Which UPS?

Hi,

I need to buy a new UPS for my small home server, up to 100 EUR (ca. 100 USD).
Something supported in FreeBSD arm64, so that a shutdown is triggered when there's power loss for longer than one minute or so.
Which UPSs to you recommend?
 
I can't really comment on the 100.- EUR/USD requirement but: I made very good experiences with UPS' from APC (formerly Schneider Electric).
I use their "Backup-UPS Pro 900" on workstations (both privately and in our office). I've also one of those powering my small home server. In total, I have like 6 of them. The first one I got about 10 years ago. They have yet to disappoint in any meaningful way.
You might do with a smaller model. I like to go overboard: My setups run +30min including the workstation, tripple monitors, network switch and so from the battery.
At our office we use some APC UPS SRT3000RMXLI-NC 3000 VA / 2700 W for our rack-mount servers (also a bit overkill for what we have running).

There is sysutils/apcupsd to interface them. Haven't used it on arm64 but it certainly works well on amd64. According to freshports.org, there are arm64 ports available.
 
Altough there will be a lot of APC recommendations, in my experience they eat through batteries like crazy and are insanely overpriced, especially considering the quality of the converters they use, especially in their smaller/cheaper units.

We needed to replace the batteries in our APC UPSes at least every ~2 years - and those batteries are indeed completely dead and gone after that time! pufeed up, with melted and smored connectors and all - it's absolutely crazy what we pulled out of the APCs even without many (or any) actual power outages/transfers to battery during that time.
We therefore have been replacing the APCs with cyberpower for a while now, and they are MUCH kinder to the batteries (as well as much more economical in initial pricing). I've replaced the batteries of the main UPS in our head office rack last year after a little over 3 years (despite them still being reported as healthy) and most of them are still running in smaller UPSes for clients or e.g. branch network cabinets. This won't be possible with any battery I've pulled from one of our APCs over the last ~10 years.


The price tag of ~100EUR is VERY low (too low) for a UPS for a server - you should really consider setting that bar a bit higher to get someting that's really usable to bridge a few minutes (depending on what kind of outages you are facing) and/or depending on what load you want to put on it. Remember that a shutdown can easily double the normal load of a server (e.g. when shutting down a few VMs), so you should always add plenty of headroom to the average power draw of the system when sizing a UPS, or it will just cut power due to an overload condition (i.e. you've only thrown out money for delaying the outage a few seconds)

In the low-budget range I'd go with something like Blue-/Powerwalker which has relatively decent hardware, considering the price, and they are using standard, off-the-shelf batteries, which are broadly and cheaply available. Of course this only holds true for the "block" type UPSes, not those tiny power strips which are completely useless for anything but a radio clock anyways...

I myself am using a small(ish) Powerwalker VI 1500 RT HID at home for my rack, which I recently upgraded with an external battery pack. I'm living at a rather old farmhouse and we had overhead power lines to the village until ~2 years ago, so power outages/surges during thunderstorms were frequent and due to the ageing cabling and voltages dropping below 210V rather frequently, I'm usually facing at least ~1-2 transfers to boost-mode a week; so the UPS is really working here and the batteries are barely ageing.
If you are fine with some brick on the floor, you can also shed off some bucks, as rackmount usually comes with a premium price, but 100EUR still is quite tough. You also won't get anything with a network interface in this price range, so have a look at sysutils/nut to shutdown the system(s) you connect to that UPS. It can read out serial/usb as well as informing other hosts via network about the status of the power supply/UPS status.
 
I just built a PicoUPS-100 rig for my Hummingboard2. I wanted Arm to Go. So I used this.
Battery=12V-3.4AH SLA.
I could have went to the max battery 12V-7ah but I am trying to keep my case compact.

For system monitoring you would need to look at the USB version.
 
