uninterruptible power supply (UPS) for FRED?

[David Tenenholtz]

Dear Collective Wisdom,

I'm interested in learning about options for a power conditioning device to use with the FRED that we use at the RAND Corporate Archives. Are other FRED users out there using an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) or other type of power conditioner? It is a recommendation from Digital Intelligence to use a UPS, but the costs associated with one that can provide around 2,000 watts runs in the $4-7K range, I believe. Any advice on this matter is very appreciated! Feel free to contact me through the list or at dten...@rand.org. 

Kind regards,

David

-----

David Tenenholtz

Digital Archivist, RAND Corporation

1776 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138

(310) 393-0411 x6188

dten...@rand.org

[Simon Spero]

On Aug 3, 2017 2:24 PM, "David Tenenholtz" <dten...@rand.org> wrote:

Dear Collective Wisdom,

I'm interested in learning about options for a power conditioning device to use with the FRED that we use at the RAND Corporate Archives. Are other FRED users out there using an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) or other type of power conditioner? It is a recommendation from Digital Intelligence to use a UPS, but the costs associated with one that can provide around 2,000 watts runs in the $4-7K range, I believe. Any advice on this matter is very appreciated! Feel free to contact me through the list or at dten...@rand.org. 

That's a lot of money to spend on a workstation UPS; 2000 watts is also a lot of power to manage for an extended period of time. That's more a  price for a rack unit for use in a data center where you *really* don't trust the center power, and you are willing to give up several u's for extra  batteries.  If the FRED doesn't have two power supplies, you are probably not in this market segment. 

You should talk to your IT department and ask them to supply a unit. They will want to know how long you need to be able to operate without power, and what the peak and continuous demand is. UPS's are almost a  kind of consumable; the batteries need to be replaced regularly, especially if get an online (probably  double conversion)  model, where you are always running off battery ). You probably want this kind, as it gives cleaner output

I  presume the main concern is having badness happen whilst connected to elderly spinning rust. You can either spec out enough power to complete the longest running imaging operation (if you are concerned that a drive won't be able to spin up a second time), or, just require enough to  see you through a brief outage, then  perform an orderly shutdown if the power doesn't come back up in time. 

Simon // do they make deskside flywheels? 

[Tenenholtz, David]

Hi Simon,

 

Thanks so much for this information. Our FRED has just one power supply, but the 2000 watts was a recommendation from our IT dept as per the language in our FRED’s manual (i.e. 1200 watts should not be the max wattage, but around 80% of max for the UPS). In any case, we’ll keep exploring our options.

 

As far as mitigating risk goes, I think we should be able to anticipate any jobs that will run more than 8 hrs where we might risk losing some work (or potentially a drive failure). This is something that we’ll have a better sense of over the next year as we bring our digital preservation program into production.

 

Thanks again!

 

Kind regards,

David

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Digital Curation" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to digital-curati...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to digital-...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/digital-curation.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

__________________________________________________________________________

This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and
may contain information that is sensitive, proprietary, and/or privileged.
Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If
you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply
email and destroy all copies of the original message.

[Michael Kjörling]

On 3 Aug 2017 11:21 -0700, from dten...@rand.org (David Tenenholtz):

> I'm interested in learning about options for a power conditioning device to
> use with the FRED that we use at the RAND Corporate Archives. Are other
> FRED users out there using an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) or other
> type of power conditioner? It is a recommendation from Digital Intelligence
> to use a UPS, but the costs associated with one that can provide around
> 2,000 watts runs in the $4-7K range, I believe. Any advice on this matter
> is very appreciated! Feel free to contact me through the list or at
> dten...@rand.org.

Not specifically FRED, but I personally have good experience with
mid-range ("upper desktop" class, if I may abuse such a term slightly)
APC UPSes.

Looking at my typically preferred reseller, they offer a rack mount
_APC Smart-UPS 3000 LCD_ (P/N SMT3000RMI2U) 2700W/3000VA unit for SEK
14,164 (about USD 1,740) + VAT, or a _Smart-UPS 2200 Rack/Tower LCD_
(P/N SMX2200RMHV2U) 1980W/2200VA for SEK 14,520 (USD 1,780) + VAT.
(Not sure why the lower-spec'd unit would be more expensive.) There is
also a slightly cheaper floor/tower version of the '3000 (P/N
SMT3000I) with what appears to be the same general specifications as
its rack-mounted sibling. It's worth noting that all of these are
line-interactive designs, not online. However, if you can live with
"just" line-interactive, it definitely will be a lot cheaper.

Also, these price figures is without doing any shopping around; I
really just pulled up that reseller's web shop and filtered their list
of server UPSes for units capable of delivering at least 2200 VA, then
converted the prices based on today's USDSEK exchange rate. You might
very well be able to find them cheaper with a little bit of shopping
around.

You may want to look into those models and see if any of them might be
a good fit for your requirements.

--
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • mic...@kjorling.se
“People who think they know everything really annoy
those of us who know we don’t.” (Bjarne Stroustrup)

[Tenenholtz, David]

Dear Michael,

Thank you for this information! I’ll be passing along your note here regarding the two APC UPSes (rack mounted and floor/tower) to my IT dept and hopefully they can assess a bit further.

Kind regards,
David