
| bloopernova wrote:
| > > I had an electrician run two 20A Dual Function
| (AFCI+GFCI) circuits
|
| > Don't do this. This is a terrible idea if you intend to run
| a UPS.
|
| Can you please elaborate why someone shouldn't do that? (not
| who you responded to, I'm just curious about the reasoning
| behind that statement)
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| UPS's are notorious for nuisance tripping GFCI's due to the
| extensive power filtering they usually have inside. It may
| not happen right away but is dependent on how 'dirty' your
| power is and on how sensitive your particular brand of GFCI
| is. All it may take is a neighbour using his AC or power
| saw and it could generate a spike large enough to knock
| your system offline (UPS filters spike to ground, leakage
| current trips GFCI which needs to be manually reset, UPS
| runs out of battery because no one's home to restore
| power).
|
| This advice is specific to the US & Canada where GFCI's are
| calibrated to trip at 5 mA. In the UK, their RCD's trip at
| 30 mA so it's less likely.
|
| If you read the fine print for your UPS and/or GFCI they
| will say not to use them together.
|
| What about AFCI's? Well they are basically nuisance devices
| by design and most electricians hate them. Do not use
| unless absolutely necessary by code.
|
| The difficulty comes into play because UPS's, servers, etc
| are essentially industrial equipment while the code is
| written for such common residential usages as plugging in a
| lamp (where a dog will chew on the cord, a good way to
| start a fire hence a perceived need for AFCI protection.)
|
| What if you're stuck because you want to locate your UPS
| and equipment in an area where GFCI's are required (like a
| residential basement)? Well I won't tell you what to do in
| your own home but I'm sure you can devise a creative
| solution. :)
| tristor wrote:
| The issues with UPS products tripping GFCI breakers is due
| to leakage current that is out of spec for the GFCI
| circuit, this is almost always caused by the load attached
| to the UPS, not the UPS itself. While most UPS
| manufacturers do recommend against connecting it to a GFCI
| outlet, AFCI is required in all new construction for all
| circuits and GFCI is required for many circuits, including
| any circuits in basement areas which necessitates a dual
| function circuit. Since the original thread is about APC,
| even though I don't use their products, here's what they
| have to say on the topic:
| https://www.apc.com/us/en/faqs/FA369034/
|
| FWIW, running my server and network equipment never caused
| the breaker to trip erroneously while I was still living
| there. I sold the house when I moved cross-country for
| unrelated reasons so I can't say what happened afterwards,
| but my setup was installed according to code and functioned
| perfectly fine. I used quality UPS and decent quality
| network and server equipment. Cheap stuff may be farther
| out of spec and have more issues with leakage current.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| > AFCI is required in all new construction for all
| circuits
|
| This is absolutely false.
|
| Though I'm sure you gave your electrician an earful and
| he did whatever was needed to keep his customer satisfied
| and happily took your money. Hope those $50 hospital-
| grade outlets are working well.
| tristor wrote:
| From: https://www.nyeia.com/where-arc-fault-circuit-
| interrupter-af...
|
| "For new construction, Section 210.12 (A) of the National
| Electrical Code states that all 120-volt, single-phase,
| 15- and 20-ampere branch circuits supplying all outlets
| must be Arc-Fault Circuit-Interrupter protected in the
| following dwelling unit locations:
|
| Kitchens, Family Rooms, Dining Rooms, Living Rooms,
| Parlors, Libraries, Dens, Bedrooms, Sunrooms, Recreation
| Rooms, Closets, Hallways, Laundry Areas, or Similar Rooms
| or Areas.
|
| Even though it is not listed, this includes finished
| basements because once the basement is finished, the area
| becomes one of the rooms listed above.
|
| Adding to the confusion, most people assume that outlets
| are only plugs or receptacles. However, outlets is
| defined in Article 100 of the National Electrical Code as
| "A point on the wiring system at which current is taken
| to supply utilization equipment". That means that the
| requirements for AFCI protection is required in the areas
| stated above at all 120-volt, single-phase, 15- and
| 20-amp receptacles, lighting fixtures, switches, smoke
| alarms, dishwashers, refrigerators, and so on."
