UPS recommendations?

General Discussion
21

…which would also account for many of them not including the bezel. But I don’t think it accounts for the battery enclosure all that well. Sure, I’m running a homemade battery bank (four 12V LiFePO4 batteries in series, wired to a blue Anderson SB 50 connector) with the UPS in my rack, but I don’t expect many people are doing that–they’d be running the UPS with a battery pack in place.

I’m not saying the enclosure couldn’t have been damaged in shipping (it definitely could have), but they’d have to have fixed it to be able to use the UPS. Unless the seller is not the former user and that damage happened in between.

In any event, replacement complete battery packs are available, as are replacement batteries to install in your own pack–the cost delta seems to be about $100. The former is of course less work–particularly since it seems that this pack had the batteries secured in place using double-sided foam tape–but costs more. As is often the trade-off.

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22

Didn’t read all the way through the thread, but I have a CyberPower CP1500AVRLCDa that provides power for TrueNAS, switch, and router (pfSense).

I don’t know what capabilities OPNSense has, but the UPS is connected via USB to my pfSense router and I configured NUT on pfSense to provide UPS Monitoring abilities to TrueNAS. Ocassionally TrueNAS will lose connectivity to the UPS monitoring, but we are talking for like a few minutes once every couple weeks.

pfSense reports that I could run for ~28min before the battery was depleted. I think I configured TrueNAS to wait for the power to be out for 5min before TrueNAS will shut itself down. I think I allow the router to run a bit longer.

It has been a while since I simulated a power loss, but last time I did, everything seemed to work as expected.

This may be a reasonable option to try before investing in a UPS w/ network capabilities.

23

Something I would consider is a UPS that has active cooling, there are many units out there that just use a block of solid metal inside for it’s cooling and cannot be upgraded in any easy way (especially battery mods).

If you really care about reliability make sure you get an online ups but keep in mind the efficiency losses, though these can also be hooked up to a standby generator, modified sine wave cannot unless the generator has an inverter output otherwise things get very messy.

Don’t overlook the used market either, you can get a much much better deal on something used and put the money into bigger battery banks vs buying new equipment and using whatever recommended battery is provided, though it depends on how proficient you are with electronics and electrical.

Used gear I don’t mind APC myself, I have a 2007 SmartUPS 1500VA with a USB cable on my TrueNAS scale at the moment, nothing fancy or special, bought used for very cheap 2 cheap lead acid batteries a data cable and it can handle my beefy server for 10-20min and I automated the shutdown procedure including all VMs whenever battery is low, the reason I got it is because it has active cooling that means if I later on want to upgrade the batteries to say 400Ah it’s a matter of simply connecting them, other more modern units will not be able to fully discharge even if you have the power.

If you just want a modern rack unit I would look into LiFePo4 though a lot of these you might also have to mod yourself with aftermarket batteries and keep in mind the battery BMS has to be able to handle being in series, some will also have a limit of how many can be in series, also some may not appreciate the fully charged voltage and the dropoff voltage, some testing will be needed.

Li-Ion UPSes are often lower output capacity, at least I haven’t seen a decent unit available in the area here and they seem to cost quite a lot more, if you want commercial stuff then I guess your budget won’t be an issue.

Also If you live in the freedom side of the world consider a NEMA 6 or 14 circuit for 208-240V so you don’t have to deal with power upgrades in the future all your gear will happily work on 240V and won’t have to buy another UPS later on when you add more gear there and it also allows you to run beefier equipment and at maximum efficiency, just don’t buy 120V equipment, some can also do 3ph IN to 1ph out which is quite handy for balancing loads (may be useful to you depending on your circuits there and how much power you want).

A lot of used enterprise gear will have network modules (or the slot for them) they may need new batteries, a proper cleaning but check the usual places and you’ll be surprised what you can get.

24

I don’t particularly want a rack unit, but I think that’s the direction I’m going to be heading.

It’s very frustrating that there’s nothing available with LiFePO4 batteries that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. I’ve put them on my main UPS (“mod” really overstates it; that unit has a connector for external battery packs, so I wired four 12V LiFePO4 batteries in series and put a blue SB50 connector on them–ugly as sin, but it works), but don’t really want to get into that kind of situation here.

I think I’m leaning toward picking up a used copy of the APC unit Dominik mentions, along with a new set of batteries. That’ll cost a bit more than the CyberPower unit @dak180 mentioned, but (1) the network card is much cheaper, or even included if I’m lucky; (2) I already know how to put a Let’s Encrypt cert on it; and (3) it has roughly double the battery capacity, and thus roughly double the runtime on battery.

25

IPMI stuff should be within an internal network completely isolated from the internet local ipv4/ipv6 addresses and a separate network can even be a good reason to use old gear even 100mbps is plenty for that, can always VPN into that network to change or check anything, I wouldn’t trust a LE cert who knows what webserver these units are running and how old it is.

