Kitz Forum
Computers & Hardware => PC Hardware => Topic started by: Weaver on August 09, 2018, 05:35:08 AM
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[We have talked about this before at least once, some years back, so would appreciate a brief up-to-date recap.]
Would appreciate tips for a UPS for a Firebrick (low power, supposedly but runs quite hot imho as fanless), two switches, four modems, and three PoE WAPs. Would have to simply guess what that currently consumption is.
But I would just like to maximise the runtime on a budget of £100 - £200. Ideally long enough to get the generator running.
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If you don't know what the consumption is why not buy something like this (https://www.wickes.co.uk/Energenie-Energy-Saving-Power-Meter-Plug/p/171299?CAWELAID=120135120001245075&CAGPSPN=pla&CAAGID=52608956104&CATCI=pla-436560611458&gclid=Cj0KCQjwzK_bBRDDARIsAFQF7zOLoA87ee75WMMiMEvxGR6wtgDFXkaAw8UFQtlNlC_HgnZCGLxP1BUaAkwWEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds&dclid=CICa8MXJ39wCFUmI7QodOtIA5w) first?
I think you might be surprised at little you need and will find a UPS for well under your budget. When you have a power cut, before going out to start the generator (before you know how long a power cut will last), my first reaction would be to unplug the WAPs or switches not actually needed at that moment to maximise the run time.
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Seconded, bought one just like it for £8 on ebay recently. Hours of fun to be had finding out how much power things about the house use... my personal favourite, or rather most shocking at least, was our ageing 32" LCD TV, 95W! 95W and its routinely on all day for no reason.
Had some fun the other day seeing how much I could reduce the consumption of an old first gen i5 PC by undervolting and underclocking, went from a little over 100W at idle to 40W, not bad but have sandybridge systems that reliably sit at 20W idle without reducing the performance to nothing.
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@jelv only essential core kit is on that ups. Other things like PCs had their own separate UPS and a shutdown interface which talked to the o/s and shut processes down, shut the o/s down cleanly or did a suspend-to-disk, writing the entire RAM and saving state, presumably all register files of each core arranged to be spilled out onto the stacks so it gets saved anyway?
I really would like a long run time because if it is night, bad weather, need to go out to shed where the generator lives. That has to go because Janet's hands are really bad and she is not strong enough to start it since we stupidly bought a pull-start one 13 years ago. So the generator needs to be replaced with a modern push-button one and they are miles cheaper now somehow.
The run time with the current APC unit is really crap, just a few minutes. Could be because the battery is dead because I bet it is 12 yrs old.
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An excellent tip about the plug-meter, thanks! I had no idea.
If anyone sees any reliable big bang-for-the buck units then I would be glad of further tips.
Actually, apart from possible mains droops or spikes or brownouts, but I wouldn't know about those anyway, as I do not have logging thereof, we do not get short power cuts. So it is always generator on, except that now my poor wife always tries to make up some lame excuse that we do not need to bother with electricity, to cover up the fact that she can't start the generator. Bless her and big kiss in her direction, wish her hands were better. So we really need an appropriate generator now, it is all about time-to-get-generator-started too.
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If you have never replaced the batteries in a 12 year old APC unit I'd guarantee that they are knackered!
I'd suggest replacing the battery(s) first.
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understood, I had no idea about longevity
Any solid recommendations then folks?
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If you have never replaced the batteries in a 12 year old APC unit I'd guarantee that they are knackered!
I'd suggest replacing the battery(s) first.
I'd stop using it immediately, unless you've got the right PPE to deal with a leaking battery.
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What model is the existing UPS?
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This is slightly off topic but I asked a while ago if broadband would still work in a power cut. There is little point in getting a UPS for your modem if it has nothing to talk to.
The perceived wisdom was that the cabinets would be good for about 4 hours on their battery backup.
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This is slightly off topic but I asked a while ago if broadband would still work in a power cut. There is little point in getting a UPS for your modem if it has nothing to talk to.
The perceived wisdom was that the cabinets would be good for about 4 hours on their battery backup.
Though a good UPS will act as a great filter, and can regulate the incoming AC.
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@jelv - will have to check.
Re dslam - in the past the dsl has remained up all day prob because we are in completely different system coming off a substation. An outage may well be a problem confined entirely to the village, or because of very local maintenance or a problem with weather or lightning on the high moorland run of the electricity line to Heasta from civilisation.
Power cuts are very infrequent, unless hurricane with 130mph winds.
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The perceived wisdom was that the cabinets would be good for about 4 hours on their battery backup.
My understanding is it is entirely dependant on how populated the DSLAM is.
I believe it to be in the 8-10 hour range though.
More likely a domestic UPS will die before the local FTTC cabinet does.
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Around 2:40 this addresses the FTTC cabinet battery issue.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBMoR1NMwVg[/youtube]
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Be careful using a power meter to determine requirements, as appuratus may be smart enough to reduce power when it is not required, whereas your UPS would probably want to be able to handle the worst case scenario.
My TP-link switch, for example, senses whether ethernet connections are active and, if not, puts individual interfaces into low power mode.
Also, I think UPS generally have VA ratings as well as Watt ratings, you need one that satisfies both the wattage and the VA. Some plug-in power meters can measure both Watts and VA, but others may not.
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I assume the power factor (cos 𝜃 or whatever, memory fails me after 40 years :) ??? ) should be well-behaved, trivial for the type of kit we are using here yes? No inductive loads ? Nothing reflecting power back? So if that is the case then I would not need to worry about the distinction here.