I use alot of 12V gear from modem to embedded boxes. So I focus on DC power.
These cheap used Belkins are littering ebay. Dumb boxes with no feedback.
I guess they come with Fiber Internet service in some areas..
Been meaning to pick up a few to test.
 
replacing the APCs with cyberpower
I have some of those cheap Cyberpower UPS. One with fancy display. One old school APC clone.
Both have had many batteries. 12v-7ah with good life.

I think finding a quality battery is paramount. Enersys is what I use. They are hard to find.
 
I have a Cyber Power 900W CP1500EPFCLCD. I'm not recommending it, because it's outside your price guide, and at 900W powers a small office (with capacity to spare). I'm also struggling to get it to behave as I want with the vendor's Linux-centric proprietary software (on Linux) -- but have yet to test it with third party control software like sysutils/nut.

However, I'll pose some questions that are worth considering:
  • Do you want a pure sine wave UPS for your electronics?
  • How many watts do you need to start up your device(s) (maximum power)?
  • How long do you want to run after a powerfail (battery size)?
  • Is your chosen UPS supported by any of the common UPS tools such as sysutils/apcupsd or sysutils/nut?
Very short outages are common where I live. My ideal UPS would issue a "shutdown assertion" 5 minutes into an enduring power fail, or when the battery dropped to below 50% capacity. I would tailor these figures so that the "5 minutes" is NOT going to run the battery down below 50%.

Beware the algorithms you choose, because an empty battery may need to be charged for some time before it's reached the capacity required to
operate without the UPS software wanting to go into "shutdown mode" because of a "battery low" condition. i.e. if the battery is flat, your reboot may have to be delayed by manual intervention while the battery charges up above the nominal 50% mentioned above.

Edit in June 2023: The last paragraph is misleading. I now have an APC Back-UPS Pro 1200S and it behaves splendidly with apcupsd(8). It can be programmed to shutdown on low battery, and to re-charge that battery after wall power returns and before it powers up the load. I could never get my Cyber Power CP1500EPFCLCD UPS to do this (not with the vendor's custom software nor with sysutils/nut) because it appears to have firmware bugs.
 
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I have found the ups daemons hard to setup and just generally difficult.
This goes all the way back to PowerChute on Windows and its quirky licenses.
I had trouble with multiple apcupsd.conf files.
apcupsd50.conf, apcupsd51.conf apcupsd52.conf
I could get one instance working. Multiple seemed to fail.
It can get complex. I have like 6 APC +.
 
I still have mostly beige APC gear which is old. I think that the build quality is superb.
The cheezy APC detachable faceplates can get brittle teeth so be careful of those.

What APC brings to the table is SmartSlot. Do you want network monitoring or are serial communications OK.
Serial Comms then Cyberpower OK.

If you want networking PLUS Environmental than APC is worth it. Rope sensors, Beacons, Dry Contacts.
Check. AP9617 basic and AP9631 for sensors.
 
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The included PowerPanel Management Software automatically saves and closes open files and then shuts down the computer system in an intelligent and orderly manner
I am guessing this is the CyberPower software you refer to?
I'm also struggling to get it to behave as I want with the vendor's Linux-centric proprietary software (on Linux)
This is mine. CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD. Very similar to yours.
I did not know they had software.
 
I am guessing this is the CyberPower software you refer to?
Yes, google: "cyberpower linux software download".
I get power failures often, and want my entire home office shut down gracefully when it happens.
I would also like to be able to auto-boot when the power comes back.
This is mine. CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD. Very similar to yours.
I did not know they had software.
Command and control is from a Linux host to the UPS via a USB cable.
Their proprietary daemon runs on the Linux host.
The software they provide has a sensible set of options and is easy to configure.
There's a separate shell script for most "actions", and you can modify them, as required.
I have never been able to get it to work properly.

However, I am entirely optimistic that sysutils/nut will do the job I need, but just have to find the time to do the research and the work.
 
I have a bunch of APC SmartUPS 1400s and 1500s (beige and black) and the batteries last 4+ years in very hostile conditions (summer temperatures in the 40-45C range). I only use Panasonic batteries which are nearly twice the price of the cheaper alternatives. Quality batteries are key.

