What size UPS do I need

oasismin

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Things I need the UPS to accomplish

#1 condition the power. in TN we have many brown outages and power spikes
#2 be able to shut down the NAS
#3 give our editors enough time to save and shut down their projects before the NAS shuts down (I was thinking 15 mins max.)
#4 Be as cheap as possible.

in transit now is a Supermicro SuperStorage SSG-6048R-E1CR60N with dual 8 core xeons.

between drives at the moment but leaning towards Seagate Exos 7E8.

this UPS will have to power a 60 drive supermicro machine so Im afraid how expensive it will be.

If anyone has any suggestions or ideas please let me know.
 
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This is a math problem and you haven't included all the variables, the most important of which is: how many amps of power is this thing pulling?

Once you know that, visit the APC web site and put the maximum expected power draw into their calculator. They'll give you a list of UPS choices along with expected runtime. They'll even tell you what it would take to add runtime. Do the same thing on the Tripp Lite web site. Once you have a couple choices, check a few web sites (Amazon, Newegg, CDW, eBay, etc.) for prices.

Cheers,
Matt
 

Chris Moore

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#4 Be as cheap as possible.
That is probably not going to work.
in transit now is a Supermicro SuperStorage SSG-6048R-E1CR60N with dual 8 core xeons.
This is the wrong model, it is the one with hardware RAID. If you plan to use it with FreeNAS, you need to cancel that order and get a different model instead.
This is the model I have, and what you should have gotten: 6048R-E1CR60L
Notice how it ends in L instead of N. Super minor difference but it is a bid deal. Here is the link to the product page.
https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/6048/SSG-6048R-E1CR60L.cfm

As for the UPS, my system has two power supplies and under load, each of them draws about 350 watts. When I had it on the bench for testing before mounting it in the rack, I had each power supply connected to a separate APC SmartUPS C1500 and that worked fine for about a month.

PS. The unit we bought has 60 of the 10TB Seagate Exos drives. They are working nicely for almost three months although one drive did get one bad sector during brun-in testing.
 

Chris Moore

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It doesn't happen often, but I have had a situation where a UPS failed in such a way that it turned itself off, disconnecting power to all connected devices. It was due to a battery internal short, so a new battery pack had it back in operation, but you never want to have just one UPS on a system like this where there are two power inlets. Spend the little extra and have two UPS units.
 

Chris Moore

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Something else I just thought about. That system would run from one power supply if the power were interrupted to the other supply, but it causes the load on that supply to spike up to over 700 watts, so any UPS you get needs to be able to handle that plus some extra to give you the run time you need. If you get a minimally sized (cheap) UPS, it will not have the run time if it is needed. Please take the exelent advice given by @MatthewSteinhoff and go to the UPS vendor websites and use their calculators. In our production environment, we have 6K Symmetra UPS in the bottom of the racks. Don't low-ball the power or you will be paying for it later.
 

Constantin

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I’d also keep in mind that a lot of equipment will to have a ups in this scenario - the server, network equipment, attached workstations, etc. if editors are expected to have 15 minutes to shut down their work and be able to save it to the NAS.

I’d test the system at least once in its entirety by pulling the main breaker to the building. Sometimes, little details only rise to the surface when you actually pull all power. Do it on the weekend or during a vacation to minimize disruption, but do test.
 
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Spend the little extra and have two UPS units.

Also, keep in mind, if you're using two UPSes in a two-power supplies per device configuration, each UPS can only be loaded to 50% (conservatively, 40%). That way, when you lose a UPS and you slam that load fully to the other UPS, it isn't overloaded.

So many times I've seen a cascading failure because a rack has two UPSes and they are both at 80%. When one UPS fails, the second UPS takes the full load and it can't support 160% of its rated value.

Cheers,
Matt
 

oasismin

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That is probably not going to work.

This is the wrong model, it is the one with hardware RAID. If you plan to use it with FreeNAS, you need to cancel that order and get a different model instead.
This is the model I have, and what you should have gotten: 6048R-E1CR60L
Notice how it ends in L instead of N. Super minor difference but it is a bid deal. Here is the link to the product page.
https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/6048/SSG-6048R-E1CR60L.cfm

As for the UPS, my system has two power supplies and under load, each of them draws about 350 watts. When I had it on the bench for testing before mounting it in the rack, I had each power supply connected to a separate APC SmartUPS C1500 and that worked fine for about a month.

PS. The unit we bought has 60 of the 10TB Seagate Exos drives. They are working nicely for almost three months although one drive did get one bad sector during brun-in testing.
Had some appointments today and just made it back to my desk. the company had not yet sent the supermicro and are exchanging it at no additional cost.( thank you for catching that!) Should I just wait till the drives are in and test the draw or being the same setup (other than 8tb drives) can I just go off your power draw?
 

oasismin

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I’d also keep in mind that a lot of equipment will to have a ups in this scenario - the server, network equipment, attached workstations, etc. if editors are expected to have 15 minutes to shut down their work and be able to save it to the NAS.

