UPS's and Power Distribuition

[glennda]

After My lucky near miss with a burnt out APC PDU in our server room and then the discussion with @john with regards to power setups - how do you have yours.

We currently have an APC SUA10000XLI which then distributes power through multiple PDU's each on there own 16Amp Circuit Breaker. - so incase of any problems they can trip. We have servers with 1 psu plugged into 1 pdu and the other into another for fault tollerence (although if ups goes = screwed - I'm requesting funding for a second!) and a couple of things which only have 1 psu).

How do you have yours setup?

The reason I ask is we had this V happen to one of our PDU's (can't of been overloaded as would have tripped.)

428311_10150588319690909_513670908_8976984_897888879_n.jpg

[robknowles]

Hi,

In each server cabinet I have 2 PDU's - one is connected to the mains (via a mains filter/surge protector) and the other PDU is connected to a UPS (3 Phase APC 15KVa). Each PDU is on it's own 16 Amp Circuit Breaker - 2 fuse boards - one directly to the mains and the other is connected to the UPS output. Each device that has two PSUs (which is basically everything other than a couple of devices) can then fail over if required.

This way if the mains goes off the devices run of the UPS and if the UPS were to break then everything would run of the mains. We can then turn of individual PDU's as required and if anything trips then other stuff should remain unaffected.

Like yourself I'm going to look at a getting a 2nd UPS, so per rack each PDU would be connected to an individual UPS for resilience.

Cheers,

Rob

[steve]

2x APC UPS (SURT8000RMXLI)
4x APC PDUs (AP8858) - 2 from each UPS, spread across 3 cabs to allow short power cable runs.

Similar setup as robknowles really - all dual PSU equipment split to have a connection to each UPS via a PDU

Pretty much looking to all new server room kit having dual PSU now where ever possible.

The PDUs can be connected to the network and monitored.

[glennda]

I think metered and monitored pdu's is going to be where i go now - I currently just have the basic ones AP7552 < one of which burnt out as per picture above without being overloaded...

[3s-gtech]

My PDUs are just connected straight to mains, with the UPSs feeding everything on the other PSU - so if one or the other fails things should run. Not all of my servers/switches have redundant PSUs - in that case they go the the UPS only. Currently have two APC Smart-UPS 3000VA (in the main server room, just a cheapie in my backup cupboard!).

[glennda]

*Bump* for other people!

[MrWu]

I have currently installed 2 x SMT3000RM12Us at the moment with APC6930 / 6931 Management Cards. Servers with redundant PSUs have one plugged into the UPS and one to the mains PDU (trying to get a filtered one on my to do list) I'm looking at a Modular Server that has 3 PSUs and 1 redundant (but requires 3 PSUs at one time to run properly) so if I do go down that route then I'd probably have another SMT3000RM12U (so one to each PSU, and the redundant one on Mains), so at any one time it could handle one UPS failing (and I have had APCs fail before....)

[glennda]

(and I have had APCs fail before....)

Yeah APC are in my bad books - not only did the above happen to one of my PDU's my 10000va UPS failed about 6/8 months ago. I'm currently speccing up 2 new UPS's and using @john's recommendation of Borri - Had the site visit on Wednesday and was nice to have somebody run through your ideas and supply ideas. I'm looking at 1 3kva Rotation unit for our backup room but also a B500 series 10KVA 3phase in 1 phase out UPS for our main server room so that if the APC unit does fail again we will be fully covered. The Idea being that we will eventuall remove all traces of APC from the server room!

Also from the rough pricing i received from them on the day they will be considerably less then APC hopefully.

[Soulfish]

We have APC 3000XL's in all our comms cabs to provide 3hrs min runtime to those switches, while our main server room has a Borri B1031 (http://www.stontronics.co.uk/Stontro...0c671f52d8.pdf) 30kva 3 phase to single phase UPS with batteries to provide 30 mins runtime at full load.

The comms cabs have pretty basic 3-pin PDUs, while in the main server room we use APC AP8653 PDUs.

[john]

I certainly found the Borri pricing much lower than APC when I got mine and I know that @Soulfish has them at his last place and his new one and he is always smiling so must be good

[Soulfish]

I forgot to say that everything in the server room is fed from the main Borri UPS. It feeds 12 32a commando sockets for our 6 racks, 2 airdale easicool aircon units and the sockets on the wall. We also have full maintenance bypass and have it connected in to the fire alarm system to power off on sprinkler set off.

[glennda]

I forgot to say that everything in the server room is fed from the main Borri UPS. It feeds 12 32a commando sockets for our 6 racks, 2 airdale easicool aircon units and the sockets on the wall. We also have full maintenance bypass and have it connected in to the fire alarm system to power off on sprinkler set off.

Sprinkler? Should a Gaseous suppression system not have been better?

[MrWu]

Yeah APC are in my bad books - not only did the above happen to one of my PDU's my 10000va UPS failed about 6/8 months ago. I'm currently speccing up 2 new UPS's and using @john's recommendation of Borri - Had the site visit on Wednesday and was nice to have somebody run through your ideas and supply ideas. I'm looking at 1 3kva Rotation unit for our backup room but also a B500 series 10KVA 3phase in 1 phase out UPS for our main server room so that if the APC unit does fail again we will be fully covered. The Idea being that we will eventuall remove all traces of APC from the server room!

Also from the rough pricing i received from them on the day they will be considerably less then APC hopefully.

That's not good ! Although I've only had one fail completely, died on a 14 day self test, luckily I've had all servers in my old company on dual PSUs...the other thing I have learnt isalthough it's good to have masses of run time on UPSs for your servers, if the school can't afford to install a Jenny to keep the Air Con going, your room will cook anyway...

[glennda]

That's not good ! Although I've only had one fail completely, died on a 14 day self test, luckily I've had all servers in my old company on dual PSUs...the other thing I have learnt is although it's good to have masses of run time oin UPSs for your servers, if the school can't afford to install a Jenny to keep the Air Con going, your room will cook anyway...

Yes - I'm looking at something to keep the air-con and lighting going - I happen to have a friend with a 20KVA set for 3k which i'm trying to persuade our bus man to buy! I am going to setup so that all the physical servers shut themselves down except our Virtual Host cluster of 3 hosts and the san so the heat shouldn't be that bad. But the genny is what i want to do.

Although it will have to be modified to auto-start and possibly to run on Gas therefore meaning no need to fill with diesel! With the more powerful Borri Devices like @Soulfish you can UPS the Air con

[john]

Modern AC units don't use much electric at all, you would be surprised how small the dint it will make to run it on your UPS at times, its when you use the AC for heating that it kills the juice cooling is much less evil.

As for @Soulfish and his water feature, yes I've had that chat with him its been rather comedy but so have many things.