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Around 2:40 this addresses the FTTC cabinet battery issue.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBMoR1NMwVg[/youtube]
That video partially informed my comment. As I commented on YouTube BT customer services should use that as their holding music.
There was another report of loss of internet every 5 hours or so. Mains to a cabinet had been lost, after about 5 hours it would die but the physical replacement of the batteries by Openreach was on a 6 hour schedule.
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I assume the power factor (cos 𝜃 or whatever, memory fails me after 40 years :) ??? ) should be well-behaved, trivial for the type of kit we are using here yes? No inductive loads ? Nothing reflecting power back? So if that is the case then I would not need to worry about the distinction here.
You might be right, though switch mode PSUs can have unfavourable power factors. But why chance it, if you can simply measure it, with the right plug in meter?
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Ah, I forgot about UPS, good point. You are quite right anyway.
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Taking a look at Amazon and elsewhere, I get the impression the plug in monitors have been dumbed down a bit since I bought mine about a decade ago (maplin iirc).
Whereas mine has buttons for ‘Watts’, ‘VA’, ‘Volts’ and ‘kWh’, the current ones seem to have buttons for things like ‘Cost’, ‘Up’, ‘Down’ and the likes. Hopefully they can also display more meaningful parameters, but not obvious. :-\
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Saw this and thought of you, or more precisely Janet
https://www.sgs-engineering.com/pgh6500-portable-petrol-generator-electric-start-6500w
No idea what the quality is like but we did buy an engine crane from them and that was well made.
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Ronski thank you so much. Disabilities are a pain, literally.
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Although sadly not within your budget, but my UPS will maintain the following hardware for up to around 6 hours on battery:
- LED Light Strip (plugged in via USB to the FireBrick FB2900 if there's a power cut)
- Firebrick FB2900 (acting as a router and SIP server for VoIP)
- DrayTek Vigor 2860Vac (acting as a bridged modem and for VoIP, BT Advanced Z is connected to it via RJ11)
- DrayTek Vigor 2862 (acting as a bridged modem)
- Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch 16 150W
- Ubiquiti Amplifi HD (for wifi)
- Synology NAS RS815+ (for monitoring my VDSL2 stats on both lines and taking automated action if errors become excessive or minimal, recording the back garden and some internal cameras downstairs, and for being a network drive I guess)
- BT Advanced Z Base Station (DECT phones)
I'd recommend checking out Power Inspired stuff though, maybe there's something that is within your budget which does what you need.
https://www.powerinspired.com/store/
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@Ixel the 1000B looks like a reasonable choice. It says 'pure sine wave output', which caught my eye. Which UPS model are you using?
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I'm using a VFI2000RT - http://www.powerinspired.com/store/vfi2000rt-2kva1800w-online-ups-system-p-1800.html
It's no longer sold as I bought quite a few years ago, it has served me well :).
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The IP2100-12 (https://www.powerinspired.com/store/ipower-12vdc-ups-2100ma-p-1904.html) looks quite interesting for someone who just wishes to maintain a 12V DC supply for a modem/router.
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What a good idea! I would need four of them or get someone to make up a forked cable or whatever the word is and guzzle. But then all the other kit would be left out.
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I don't know if any of this is of any help but...
If I remember correctly the ZyXEL VMG 1312-B10A pulls roughly 250 mA (idle) to 350 mA (load) @ 12v. That's in bridge mode, WiFi disabled, on a 80/20 VDSL connection. I measured it a while ago with one of my Fluke meters because I wanted to run my 1312-B10A off a 12v PoE splitter and wanted to make sure it had ample headroom. That is going off memory though, so probably best not to rely on it :D. I could probably pull out my spare 1312-B10A and test again if you wanted? I probably don't want to test it on my line again though, don't want to risk getting DLM'd.
If it's possible I'd say it's a good idea to have anything "natively" DC powered on a DC UPS, just strikes me as more efficient. Particularly in the case of the "modems" because they are relatively low draw devices you should be able to run them for quite a long time without a massive AC UPS that has lots of overhead. At least that way the modems get a long runtime and avoid any disconnects that might effect the line speed, even if the rest of the network devices don't have as long a run time on a different UPS.
High quality DC UPS's don't seem exactly easy to come by though. Personally I'd be kind of weary of that IP2100-12 because of the Li-ion battery, even if it is properly protected. IMHO lead acid or LiFePO4 are better candidates for UPS use. I'm not sure if powering all the "modems" in parallel from one of those units would be a good idea or not, would they benefit from galvanic isolation? I dunno.
I have one of these: http://www.mini-box.com/OpenUPS that I bought quite a long time ago before the pound tanked against the dollar. Really nice unit, quality components, NUT supports it, lots of options. I always intended to use it to power my modem and a few other bits (a Pi and DECT base station maybe) but haven't got round to it yet. Last time I looked at it I was umming and ahhing about whether to go for VRLA or LIFEPO4 batteries and what enclosure to stick it all in (converting a Mini-ITX PC case was my last idea I seem to recall). Unfortunately that seems a bit pricey now, I think Mini-Box do have other UPS's that might still be an option though?
Right now (as I kind of alluded to previously) I run my 1312-B10A off a 12v PoE splitter which in turn is powered by a PoE injector which is powered by the Eaton 5px UPS in my rack. I opted for this because my master socket is a long way away from my network/server rack and I had an extra Ethernet run handy, so it's just a convenient temporary solution to get the 1312-B10A on some form of UPS. As a better/permanent solution I'll hopefully get that OpenUPS up and running before too long though.