I’d test the system at least once in its entirety by pulling the main breaker to the building. Sometimes, little details only rise to the surface when you actually pull all power. Do it on the weekend or during a vacation to minimize disruption, but do test.
Our entire internal network can run roughly an hour without power. (switch, router, AP, even our current 36bay freenas setup.) we only need and use a few minutes. the rest is just extra padding
 

Chris Moore

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Had some appointments today and just made it back to my desk. the company had not yet sent the supermicro and are exchanging it at no additional cost.( thank you for catching that!) Should I just wait till the drives are in and test the draw or being the same setup (other than 8tb drives) can I just go off your power draw?
I can't recall the numbers exactly but it does spike a bit higher when the system first spins the drives up, but it settles down fairly quick. I would say that you want to have some extra capacity above what I said, as a safeguard, and some more besides, so the system can have some run time. Those APC BackUPS C1500 units I mentioned using were only reporting around eight minutes of run time and if either of them had to take the whole load, it would have been overloaded. Don't take this unit lightly. Each of the two power supplies is rated for 2000 watts.
Also don't try to lift it by hand with the drives installed. We have a server lift that I used to get it from the work bench to the rack. I don't have an exact number but I bet it is over 200 pounds. A couple guys can lift it, but it is difficult to manage because it is big and cumbersome.
 

danb35

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this UPS will have to power a 60 drive supermicro machine so Im afraid how expensive it will be.
Used gear is always an option. Plan to replace the batteries, but the rest of the UPS will last a long time. My unit (see my .sig) will probably do what you need; I got it used on eBay a couple of years back, though I can't say for sure what I paid at the time.
 
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Used gear is always an option. Plan to replace the batteries

In fact, since you'd almost be foolish not to replace the batteries, it's often best to negotiate with the seller not to include batteries because the shipping costs on a 50-pound bare UPS is a lot less than a 200-pound UPS filled with batteries you're going to replace anyway.

The only contraindication would be if you plan to rebuild the battery pack yourself. If that's the case, you'll want the battery tray and all the connecting wires and hardware.

Cheers,
Matt
 

danb35

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it's often best to negotiate with the seller not to include batteries
Yes, good point. I didn't, as the seller specifically said the batteries were good (they did work, though I replaced them about a year later).
The only contraindication would be if you plan to rebuild the battery pack yourself.
...which you really should, IMO. The batteries are (relatively) cheap commodity items, and it isn't hard to replace the individual batteries. But having the existing batteries to work with makes it much easier--if not, look for a good diagram.
 

Chris Moore

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Had some appointments today and just made it back to my desk. the company had not yet sent the supermicro and are exchanging it at no additional cost.( thank you for catching that!) Should I just wait till the drives are in and test the draw or being the same setup (other than 8tb drives) can I just go off your power draw?
I went back and took a look at the numbers and found that the per PSU load, with both power supplies installed, was closer to 360 watts and when I tested it on a single supply it spiked to almost 800 watts on the singe supply. I hope that helps.
 

Constantin

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Keep in mind that depending on the battery size, you may or may not incur a core charge of $15 per battery if it's lead acid. If you exchange a old battery while buying the new one, you don't have to pay that core charge. It's one reason that the lead recycling rate is over 99%.

I'd inquire with a battery reseller. $15 times a couple of battery packs may be more money than the additional shipping charge. Also, it's helpful for the reseller to see exactly what you need when you walk in with them and that in turn prevents mistakes. The sheer variety of battery dimensions is pretty amazing.
 

danb35

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$15/battery sounds like an awful lot--I've seen fees of $5/battery for car batteries, but those have a lot more lead in them. The replacement UPS batteries I've bought recently have come from eBay and there's no such fee.
 

Constantin

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Apparently, it comes down to the state you're living in: the battery council has this table. I too have not paid a local core charge for small batteries for use in UPS', motorcycles, and like applications. I presume that may also have to do with folk on the internet potentially avoiding state laws by shipping cross-state lines.

However, for bigger batteries (and I don't know how big the batteries are in a professional UPS) I thought I paid $15 ea in Maine around 2012. While these batteries were VRLAs just like the type typically found in small UPS', they're a bit heavier than the UPS batteries I've encountered. The Battery council lists a $10 charge in ME, so I have no idea if I'm mis-remembering or if the store took me for a ride.
 

oasismin

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Thank you to everyone. I have noticed the FreeNAS community is so helpful. I appreciate it again. Since I switched to the Supermicro 6048R-E1CR60L it has set us back another 14 business days. That much longer to prepare. In the meantime going to run a separate circuit for this and our surveillance server. Too much is already plugged in the server closet as is.
 

oasismin

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I went back and took a look at the numbers and found that the per PSU load, with both power supplies installed, was closer to 360 watts and when I tested it on a single supply it spiked to almost 800 watts on the singe supply. I hope that helps.
What kind of throughput are you getting? Currently we are using consumer drives in our NAS and that was the biggest mistake in the build.
 

Chris Moore

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I have client computers with 10GBase-T network connections that are able to write at the speed of their own local drives. Many of the SSDs are only able to do around 500MB/s and I have found that the software we are using is more of a limiting factor than the speed of the NAS.
 
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