|
| So, yes, /technically/ it's not /all/ circuits, however
| please identify for me a room that's commonly found in a
| residential property that's not a Kitchen, Family Room,
| Living Room, Dining Room, Bedroom, Hallway, Laundry Area,
| Closet or "similar rooms or areas"? Look at the floor
| plan of most residential properties in the United States
| and every room noted on that floor plan is on the list.
| So /technically/ it's not /all/ circuits, so I was
| /technically/ incorrect, in practice what I said is
| absolutely true.
|
| Maybe a bit less snark from you and a bit more reading
| comprehension and you wouldn't come off as such a dick?
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| You conveniently left out that few jurisdictions are on
| the 2020 NEC code cycle when this provision was
| introduced. New codes do not get adopted everywhere
| immediately. Your town or city needs to adopt it and that
| can take many years. So, no, not all new construction.
| tristor wrote:
| This provision I quoted above is from NEC 2017, not NEC
| 2020, and NEC 2017 was adopted in my jurisdiction when I
| had that house built. But, please, continue to tell me,
| the almost electrician, that both myself and the master
| electrician I hired to help during the construction of my
| house are wrong and how you know better, Mr. Unqualified
| Internet Commenter.
|
| I reiterate to anyone reading this comment thread, hire a
| certified electrician, get an inspection, don't get your
| safety advice from random assholes on the Internet in the
| comments section.
| tristor wrote:
| > Judging by all these incorrect assumptions about
| electrical, I'd suggest stopping while you're ahead before
| you burn your own house down.
|
| For anyone reading this, this person has no idea what they're
| talking about. Besides the fact that I once considered
| becoming an electrician and completed my apprenticeship prior
| to entering the tech industry, it is a published standard how
| things should be installed in residential properties in the
| US, called the National Electric Code or NEC.
|
| The NEC 2020 states that GFCI is required (in additional to a
| general AFCI requirement) for any 125V or 250V receptacles in
| kitchens, bathrooms, laundry areas, finished or unfinished
| basements, garages and anywhere within six feet of a sink.
| Since my server rack was in a closet in a finished basement,
| it is /REQUIRED/ by code to have a dual-function breaker.
|
| Also, I once again refer you regarding fire risk to simply
| search "UPS fire datacenter". UPS fires are the primary cause
| of datacenter fires. But sure, I don't know what I'm talking
| about, I've only been responsible for multiple datacenters
| spanning the globe for one of the world's largest hosting
| providers as part of my career after giving being an
| electrician a go and deciding against it as a career in my
| youth.
|
| If anyone is ever in doubt about how to install something
| that's electrical: 1. Hire a certified electrician and 2.
| Read the applicable standard, which is the most recent
| published version of the NEC. Don't listen to people who make
| rude smart-ass comments on the Internet.
| hedora wrote:
| I have one of the nicer APC units (for use in offices, not
| racks). Recently, when the power blipped, it went into backup
| mode and got stuck there, draining the battery. I had to
| physically unplug it and plug it back in to get it to turn back
| on.
|
| I'm not sure if there's a decent UPS brand any more. I get the
| impression APC has been going downhill since the acquisition.
| newsclues wrote:
| Eaton
| da768 wrote:
| Vertiv Liebert
| js2 wrote:
| No one on this site has a large enough sample size to speak
| authoritatively about the quality of consumer-oriented UPSes.
|
| In my home right now, I have an APC (Schneider) Back-UPS Pro
| 1000, Tripp Lite (Eaton) AVR550U, and CyberPower
| CP1500PFCLCDa.
|
| I purchased the APC in April 2017, the CyberPower in Nov
| 2020, and the Tripp Lite in Sep 2021.
|
| The APC was originally for all my IT gear but for some reason
| that load caused it to cycle to battery at random times. I
| replaced it with the CyberPower which works fine with my IT
| gear. Meanwhile the APC works fine with my AV gear where I
| re-purposed it.
