Submitted 1 month ago by Tinnitus@lemmy.world to selfhosted@lemmy.world
I’ve been running a pair of cyberpower systems for over a decade. I had to replace the battery in each of them once, but they’ve been working great.
I assume newer ones use some sort of Li-Ion battery tech, but mine are just plain old Lead Acid.
Nah they’re still lead acid. They seem to be robust and cheap.
Maybe soon sodium ion!
Higher cycle counts, reduced capacity, but also not dangerous.
APC is cheap garbage.
If you are concerned about the power quality causing damage, you want an online or double-conversion UPS. Those ones don’t even bother trying to condition power, they run off the battery all the time.
I don’t have a whole lot of experience, but Eaton has been reliable. People also recommend Tripp-Lite and Cyberpower but they’ve always seemed cheap to me.
APC makes low end offline UPS units, which are cheap garbage.
They also make line interactive and online ups units, which are decidedly not completely garbage.
I pick up line interactive APC units from used locations like eBay, and go buy off label replacement batteries. Haven’t had any problems with them so far.
To date, over the last ~10 years of running a homelab, I have used mainly SMT 1500 units, one was a rack mount. I’ve recently upgraded to an SMX2000. I’ve replaced batteries, but never a UPS, and never any server components due to power issues. I’ve run servers ranging from a Dell PE 2950, to a full c6100 chassis, plus several networking devices, including firewalls, routers and PoE switches. Not a single power related issue with any of them.
Tripp-Lite is owned by Eaton though
I have a APC Back-UPS 1600VA. It powers two desktop PC/Server, a monitor, and router. So far, it gets the job done.
The biggest downside is; battery is not user replaceable, at least it’s not straight forward like the other models. If possible, prefer a UPS with the easy battery replacement option.
Yup, this - batteries are consumables. They have a service life of ~2-5 years depending on load. If the manual doesn’t tell you how to replace them then it’s basically ewaste already
Build your own just for fun. That’s homelab style
I will not recommend it if you don’t have enough experience.
Fire hazard.
Yeah no, line voltage will kill you if you don’t know what you are doing, not to mention the fire hazard as was mentioned. The 12/24 volt used in computer systems much easier to mess around and not found out other than maybe a fried component. Unless you are an electrician/ electrical engineer with proper training don’t open/mess with Power Supply Unit (PSU) or UPS.
One mod anyone could do is swap their lead acid for a LiFePO4. You just need to make sure the same voltage,battery quantity (larger backups often have 2 batteries in a series) and the battery dimensions are the same. They should be drop in replacements and do last longer.
That being said, I myself, do have training and if you want to waste your time I probably would mod some UPS with a car battery for longer down time support. Watched a YouTube video of a person do it to find the pitfalls for me and the issue is heat as it’s not expected to run off battery + inverter for longer than the smaller battery normally allows it maybe 5 minutes compared to like 1 hour, so several fans and heat sinks on critical components would be needed adding minor complexity and planning.
Keep an eye on woot.com they have open box stuff all the time for decent discounts
They have deals on fire extinguishers too.
Haha the one I got was like 300 bucks off and when I plugged it in it had 0 hours on it so it was brand new. Been running fine for almost 3 years now. It cane with the warranty and free one year of their online service thing
If you can afford it see if Eaton has a smaller tower UPS suitable for you.
I have 5 300 VA units, 2x cheap brand, 2x CyberPower, 1x Eaton.
I think 2 of them don’t have a transformer.
Does it matter? All have a 9 Ah 12 V battery.
It will last few to 20 minutes maybe.
No issues so far (battery capacity lost excluded).
Recently, as someone recommends, all batteries are outside of UPS enclosure,
lower temperature. Which could affect battery lifetime.
More power, more money 👀
thayerw@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Despite some of the comments here, I suggest that you don’t overthink it; just buy an APC Back-UPS 600VA and be done with it. You have relatively low power requirements. The UPS will provide some surge protection (490J), several minutes of uptime, and a USB connection for automated shutdown.
The 600VA unit is less than $100 USD and replacement batteries are about half that. I’ve been using several of this same model for years without issue and we have many brown/blackouts being in a rural BC community. The batteries have lasted me 4-5 years.
You can always plan for something more significant down the road, if your hardware or needs change, but this should do fine in the interim.