UPS Recomendations

Same, I run Cyberpower’s all over the place.

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I have the same for my rack but mostly for power conditioning. Also have surge protectors at all panels and subpanels.

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I use APC at home - 1000kvas, because they’re cheap second hand and easy to re-battery.

At work, we moved from APC to Eaton, which are better priced and very well built - we had a bunch of APC failures due to poor components. They need an additional nic module, but once that’s in the SNMP information is pretty solid. I can’
t recall the sizes, but they’re big. Two 4u’s power one rack with a pretty hungry cluster, and a single 4u runs a less hungry rack. Battery replacement is a little more involved than apc - we did one of them which contained 16x 12v slas in nothing much worse than a plastic blister pack - that’s some pretty scary voltages to be playing around with. But generally we like them, and they’ve been very reliable and seem to be kinder to batteries than the APCs.

I’ve also used Cyberpower at home, but had 2 fail before they were 3 years old and won’t buy them again.

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I will echo what the other responses are saying, APC (for bigger needs) and CyberPower (for smaller stuff, because you can buy them at Costco, with Costco warrantee return ability) with NUT for monitoring and control. If my reading of the stats of the replies is correct and from my small experiment with bluetti LiFePO4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) stuff, I would not give up on the ‘good old’ lead acid based solutions.

Good hunting!

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Thanks all for the responses. Nathan thanks for the heads up on the NUT, Promox Etc. So now the question becomes do I buy a RP simply to install NUT or do I buy a dedicated device for HA and if so which one? Perhaps the better answer would be to have HA on a dedicated machine in the first place!

what’s the easiest for you to manage? (that’s always my first decision point…) Dont build a fortress to protect a piggybank.

The first thing is to buy the UPS! After that I can play around with the NUT addon within HA and see how things re-act during a simulated power fail.

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Cool! Is this a DIY powerwall using Tesla batteries or you bought Powerwall from Tesla?

I love having a small UPS in my RV for when power fluctuates (as it does at camp sites), it prevents HA, and my other nerd toys, from hard shutting down and corrupting the database. I can say that my RV Cyberlink with HA, Access Point and Pi-Hole will run a full 8 hours on my UPS battery easily, I learned that the first time I took it out and our phones kept trying to connect to the available network and Internet the entire trip :slight_smile: .

Powerwall Gateway Gen 2 with two batteries and 16.7kW rooftop solar.

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first thing you might want to know is the time 2-4 hours or days … you want the runtime more than 30 min for any UPS your SOL and switch to power invertors/powerwall thingies UPS is not intended for log runtime but gracefull shutdown.

A generator or powerwall (victreon multiplus) is needed for anything beyond 30min …
lets say your NAS and router + some other feature you want online during an outage uses together 200W a 750W unit will give you then about 1,5 hours of runtime but you are also deep draining the lead-acid and destroying them in the process

Deeo discharge for Li-ion and lead-acid are both ill advised however Li-ion “recovers” better than a lead acid in generic thems, li-ion is how often you deep discharge/cycle the lot.
lead acid (all ups models basicly) destroy their batteries within 2-3 years

going for a victreon multiplus 48v/1500VA with li-ion (aka powerwall) with seperate batteries (also available in rack mount) would be my advise

12v = one battery creates a lot of heat (fire hazard) back to 115/230v conversion double (24v) to 36 or 48v … extending power-outage life is generaly 36v/48v only due to runtime + heat

all decent OS / NAS have some way to hookup to external UPS (opensource NUT server) in order to gracefully shut down.,. you just need to read the remaining charge on your battery pack and use it as an input many have gone before so many guide(s) are available.

the TLDR part: for more than 30min runtime → go with a powerwall solution

One follow up question. Do I need a NIC on the UPS in order for the NUT to communicate with it?

no. a USB connection is better/preferred.

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Okay. Thanks. Is there any need for a NIC? If not it save a bit of money off the purchase price.

No need for a NIC. In fact some manufacturers (APC is one) include a “SmartPort” for cloud control, but it does not allow local network config or controller. So just stick to USB, it’s easier and universally supported.

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Thanks.
It looks like I’ve settled on the CyberPower PR1500RT2U Smart App Sinewave UPS System, 1500VA/1500W, 8 Outlets, 2U Rack/Tower, AVR. Does anyone have any experience with this unit?

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07H9XBCXY/ref=sw_img_1?smid=A2WUFJ6JJA4T9B&th=1

The quality of consumer grade units, for all manufacturers, is much less than enterprise kit. Something I’ve been doing at home for a few years now is to buy a used APC UPS off Ebay from a supplier that sells ex-commercial equipment.

For around £60, I get a 750 or 1000va non-rack UPS without batteries. Another £40 or so will get me a pair of new compatible 12v slas (I don’t recommend paying top price for branded batteries, IME there is not a huge of benefit, especially if you test regularly). This means I get a better quality, if older, UPS that will outlast consumer grade units and (touch wood) less likely to catch fire. (I had this once with an under-desk unbranded UPS, it was a scary day). Also, the consumer units often have plastic covers, which concerns me in the event of such a fire. No UPS is going to contain an electrical fire fully, but a metal cased one might limit the damage a little bit.

Thanks very much for the response. I will take your advice into consideration.

I have a Wattbox UPS:

I could not find it on the list. Any way to use this add on with it?

Looks like that UPS has a USB interface. If you plug it into a computer, see if it shows up in USB devices. Then go look at the installation steps for NUT. Configure NUT with a generic USB HID driver and see what it reports back or if it is able to connect to the UPS.