UPS runtime - what's your set up?

[iSteve]

Hello,

 

We have a few APC UPSs here at the school, powering all servers, all with network shut down etc However currently these are set to shut down servers after about 3 minutes on battery due to load vs runtime with a buffer for shut down delays etc.

 

We've just allowed remote access to our students meaning they can log in from home....which has led me to think that just because the school has a power cut, those students 10 or 20 miles away won't so it would be nice if they could work uninterrupted. Looking at options, I could get an additional battery for my UPS to increase (for example) full load run time from 8 mins to 40 minutes, getting over the problem of short local power cuts.

 

What do you do at your school? Do you just have a standard UPS which shuts stuff done, and tough luck to remote users? Or, do you have a power system which will run for hours?

 

Thanks for any replies!

[pete]

Does your server room need aircon/forced air to keep within acceptable operating temperatures? That's our limiting factor.

[Duke]

If I shut down a few non-essential servers then I can get about 15-20 minutes off the main UPS and roughly the same off the SAN UPS. Nowhere near as long as I'd like if I don't shut some stuff down, and the big aircon isn't UPS'd so it gets hot quick in summer. Very much not ideal, although virtualising will help us hugely in this area (less physical servers, DR/failover site). I'd want at least 10 minutes to get everything shut down so it sounds like you could do with an upgrade (don't forget about things like redundant UPS's and putting dual power supplies on servers onto different UPS's), but my biggest concern would be time for clean server shutdowns and handling short outages with no downtime rather than keeping remote users happy.

 

Power outages are an 'oh s**t' situation that shouldn't ever be my department's fault or responsibility, so if there is downtime caused by them I wouldn't expect people to blame me (unless someone had offered me the budget for a huge UPs and generator and I'd turned it down!).

 

Chris

[iSteve]

That's a very good point and one that escaped my mind We have air con, but the particular conditioner we have does not automatically come back on after a power cut, so that would be a bit of a problem!