|
| Both of those are still on their original batteries which I
| test every 6 months.
|
| The Tripp Lite I use at my desk and I also test it every 6
| months, but last month the power went out and the Tripp Lite
| immediately shut down. The battery had failed w/o warning and
| the Tripp Lite battery-monitoring is apparently useless since
| it still thought the battery was good when power was
| restored, but an actual load test proved otherwise.
|
| When I replaced the battery, the Tripp Lite had a cheap
| Chinese battery in it. I replaced it with a Duracell
| (manufactured in Vietnam). I've had less trouble with non-
| Chinese UPS batteries.
|
| Another fun thing: Tripp Lite has reused the model "AVR550U"
| for three different UPSes all which use a different battery.
| Turns out my version uses the quite common APC RBC2 sized 7Ah
| battery.
|
| Which is all to say: I've had a lot of UPSes over the years
| and you can't make any claims about any single manufacturer.
| They all manufacture a range of models and none of us have
| any actual data about failure rates. The best you can do if
| you have the expertise is to take one apart and evaluate its
| design and manufacturing quality.
| da768 wrote:
| Not necessarily, but reading online you'll quickly find
| about certain manufacturers frying batteries faster using
| out of spec charging voltages.
| pastorhudson wrote:
| Eaton is what I use and it is one of the only ones that
| provide pure sine wave. It's good stuff.
| tomek_ycomb wrote:
| 100% agree, but have never had $1k to drop like that on a
| backup dedicated to my PC ;p.
| csnover wrote:
| > I'm not sure if there's a decent UPS brand any more. I get
| the impression APC has been going downhill since the
| acquisition.
|
| I've noticed a similar thing.
|
| I had a 2005 Smart-UPS tower that never failed, but developed
| some transformer buzz that was annoying in an office
| environment--and hey, improved standby efficiency and an LCD
| panel would be nice--so I replaced it in 2013 with its latest
| equivalent. This one ran for about nine years and then started
| rebooting itself randomly, dropping the load each time. (It had
| no issues transferring and holding a load on battery, and self-
| test passed.) Its 2022 replacement now uses a non-standard
| USB-A male-to-male cable, is missing information that used to
| exist in the LCD menu, seems to have a problem charging from
| 98% to 100%, and has a broken event log (event 1 is always
| "Site wiring" and every other event is always "None", even
| though there have been multiple power events, and there is no
| site wiring issue). It works, but QA issues are evident.
|
| I'd previously tried a prosumer-grade CyberPower UPS
| (CP1500PFCLCD) on some other less critical equipment. When its
| battery failed after two years, it cut power to the load. When
| the charger failed a few years later, it cut power to the load.
| It died completely in about six years.
|
| Tripp-Lite's consumer grade stuff seems to work well enough for
| what it is, but their higher-end equipment seemed to all be
| designed for environments where noise doesn't matter, which
| makes it a non-starter for an office. Eaton (their parent)
| seems the same.
|
| So it would be great to know what is an actually good choice
| these days. At the moment I'm not in the market for anything
| and hopefully what I've got will run for another decade, but if
| it doesn't, I have no good idea about what else to buy today.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > I'd previously tried a prosumer-grade CyberPower UPS
| (CP1500PFCLCD) on some other less critical equipment. When
| its battery failed after two years, it cut power to the load.
| When the charger failed a few years later, it cut power to
| the load. It died completely in about six years.
|
| I've never (n=4) had a stock CyberPower UPS battery last me 2
| years. 3rd party replacement batteries have all lasted
| significantly longer than what shipped in the box.
| th3typh00n wrote:
| > event 1 is always "Site wiring" and every other event is
| always "None", even though there have been multiple power
| events, and there is no site wiring issue
|
| Some UPS:es are adamant about wanting live and neutral on
| specific pins on the power plug and will throw that error
| message if they're swapped.
|
| If it's a reversible power plug, flip it around. If the power
| plug can only be connected in one orientation the outlet is
| likely incorrectly installed (which is not all that uncommon,
| as 99.99% of stuff will work perfectly fine with live and
| neutral swapped).