I mean that unit is 120V so you’ll be limited to 120V output wattages and efficiency but if that’s what you want, rackmount stuff I strongly recommend you get 208-240V so you don’t have to dispose of incompatible hardware later on if you ever plan on upgrading, you can also check ebay etc see what’s available there otherwise you can find cheaper units if you’re going to go the 120V direction non rackmount etc

I would also consider the amount of cycles you’re going to be putting on the UPS, LiFePo4 is great but there is genuinely no need to have that if it’s gonna stay fully charged and only occasionally discharge, unless you’re going to be needing that at least 1/week/mixing with solar panels or wind or something more complex I would still consider some large bank/set of AGMs at the end of the day you will get more power for your money at your disposal with lead acid it’s just a matter of cycles and space (if it matters) and it’s hassle-free to maintain.

If it’s not likely to be discharged at all or less than 5-10 times/year I would even consider car batteries, that’s a step down from AGMs but quite cheap and will get the job done roughly the same, though I personally prefer to have AGMs for longevity and the float voltage issues that cause electrolyte to evaporate faster with some units that you can’t control the DC voltage.

26

I have no idea what you think these two things have to do with each other[1]. But the firmware on the AP9630 card is actively maintained, with a firmware update within the past year or so.

I’m taking a few devices to a remote location. I’m not taking a rack, I’m renting an apartment, so I can’t do any electrical wiring.

For home, where I do have a rack, I’m also running 120V. The Smart-UPS 3000 XLM I have there takes a 30-amp input circuit, which is roughly 3x what I need for the loads it sees. It is fed by a solar system, and that has a 120V output, so switching the server rack to 240V would be a major undertaking, and 3-phase just isn’t an option.

  1. It’s true, of course, that communications over the wire between the UPS and whatever client PC I’m using won’t be any more or less encrypted or secure depending on whether I’m using a trusted cert from LE or a self-signed cert generated on the UPS itself. And using a trusted cert doesn’t magically make it secure such that I can, e.g., safely put it on the public Internet (which I wasn’t planning on doing in any event). But it does avoid browser warnings, and thus reduce the temptation to click through the “this site may be dangerous” warnings. And I prefer HTTPS even on my LAN when it’s feasible, which is most of the time. ↩︎

27

I am a crazy person, and even I opted to wire my home network closet with 120v. I’ve got two dedicated 20-amp circuits protected by GFCI/AFCI (I get random nuisance trips on one of them when its hot in there, but it makes me sleep better at night) outlets going to two seperate Eaton UPSs for proper A-B power.
5PX2200RTUS | Eaton 5PX UPS | Eaton

These power my NAS’s

The 2200-grade UPSs have 4 batteries, compared to the 2 that are in the rackmount type 1500VA (APC) one I have for my switches, and the 1500VA (Cyberpower) ones I have for my desktop and my living room entertainment system. They all use the same sized 12v SLA batteries IIRC, and a 2200VA is as large as you can buy for a 20 Amp circuit.

A 1500VA line interactive you find on sale (or used with new batteries) from a reputable brand will be more than adequate for a couple embedded systems, and allow you to use a desktop formfactor if thats what you want. These days, the big 3 APC/Eaton/Tripplite (I believe) spit out anything less than 1500VA with cost-down components that are crap, and Cyberpower is usually crap comparitively but is fine at these power levels.

28

Just to close the loop, I ordered a used one of these from eBay (edit: not exactly; I ordered a RM2U, not a RM2UC), along with a 9631 network card–the UPS should be here tomorrow; the network card on Tuesday. I’ll need to get fresh batteries for it. But I know that network card works with Nut’s ups-snmp driver, and APC/Schneider has kept its firmware reasonably up-to-date. I may try feeding it with LiFePO4 at some point in the future, but it should do fine as is for the next year.

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Curious. Was the final price on eBay low enough to justify buying new batteries and getting a used unit, instead of a brand new one?

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I thought so. The unit new is US$700+. $150 shipped from eBay, $25 for the 9631 card, another $100 or so for the batteries. It’s not in cosmetically-great shape, but for my application that isn’t all that relevant.

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31

UPS arrived yesterday, four days late–UPS thought the best way to get it from Columbia, SC, to Savannah, GA, after it had already arrived in Savannah, was to take it on a trip through PA and WV before coming back here.

The 9631 arrived on Tuesday, and installing it was just a matter of two screws. But it’s got some weird firmware issue going on; I’d randomly get this on its web interface:
image

Looks like a botched or partial firmware update (because for some reason that takes uploading three files in a specific sequence on this thing). Updating the firmware to the latest through APC’s firmware update utility seems to have resolved this. Now to order the batteries.

