[Marshman]

Hello All,

I will go through them again to check but has there been an episode that mentions UPSs? My electric flickered ONCE, VERY briefly and ONLY the Mac Mini was affected. I have backups of everything but do NOT want to have a corrupted file system to have to contend with. Looking for thoughts and ideas. Obviously the more I can have on a UPS the better but the Mac is the most important box other than the firewall right now.

Any recommendations about UPS? Not looking for Apple blasting. I can do that all by myself. 

[Robbie Ferguson]

Hi Marshman,
Episode 201 and Episode 407. 201 while old, was almost entirely dedicated to UPS. Also, Episode 177 talked about surge suppression, which is also good info.
Good luck on your quest! Let us know if any specific questions arise.

[Marshman]

Thanks Robbie!

After I posted I did go through the episodes I have downloaded cuz I did remember seeing one. I re-watched Episode 201 about the Cyber Power UPS and thought it looked good. Obviously by now there is an updated version but after watching Episode 407, I figured I would try your idea of using the Kill-A-Watt unit which I have to see what the Mini and two other PCs that sit side by side with it draw altogether. All three are generally not on at the same time and as I stated only the Mini was affected by the short brown out. I'll see what the dealio is and take it from there.

Thanks again!!

[Robbie Ferguson]

My pleasure! Thanks for watching!

[PasqualeSti]

Now I have to go back and watch the Ep 201. Sounds very interesting.

[Robbie Ferguson]

Hope you enjoy it, PasqualeSti. Oldie but a goodie 

[ronjohntaylor]

Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) is an interesting subject.
I have a small home network that I protect with UPS.

A lot depends on your budget (as usual) but I cannot afford full time inverter models so use a switching UPS (4ms to switch).

I won't mention brands as there are plenty of reviews out there.

I live in and area where the Electricity GRID  is subject to lots of spikes, surges and the occasional brownout.
You need to understand the difference between spikes and surges.
Most modern UPS have Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR) with surge protection but are still susceptible to spikes.

Do you want a pure sine wave UPS?
 I do.

You also have to decide how much autonomy time you want to have.  I chose to have about 60 minutes as we have had outages for 30 - 40 minutes.

I also have a backup inverter generator for the times when we are without power for hours and sometimes days in the cyclone season.

I have attached my personal setup in the attachment.

I have built this up over time so as to spread the cost.

I would also refer you to  Network UPS Tools (NUT)
 
I have my UPS plugged into my NAS, via USB, which runs a NUT server.
My other RPi's run a NUT client.

Have a read of the NUT documentation and it's role.

I also use NEMS to keep an eye on the UPS using SNMP (see attachment) for Mains voltage going HIGH or LOW as well as battery run time.

Anyway I hope that give you some insight into Energy Control and management.


[url=http://networkupstools.org/][/url]

[Marshman]

Thank you for the input ronjohntaylor!

I am just looking for something to keep things going in the event of a spike or dropout. Thankfully we don't suffer from full on blackouts too often. Something massive enough to give me time to run around and gracefully power down is not what I am looking for. I have backups of my critical data so if a machine goes out and I need to rebuild it I'm set. It just surprised me (at the time but not really anymore) that the Mac turned off with the smallest of power flickers. Everything else stayed operational. 

I will look at the link you sent to see what it's about. Knowledge is power!

Thanks again!!

[LewisLeb]

I completely agree with Ronjohntaylor's suggestions. I have a UPS set up as well. The infrastructure where I am is so bad... Maybe that's an overkill for your needs, but it'll give you piece of mind.