Which UPS to buy?

[rdybro]

Hi everyone! :)

I got a little money this christmas, marked for a UPS for my relatively new FreeNAS box. My FreeNAS is a ASRock Avaton C2750-board, with 16GB of RAM, and 5x3TB WD Red drives.

Now, I don't know a lot about UPS, and I am pretty lost on what to look for. My build doesn't use up a lot of power, and I do not run anything critical on the system, so the UPS would be purely for data protection, and it's sole purpose would be to shut down the FreeNAS after a few minutes without power.

I've Googled a little and found this link, which I understand should be some sort of compatibility list, but I am not sure on what it means exactly to me if my UPS for example is "based on publicly available protocol" or on "vendor provided protocol".

So anyone got any suggestions for a good, and not too expensive UPS for me? As said I don't know a lot about this, but I've heard of APC Back-UPS, APC Smart-UPS and Eaton, are any of these good? And what models should I go for? I see that the APCs doesn't seem to have as good compatibility (according to the aforementioned link) as the Eatons.

Regards

 

[joeschmuck]

I'm partial to APC. Look in my tagline for my model. Also, look in other users taglines to see what they may have. APC's as far as I know are very compatible with FreeNAS.

As for the Volt Amp (VA) rating, really that depends on how long you want the system to remain running during a power failure. I power both my FreeNAS and my entire Internet hardware from my UPS and it can run for quite a while before things need to shut down, in excess of 30 minutes. To me, 30 minutes is my personal sweet spot. 5 minutes is nothing more than a glorified surge suppressor, 15 minutes is fine but doesn't give you any expand-ability in the future.

EDIT: I have an APC Back-UPS RS 1500 on my main computer and I've owned it since April 2003, replaced the batteries twice. I originally purchased this to supply power for my home theater projector because a lamp bulb cost $300 to replace so ensuring I had good power saved me a lot of money. I re-purposed it when I moved and now it's been my UPS for my main computer for the past 8 years. Buy good quality up front.

 

[ethereal]

CyberPower CP685AVRG (390w UPS)

 

[rdybro]

I'm partial to APC. Look in my tagline for my model. Also, look in other users taglines to see what they may have. APC's as far as I know are very compatible with FreeNAS.

As for the Volt Amp (VA) rating, really that depends on how long you want the system to remain running during a power failure. I power both my FreeNAS and my entire Internet hardware from my UPS and it can run for quite a while before things need to shut down, in excess of 30 minutes. To me, 30 minutes is my personal sweet spot. 5 minutes is nothing more than a glorified surge suppressor, 15 minutes is fine but doesn't give you any expand-ability in the future.

EDIT: I have an APC Back-UPS RS 1500 on my main computer and I've owned it since April 2003, replaced the batteries twice. I originally purchased this to supply power for my home theater projector because a lamp bulb cost $300 to replace so ensuring I had good power saved me a lot of money. I re-purposed it when I moved and now it's been my UPS for my main computer for the past 8 years. Buy good quality up front.

Thanks for your inputs! :) I have been looking at the APCs, and they seem like a generally good choice. I am in doubt on how much power my FreeNAS actually is using, so maybe I should get a Watt-meter to check it out, before buying the UPS, to make sure that I got some time to run on.

 

[Bidule0hm]

Please read the PSU sizing sticky: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/proper-power-supply-sizing-guidance.38811/ to know what power you need.

 

[rdybro]

Please read the PSU sizing sticky: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/proper-power-supply-sizing-guidance.38811/ to know what power you need.

Thanks a lot, that is a great link! :)