Anyone have experience with UPS's? (Uninterruptible Power Supply)

[bullox]

After a recent power outage here, a family member finally has a reason to step up and buy a serious UPS for a room full of computers used for his business. He has asked me to look into getting something to make sure that the computers don't just go down as soon as there is an outage.

 

What I need is a UPS strong enough to power 8+ computers. The monitors I could care less about, so I will just need to power the towers. They are all relatively close to each other, so they could all run off of one UPS in theory. I would like to know if this is not a good idea in practice and it would be better to get more than one UPS to serve this purpose. If one UPS would work fine, what specs should I look for in a UPS? Should I be more interested in the wattage rating or the amps?

 

Any models or brands that you would recommend? I was thinking of going with APC as they seem to have a pretty good grasp on the market.

 

Looking forward to any info you may have for me.

[reags24]

I work with a tech firm and when my customers need a UPS, I typically set them up with APC. I originally went with them because their site is great for configuration and their support has been very good. These are typically enterprise level units though, so I dont have a ton of experience with their smaller models.

 

I would recommend checking out the APC site and calling their customer support. They can at least get you an option that will work with your power source with the run-time and expansion options you may want. This will give you a solid start even if you dont end up going APC.

[Diskono]

APC has some larger rackmount UPSs that work pretty well and don't typically have problems. You'll have to replace the batteries every few years, but that's true with any UPS.