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32

I suppose that someone at UPS thought it fit to match the perversity of whoever had the idea to use UPS to ship a UPS…

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33

I’ve done the same. I got a UPS without battery delivered for $12 total on Mercari. Got battery local, was cheaper than the same model with battery used or new, and for used, I knew the battery was new.

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34

Just as a word of warning, these UPSs are pretty heavy, even without the batteries included, no doubt largely due to that hefty transformer in the lower right:

A0E1A0CE-B180-4C70-AC19-73937A6B24D3_1_102_a
A0E1A0CE-B180-4C70-AC19-73937A6B24D3_1_102_a1784×1760 399 KB

Unfortunately, lots of eBay sellers (even the ones who’d appear to have a regular business selling such things) don’t know how to package heavy things for shipment, resulting in shipping damage–but I expect I’ll be able to straighten out the sheet metal in the front panel area.

But sizeable heat sinks on those transistors, and the fan should provide plenty of air flow over them. Unlike my 3 kVA unit, this one doesn’t have provisions for an external battery pack, but I expect it could run well, and for quite some time, with one.

Edit: Of course, nothing’s as easy as you expect. The power switch wasn’t working, but I’d figured that was a result of the sheet metal damage on the front of the unit pushing things out of alignment. I could still power it on using the network card, so I figured it wasn’t a big deal. But when I removed the control panel in order to work on straightening out the sheet metal, I realized that the internal tactile switch was actually destroyed. Bother. A few minutes to desolder the old one, and Amazon should have an assortment of new ones to me tomorrow. Should I have tried to return it to the seller? Probably. But time before I leave is getting very short at this point.

Am I still ahead of the game compared to buying this or a comparable unit new? Definitely. Compared to buying one “refurbished”, with new batteries and presumably better packed? Still yes, but a closer call (though that one is in much better cosmetic condition). But I’m paying at least some of the difference in my labor.

Edit 2: Front panel’s mostly straightened, Amazon did indeed get the switches to me today, and soldering in one results in everything else working. Woohoo! Batteries should be here Tuesday. And now I have about 200 spare switches.

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35

Just curious @dan
These “CSB” brand ones I’ve found as OEM in 1500VA (and 2200VA, 3000VA) APC and Eatons in the past
P/N: HR1234W-F2
CSB Battery HR1234W: 12v 9 AH (34 Watt) Deep Cycle Sealed Lead Acid Battery "(batterystuff.com)

I’ve seen a few mentions about LiFePO4 in this thread, and I’ve seen hobbyist custom integrations with 18650 Lithium (not LiFePO4) and 26650 LiFePO4 with various BMSs in the past.

Recently I’ve seen a few of these on Ebay which are drop-in replacements that have built-in BMS’s
e.g.:
Banshee 12V 10AH Lithium LiFePO4 Replacement 3000+ Cycle Battery for HR-1234W-F2 | eBay

image
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Mighty Max 12V 10AH Lithium Replacement Battery for HR-1234W-F2 | eBay
This “gotcha” may matter depending on the pack in the UPS

image
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Does anyone here have any positive or negative experiences with these things? I’m overdue on replacing some of my batteries, so I figured I’d ask.

36

As a side note I’m not sure I would want a Lithium battery inside my house/office/homelab. Massive fire hazard.

37

Do you have a laptop?

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You have lots of them, I expect–a laptop, a cell phone, and various other pieces of tech. Anything rechargeable in the last several years probably has a Lithium battery in it. But there are several different Lithium chemistries, some more dangerous than others. LiFePO4 is fire-safe, and also (in groups of four) a very close substitute for lead-acid 12V batteries.

I don’t have experience with these particular batteries. I used four of these in series to repower my 3 kVA UPS:

Of course, they don’t fit in the enclosure, so they’re sitting outside and plugged in.

But there are really two big questions with any self-contained battery like you link:

  • What’s the maximum voltage allowed by the on-board BMS (which limits how many can be placed in series)?
  • What’s the maximum current allowed by the on-board BMS?

The UPS I just bought has a rated capacity of 1440 VA. Assuming 100% conversion efficiency from at 24V-nominal battery pack, it’s going to draw 60A out of that battery pack. Since that pack has 4 12V, 9Ah SLA batteries in a 2S2P configuration, that means each battery needs to provide 30A.

You can, of course, skimp on this if you “know”[1] that you’ll never use the max capacity of your UPS. But it’s something to be aware of.

  1. which you never really do, of course ↩︎

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39

Not that big :slightly_smiling_face:

40

UPS is really on a roll. After emailing me at 10:00 this morning that my batteries were on the truck for delivery today, they’re now saying they never left the terminal. We’ll see if they get them out tomorrow, or if they take a scenic tour of Montana first.

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