[BBLISA] UPS relative merits

[Edward Ned Harvey]

> From: bblisa-bounces at bblisa.org [mailto:bblisa-bounces at bblisa.org] On
> 
> We need a UPS to prevent damage to our disk drives when power spikes.
> We
> have been getting APC Smart UPS for ~$500, but I have noticed that the APC
> BackUPS is about $200. If we don't care about the USB interface, or the
> LCD monitor, or the "hang time", is there a reason to prefer the Smart
> UPS? 

I've had some bad experiences before, looking for alternatives cheaper than
the smartups, finding something that seemed to be equivalent spec, and then
regretting the decision.

In the case of backups, I noticed two things.  Failure modes.  (1) when the
battery is surpassing its usable end of life, the smartups in my experience
has been more reliable at notifying me.  I had some backups that couldn't
maintain 5 seconds of power, and still didn't alert me to bad batteries.  In
fact, on those units, occasionally they would cut power voluntarily even
when all the neighboring people had no noticeable interruption.  I don't
know, maybe there was a momentary brownout or something that would
occasionally affect those units...  They would spontaneously start sounding
the "on battery power" alarm, and they would not restore wall power unless
you hit the right button (don't hit the wrong one!)  You have 30 seconds to
comply...  ;-)  In other words, the backups caused more power outages than
they prevented for me.  (2) When the battery is getting old...  the smartups
(sua and xl) have hot-swappable batteries.  The smartups SC does not, and
the backups does not.