I use apcupsd on a 2011 Mac mini (running FreeBSD 12-STABLE) to control four of them connected via serial (UPS) to USB (Mac mini) via a Lindy serial-USB converted (using FTDI chips). Never had an issue.
 
Considering all that have been said and my research thereafter, it seems to me that I need to stretch my budget some 60% more to buy a PowerWalker VI 1000 CSW ups.
It's a line interactive ups and pure sine wave output. Batteries are also replaceable.

Thank you all for your inputs.
 
I take it you're in Europe? Where are you going to purchase the UPS if you don't mind telling? I can't find many retailers online.
 
UPS Ever Eco 500 LCD, or Eco Ever 800LCD. I have both for a ridiculous money, one to the computer the other one to the router.
 
What do you mean?
Serial Port only are dumb to me with Network UPS in use. I use the dumb ones as a second layer mostly.
For instance I have a SU1500 networked in my utility room. Behind it I have a dumb UPS for a Cisco router and cable modem in addition to embedded shelf units. The embedded units get their shutdown orders via apcupsd on network. While Cisco/Modem runs until battery dead in second layer.

I like the USB Charging jacks on these. Those are nice for running Arm boards.
 
I take it you're in Europe? Where are you going to purchase the UPS if you don't mind telling? I can't find many retailers online.
You can find them in this store.
What I did to find them was to search for the brand in a comparison site of my country and got some stores that sell the devices.

It's said by BlueWalker that they sell almost to all countries in Europe.
 
I need to buy a new UPS for my small home server, up to 100 EUR (ca. 100 USD).
I need to stretch my budget some 60% more to buy a PowerWalker VI 1000 CSW ups.
1000 Watts is a LOT of power for a "small home server"...

My UPS pulls less than 300 Watts continuous for:
  • a MythTV server with two spinning disks;
  • a KVM server with two spinning disks and two SSDs;
  • a ZFS server with 8 resident spinning disks, two SSDs, and three hot-swap 3.5" bays (usually empty);
  • a raspberry pi;
  • three switches, including one with Wi-Fi;
  • an itinerant notebook;
  • two HD Homerun TV tuners;
  • a large monitor...
I don't use any power greedy video or GPU devices.
 
I have a bunch of APC SmartUPS 1400s and 1500s (beige and black)
I am up there with trev.
2 SU1500RM in tandem mounted in rack feeding tandem PDU with 12V-2S deep cycle external batteries(was quad).
1 SU1500 In Utility Room
1 SU1000RM for Security DVR ect.
1 SU1400RM for Media/TV
New addition SMT1500. Black one and takes newer Smart Slot cards.

Dummies:
APC SU700 No Smart Slot
Two Cyber Power
 
Despite all that gear I had no protection on my POE cameras and lost some upstream router ports due to lightning rendering the gear useless.

So you need to consider 'outside' factors as well as inside.
 
Cheap small APC here, model is called "ES550". About 15 years old or so, I think. Goes through a new battery every 2 years; I try to get batteries that are decent (not the cheapest Chinese-made), but also not super-expensive (not Panasonic or Yuasa brand). Connects via UPS to the FreeBSD server, using the apcupsd package, absolutely no problem.
 
2 years is probably a good schedule for reliability.

I was having some weird power fluctuations in the house and low and behold.
Red light on SU1000. No battery at all.
Next day it was feeding-back into house circuit so bad I had to take it offline.

I knew it was needing batteries and I thought I could stretch it longer....
Pair of 12V12AH should be the last of my rotation.
Now I have Dec 2020 as oldest.

Do yourself a favor and label the date of battery on case and type if known.
 
Just like data backups you need to test your UPS.
Sure the UPS monitor tells you 1.5 hours....
Just like most battery meters it is pretty worthless.

Just yank the cord and give it 10 minutes. That is the ultimate test.
You just need to withstand that annoying beeping.
 
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