UPS on switches?

[titch]

Just wondering.......

 

Our server cabs are obvouisly plugged into a UPS but just wondered if anyone is Gucci enough to have their and other random cabs/switches attached to a UPS and if so what have you used for some basic protection and minimum uptime.

[FN-GM]

I am 75% way through a rollout.

 

We are installing new switches and WIFI. Along with this we are installing UPS(es) into each cabinet. This is across 19 sites - some are a plane journey away.

 

Reasons:

1. Fairly common to have short term power issues. It has been helping increase our reliability of internet routers etc.

2. In a short term outage phones, data points and WIFI continue to operate. Laptops use their own battery. When there are bush fires power can be cut to an entire town so this short term power allows to make arrangements etc.

3. Protect against surges.

 

We use Eaton UPS. They are lighter than APC and smaller so much easier to install and maintain. We get around 2 hours battery on each cabinet.

 

 

When I worked in UK schools every cabinet had a UPS. Again it allowed short term power in an emergency or to ride out power outages. They did happen less and less so would reconsider if they were needed.

Edited November 9, 2020 by FN-GM

[3s-gtech]

Yup, we’re now covered sitewide. We have APC 750VA desktop type UPSs in or on each cab - they power our edge switches and will give anything between 20 and 70 minutes runtime depending on PoE load. They also allow my cross-site backups to continue during an outage. Server room is covered with redundancy of UPSs for core and servers.

 

This was WG funded but would have cost us a fair chunk of change. It should help protect our switches and WAPs though so money well spent.

[free780]

It depends on budget. Not just the initial outlay but the ongoing cost of batteries. You can't bulk buy them as they expire after a while.

[FN-GM]

It depends on budget. Not just the initial outlay but the ongoing cost of batteries. You can't bulk buy them as they expire after a while.

 

It can also cost to dispose of them!

[Jcx500]

We do , we have the desktop ups’s on the shelf in cabs around the school , although a few cabs have some nvr’s attached to the ups as well

[robyholmes]

We have UPSs on some cabinets which power our POE Paxton doors. Saves having a battery on each door and can be monitored easier.

[chris11256]

At my current school I just have one single server/comms room. So everything is hooked up to a UPS anyway.

 

Any my old school we did try where possible to have all switch cabinets hooked up to a small UPS. Mainly so wifi/phones still worked in the event of a power outage.

[Primus]

All switches are on a UPS here.

[titch]

Blimey. Didn't realise so many people had it set up already! Think I will look into it.

@FN-GM where do you work now?

[dhicks]

just wondered if anyone is Gucci enough to have their and other random cabs/switches attached to a UPS and if so what have you used for some basic protection and minimum uptime.

 

We added UPS backup at the same time we re-cabled the building for networking so we were able to run power cabling at the same time we ran network, so now we have a large UPS in the basement power inlet room that powers the main server cabinet, several edge switches, some workstations and the front office printer. Depending on usage, uptime should be somewhere up to 2 or 3 hours in case of a powercut - that should include PoE-powered devices such as phones, wireless, CCTV cameras and tannoy speakers.

 

The above saved us having to buy a separate UPS per edge cabinet and gives us the one main UPS to maintain, so in some ways saves money. Of course, that is a bigger UPS to purchase and maintain. We've also just had to do maintainance over half term and had an issue where we had to swap our about a third of the batteries, which was a bit of a cost, and of course that meant downtime while we turned the main UPS off (our servers were fine, just our core switches don't have dual power supplies).

[Katy]

Main server room's switch rack runs off the same UPS as the servers, the larger comms rooms have either a relatively small Tripp Lite unit covering the switches, or in the case of the Prep server room (which has zero servers now) it's still got 2 x APC SmartUPS. The smaller wall mounted cabs are unprotected as there's no room in them for anything.

[titch]

We added UPS backup at the same time we re-cabled the building for networking so we were able to run power cabling at the same time we ran network, so now we have a large UPS in the basement power inlet room that powers the main server cabinet, several edge switches, some workstations and the front office printer. Depending on usage, uptime should be somewhere up to 2 or 3 hours in case of a powercut - that should include PoE-powered devices such as phones, wireless, CCTV cameras and tannoy speakers.

 

The above saved us having to buy a separate UPS per edge cabinet and gives us the one main UPS to maintain, so in some ways saves money. Of course, that is a bigger UPS to purchase and maintain. We've also just had to do maintainance over half term and had an issue where we had to swap our about a third of the batteries, which was a bit of a cost, and of course that meant downtime while we turned the main UPS off (our servers were fine, just our core switches don't have dual power supplies).

Jealous!