Help with APC UPS - SMT vs SMC?

[KuniD]

Hi all, I'm looking to get a UPS for my server - over the last year I've had a couple of 5-10minute outages and its a real pain afterwards to get things back up and running!

 

I've read that unRAID has support for APC built in so focusing on those. Used the following calculator to estimate power needs:

 

https://outervision.com/b/lha000

Attached recommends 1000VA UPS based on 12 core Xeon, 64Gb ram, 8x HDD, 2x SSD.

 

I've been looking at the following three models. To be honest I'm not enough of a power/UPS expert to be able to tell them apart (especially the 2nd and 3rd). Main difference from the 1st to the latter two is sine wave support from what I understand.

 

APC Back-UPS Pro 1500  /  BR1500GI  /  £322

APC Smart-UPS C 1500 SmartConnect /  SMC1500IC  / £451

APC Smart-UPC 1500 SmartConnect  /  SMT1500C  / £538

 

Leaning towards the middle one but don't really understand whether its worth paying extra for the SMT!

 

Any advice appreciated.

 

[Tal]

What is your intention for the UPS to be used for? To ride out the outage on battery or to safely shutdown until mains power is restored? If you want to ride out the loss of mains power, the BR1500GI will supply 500W for about 10 minutes which might be cutting it close. The SMC1500IC will give you about 23 minutes. Sine wave support is there for active power factor corrected PSU's so if you don't have a PSU that supports that, it's a wasted feature.

[KuniD]

21 minutes ago, Tal said:

What is your intention for the UPS to be used for? To ride out the outage on battery or to safely shutdown until mains power is restored? If you want to ride out the loss of mains power, the BR1500GI will supply 500W for about 10 minutes which might be cutting it close. The SMC1500IC will give you about 23 minutes. Sine wave support is there for active power factor corrected PSU's so if you don't have a PSU that supports that, it's a wasted feature.

 

In an ideal world, I'd ride out the outage and only trigger a safe shutdown if the UPS continues to detect no power after a certain amount of time. Not sure if the following is realistic, but if a UPS can give 20 minutes power and a clean shut down takes 5 minutes, it'd be good to have a 5-10 minute delay before a shutdown signal is sent.

 

I believe my PSU does support active PFC, I use a Superflower Leadex Platinum 80 750w

http://www.super-flower.com.tw/product-data.php?productID=55&lang=en

[JonathanM]

31 minutes ago, KuniD said:

In an ideal world, I'd ride out the outage and only trigger a safe shutdown if the UPS continues to detect no power after a certain amount of time. Not sure if the following is realistic, but if a UPS can give 20 minutes power and a clean shut down takes 5 minutes, it'd be good to have a 5-10 minute delay before a shutdown signal is sent.

Which means you will be running on the ragged edge after the first couple events have taken their toll on your batteries.

 

SLA batteries don't like being drained fully, it wears them out prematurely. You really should be configuring your setup so the batteries still have 50% power left after a successful shutdown event.

 

Also, keep in mind that power outages seem to follow murphy's law, and your server will be busy in some task and may take longer than anticipated to complete a clean shutdown.

 

Backups in this price range are really meant only to ensure a successful shutdown or bridge the 2 to 5 minute gap until another power source like an onsite generator can be fired up. A battery backup unit meant to keep a machine running for a significant period of time generally has separate battery box pieces that you connect to extend the runtime, and are 2 to 3 times the price.

[KuniD]

19 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

Which means you will be running on the ragged edge after the first couple events have taken their toll on your batteries.

 

SLA batteries don't like being drained fully, it wears them out prematurely. You really should be configuring your setup so the batteries still have 50% power left after a successful shutdown event.

 

Also, keep in mind that power outages seem to follow murphy's law, and your server will be busy in some task and may take longer than anticipated to complete a clean shutdown.

 

Backups in this price range are really meant only to ensure a successful shutdown or bridge the 2 to 5 minute gap until another power source like an onsite generator can be fired up. A battery backup unit meant to keep a machine running for a significant period of time generally has separate battery box pieces that you connect to extend the runtime, and are 2 to 3 times the price.

 

Ok makes sense. In that case a clean shutdown is all I need, as secondary to that I obviously want the unit to last a while!

 

I'm still leaning towards the SMC1500IC, just need to understand whether the SMT1500IC provides any real world benefits that I would appreciate.

[Tal]

34 minutes ago, KuniD said:

 

Ok makes sense. In that case a clean shutdown is all I need, as secondary to that I obviously want the unit to last a while!

 

I'm still leaning towards the SMC1500IC, just need to understand whether the SMT1500IC provides any real world benefits that I would appreciate.

Personally, I don't think frills will be utilised. Unless there's a docker or plugin that I'm unaware of to give more flexibility to UPS users, The native capabilities are pretty basic, though I can personally say I've never had a problem with them. Check out the capture for this crappy old UPS I have laying around to give you an idea of the usage in unRaid.

[TUMS]

SMT will give you longer runtime.  It's more of an enterprise grade model than the SMC.

Also with the SMT you can add that network management card into the back of it.