| johnklos wrote:
| First, it's extra work, but it's possible to configure apcupsd to
| run a script on events, then use that script to ignore spurious
| events.
|
| Second, for people who can't necessarily afford either new UPSes
| or something other than "consumer grade", a good option is to
| find local sellers, perhaps on Craigslist or Facebook
| Marketplace, who are selling or giving away old UPSes. Many
| people and businesses don't bother replacing batteries, so they
| just buy new devices when the batteries near or reach end of
| life, and since they're heavy, they often just want to give the
| hardware away.
|
| New batteries are not expensive. A common 9AH battery for many /
| most common smaller UPSes costs around $25 USD from Amazon
| sellers that have 4.5 or more stars.
|
| I've personally never bought a new UPS for myself, yet all of my
| equipment and everywhere I've set up home Internet equipment for
| others has UPSes. I've only ever bought batteries. Just a
| thought.
| underlogic wrote:
| I have had maybe 10 UPS units over the years but I would never
| buy another one. I was once severely poisoned by an APC unit with
| a leaking battery. It released an odorless vapor, had me in the
| hospital twice before I figured it out. Not a fan of APC quality
| anymore either. I don't trust the product, don't want to plug it
| into my equipment. Most everything I use now has a battery or
| will just reset on power failure anyway.
|
| The model he is referring to is the last UPS I owned and had some
| very serious QA issues;
|
| https://www.eevblog.com/forum/dodgy-technology/apc-ups-now-w...
| e40 wrote:
| Wow. What would you use?
|
| We had a bunch of Cyberpowers and they were absolutely crap.
| The failed at a high rate and had terrible software.
| underlogic wrote:
| A UPS is really just a car battery and a voltage regulator.
| Actually the cheaper APC models have no voltage regulator
| which is why you should avoid them. It's obsolete technology.
| Modern regulated power adapters are enough just use a strip
| with a surge protector. If you really need something to
| protect your gear get a voltage regulator. But if the power
| drops frequently then maybe you do need a UPS idk. If you
| really do then the APC enterprise units. But I'd avoid if at
| all possible
|
| https://www.apc.com/us/en/product-
| range/61877-liner/?parent-...
| skottenborg wrote:
| How did you figure out the UPS was the cause?
| underlogic wrote:
| When I came back from the ER I got sick again. The UPS only
| had arrived a couple of days before
| atesti wrote:
| What was this odorless substance and where did it come from?
| (just curious what to watch out for)
| underlogic wrote:
| It came from a leak in the battery during charging. Exactly
| what the gas was is still unknown but it knocked me for six a
| couple of days after I received the unit. I thought about
| getting it tested and even suing but it took out my whole
| apartment and I just had to get rid of it and cut my losses.
| I was in the ER unable to stand and in quite a state, lost
| balance and coordination and was incoherent for a while. CAT
| scan w/contrast, it was a whole production on Thanksgiving at
| 3am. They monitored me for a couple days and sent me back to
| the apartment where all the symptoms immediately returned,
| and then I put it together and looked closer at the UPS.
| Underneath it was a couple of drops of black liquid that had
| come from the battery compartment and after returning to the
| ER again to go throw up some more I went back and took it
| straight to the garbage. I think it was one of those types of
| gas that can effect you in the PPM range. Totally odorless.
| This was the enterprise APC UPS, the model was SUA1500
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| > I was once severely poisoned by an APC unit with a leaking
| battery. It released an odorless vapor, had me in the hospital
| twice before I figured it out.
|
| X doubt
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I once installed apcupsd only to be so appalled by its lack of
| security design I ripped it out PDQ. It demands to run as root so
| it can run shutdown (and maybe access the USB?!) and goes
| downhill from there.
