Small-ish UPS recommendation?

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Tim1962

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There is a current thread for a Large UPS Recommendation. I think I need a small-ish one. My FreeNAS is on an HP Microserver and for reasons I don't fully recall I have three others running Smoothwall, media server and Windows with a mailserver on respectively with a router etc.

Because Freenas mostly backs up copies of everything else I it hasn't been mission critical but a safety net and I've never ventured into UPS land but increasingly feel I ought, no so much for the data but to prevent OS system corruption and hassle from that needing rebuilding etc.

Should I accept that risk of hassle do you think? If not I know I can google UPS but prefer a personally recommended sensible FreeNAS related guide, (that maybe supports FreeNAS and the other machines merely to get them to shut down gracefully.)

Hope I am not shown to be too stupid so far...
 

ethereal

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CyberPower CP685AVRG (390w UPS)
 

74m

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I have a APC Back-UPS ES 700 and I'm using the "APC ups 2 Back-UPS ES/CyberFort 350 USB (usbhid-ups)"-driver in the gui settings. I got e-mail notifications if there is a power loss and so on. When the UPS was new, I tested the automatic shutdown and all works great. Since then I never needed this feature, but I think it is still working... (if you change the usb port, you have also to change these port settings in the gui...) ;)
 

Tim1962

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Tim1962

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I have a APC Back-UPS ES 700 and I'm using the "APC ups 2 Back-UPS ES/CyberFort 350 USB (usbhid-ups)"-driver in the gui settings. I got e-mail notifications if there is a power loss and so on. When the UPS was new, I tested the automatic shutdown and all works great. Since then I never needed this feature, but I think it is still working... (if you change the usb port, you have also to change these port settings in the gui...) ;)

Thanks looks suitable price :-> In terms of education for me I've seen cryptic comments about sine wave UPS is this something I need to understand???
 

ethereal

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you don't need a sine wave they are a waste of your money
 

ethereal

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Bidule0hm

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Bidule0hm

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Yeah of course, but I was referring to good but not excellent PSUs :)
 

Bidule0hm

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I guess I didn't understood that well what "not so good" means then. Remember english isn't my native language :)
 

Tim1962

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Hehe!

Back to the original thread...

It seems that most/all UPS only provide one USB port for triggering a shutdown message. The expectation seems to be you then link one shutdown service on that machine to cascade to other PCs using Powerchute software, network shutdown software. (Is that right?)

If so, any recommendations for the cascade

I have
FreeNAS 9.10
Smoothwall firewall that can deal with UPS config settings
Windows10
Vortexbox (linux) but no inherent UPS software I can see.

Which is best to link to the USB lead and cascade from
 

jgreco

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It seems that most/all UPS only provide one USB port for triggering a shutdown message. The expectation seems to be you then link one shutdown service on that machine to cascade to other PCs using Powerchute software, network shutdown software. (Is that right?)

No, that's not right. They expect that your UPS is just powering one thing. For the larger UPS's, generally they expect a network management card and then PowerChute on each machine talking directly to the UPS. These hobbyist use models of "get one big cheap UPS and run lots of stuff off it" are essentially unsupported. They don't actively try to make it not-work, and they may even give lip service to saying they support software that makes it possible, but they don't really support it.
 

Tim1962

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Oh,
That makes me question the UPS with 4+ power outputs. I guess the answer is only one is supported to be critically protected...

More importantly my desire is to gracefully shut down my FreeNAS but ideally do the same for the other machines, I think you are saying "unsupported but possible". I'm not keen to spiral costs out of control and if its just the FreeNAS protected so be it but hoping for more...
 

pschatz100

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Any of the small APC or Cyberpower UPS's would be sufficient for FreeNAS. Just be certain to get one with a USB port. I have a Cyberpower 550VA series UPS that supports a FreeNAS with 4 disks. I have it set to run for two minutes on battery, then do a graceful shutdown. The two minute runtime prevents FreeNAS from shutting down due to very brief power interruptions.

As for running more than one machine from a UPS - yes it is possible to do this, but is a little tricky. Consumer UPS's and their supporting software are not set up for multiple machines. You would be better off buying small UPS's for the computers that need them.

To figure out how much of a UPS you need, look at the power consumption of your computer plus any other needed devices, then decide how long you want the battery to last. The battery needs to last long enough to run for a while on battery then do a graceful shutdown.
 

danb35

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The standard *nix utility for managing UPSs is nut, and it is included with FreeNAS and many Linux distributions. Nut can work as a master (on the computer that's directly connected to the UPS data port) or as a slave (one another computer on the same network). Thus, a valid configuration would be to run nut as a master on your FreeNAS box, and have other instances of nut on other machines connect to the nut instance on your FreeNAS box.

Another valid configuration, with a higher-end UPS, would be to plug the UPS's network port into your network, and have other computers directly monitor that. I'm less certain about the details of this configuration; I just bought a networkable UPS, but haven't yet tried to configure this.
 

bestboy

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I have the CyberPower CP1500EPFCLCD and it's working great with FreeNAS and NUT
 

jgreco

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Oh,
That makes me question the UPS with 4+ power outputs. I guess the answer is only one is supported to be critically protected...

I'm not sure what you mean by "critically protected" in this context. None of the smaller UPS's have that sort of protection. You have to move up to the larger units. I think our SMX1500's are the smallest thing we have that support multiple tiers of power protection. There are three groups of outlets, and you can configure load shedding to shut down one set of outlets maybe 5 minutes after power is lost, another when there's only 20 minutes runtime remaining, and then a third when the UPS is nearly drained. That's usually what we refer to as a critically protected load.

More importantly my desire is to gracefully shut down my FreeNAS but ideally do the same for the other machines, I think you are saying "unsupported but possible".

Correct. Within the context of this discussion, the low end UPS's are simply not designed for or intended to be powering more than one server. There's nothing they can do to PREVENT you from doing it, and from using software of your own to manage notification and shutdown. But if you call them up and say you're doing it and you need some support because you've got a question, you're not going to get it. They'd want you to buy a better class of UPS, and then probably buy the network management card, and also PowerChute or whatever. Then they'll happily help you make that work in a supported, networked environment.

I'm not keen to spiral costs out of control and if its just the FreeNAS protected so be it but hoping for more...

So set up NUT and be done with it.
 
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