N54l and Ups

[Flinty]

Hello,

I'm just taken delivery of a new N54l, to be used as a music and film storage box and also torrenting and Cp, Sb etc.

Firstly, how vital is a ups ?

And can anyone recommend a small, quiet one for use with the N54l and freenas, and router and network switch.

Cheers

 

[jgreco]

You should really have a UPS. The best plan is to have one that NUT can talk with so that your system can be shut down automatically if there's a power event. While ZFS is supposed to maintain on-disk consistency at all times, do you really want to risk your data?

The N54L is likely to be under the capacity of just about any UPS you can find, so just get something small.

 

[Flinty]

Thanks,

In the small bit of research I've done I've found conflicting reports on needing a pure sine wave ups because of the APCF on the n54l psu.

Also, thinking about it - plugging in the router and switch is superfluous as long as the n54l shuts down correctly.

Thanks again

 

[jgreco]

Pure sine wave units are nice, but generally more expensive. In general, NUT has better support for less-expensive and older model UPS's.

For small UPS's, I tend to like the APC SMT and SMX series, but they are explicitly not supported by NUT. The problem with small inexpensive UPS's is that they tend to burn up batteries in a year or two, and we had similar problems with older APC Smart-UPS units. The charging circuits in the newer gen APC Smart units seem to be somewhat better. You can't really win, sigh.

 

[Ames]

I know this is not a UPS thread, but where can we find a list of known/good UPS that works with freenas/FreeBSD? Searching the forum for "UPS" seems to be problematic as the search string may be too short.

 

[jgreco]

If you're looking for a list of UPS's that are compatible with FreeNAS for shutdown purposes, you should know that FreeNAS uses NUT, so good quality hardware off the NUT HCL would be a good start.

However, the fact of the matter is that UPS hardware varies widely in quality and featureset. For example, some of the APC Smart-UPS units had a tendency to slowly cook their batteries with a high float voltage, those products are well-supported by NUT. New Smart-UPS units appear to be much better in the battery maintenance department, but have a new design and a new protocol and are not supported by NUT. Everyone has stories of UPS failures and frustrations.

 

[Flinty]

Thanks for the tips.

I'm plumping for a cyberpower 600 value

 

[jgreco]

Just be sure to buy your UPS from someplace where it hasn't been rotting in inventory for a year or two. SLA batteries left untended after six months may begin to noticeably discharge, and a UPS that's been unplugged for a year or more very likely has sustained irreversible damage to its battery pack. I was at Fry's yesterday and was seeing UPS's that appeared to have been on the shelf since 2011. Eww. Not to pick on Fry's too much, since I've seen that at Office Depot, OfficeMax, etc. too.

I note that Amazon has a CyberPower CP600LCD in stock, and my guess would be that it's a safe bet it hasn't been rotting on a shelf for a year there.