| rubatuga wrote:
| Seems like your best bet is to use an industrial battery
| inverter/charger system (Victron Multiplus) for slow-switching
| (>20ms) and then layer a secondary industrial grade UPS to
| provide fast switching (<15ms) and shutdown process through
| USB/serial/network etc. Is it cheap? No, but you shouldn't be
| using cheap power supplies to protect your more expensive server
| equipment.
| shmerl wrote:
| I have no issues with Back-UPS RS 1500MS2 on Linux.
|
| I had to configure an udev rule though for it to set up a static
| USB device name since that wasn't happening out of the box, but
| other than that - no problems.
|
| See http://apcupsd.org/manual/manual.html#usb-configuration
| ek750 wrote:
| I'm kinda sick of buying these cheap lead-acid based UPS units
| (only tried APC and Cyberpower so far) to have the batteries die
| in just a couple of years.
|
| Are the lithium-based batteries more durable (probably more
| dangerous)? Anyone have experience with these?
| https://www.amazon.com/Xtreme-Power-Conversion-J60-600-Lithi...
| alright2565 wrote:
| What's interesting is that APS's Windows-only software,
| Powerchute Serial Shutdown, is actually Java-based, accessed
| through the browser, and trivially de-compilable and readable.
| secabeen wrote:
| In my experience, all modern operating systems and widely-used
| databases handle power interruption well. I can't recall an time
| where a filesystem or database was corrupted by power loss in
| decades. Adding a monitoring/shutdown system for basic UPSes is
| not worth the risk/hassle. I'd just monitor the power directly
| and let the system fall over when the UPS runs out of battery.
| nayuki wrote:
| Some SSDs brick themselves in an abrupt shutdown.
| neilv wrote:
| After many UPSes at home over the years, I currently have only 1
| (a business-grade rackmount Cyberpower), and once it needs a new
| battery pack, I'll probably just switch to a surge protector.
|
| My local electric is pretty stable, I no longer run servers at
| home that need to be up 24/7, most of my work at home is on a
| laptop with integrated battery backup, I can use my phone WiFI AP
| mode for backup Internet, UPSes are a pain to move between
| apartments, and UPSes have a small risk of dangerous battery
| leakage.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Don't even bother buying used enterprise APC units because
| firmware updates now require $$$.
|
| NMC2 and NMC3 can't even install proper SSL certs without some
| shitty Windows-only tool.
| mastax wrote:
| I'm having exactly the same issue with apcupsd and my APC Smart-
| UPS X 1500, so it's not just an issue with the cheapo units.
| binkHN wrote:
| I refused to go down this route; the hours lost in frustration
| are not worth it.
|
| I purchased a UPS that supports a network management card,
| basically an overpriced SNMP daemon with an Ethernet interface,
| and have been happy ever since, since every system can query the
| status of the UPS.
| Animats wrote:
| Have low-end UPS units gone lithium iron phosphate yet? That's
| the battery technology of choice now for non-portable
| applications. Cheaper and longer-lived than lithium-ion, no
| thermal runaway risk, about the same energy density per cubic
| meter, but twice the weight.
|
| Such UPSs are available in small rackmount units.[1] The usual
| serious players, such as Tripp-Lite, have LiFeP04 battery powered
| units. Searching for consumer-grade LiFePo4 UPSs turns up many
| articles on how to replace crappy batteries in UPS units with
| newer battery technology. The batteries themselves are cheap now.
| APC doesn't seem to have caught up yet.
|
| This looks like an APC corporate problem.
|
| [1] https://www.falconups.com/ups/lifepo4-ups-sl.htm
| neilv wrote:
| For most home use, you don't need UPS monitoring.
|
| If you're home when it switches to battery power, the equipment
| will probably have been protected from any surge, and you'll hear
| the beeps from the UPS, and can manually shut down equipment.
|
| If you're not home, and the power doesn't come on soon enough,
| power will be cut to protected equipment, without a surge, and at
| most the equipment probably only needs the auto-`fsck`.
|
| And because no monitor means that you can have the UPS airgapped
| for data, there's less theoretical risk of a remote firmware hack
| causing a fire/explosion or toxic leak.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-02-23 23:00 UTC)