Your UPS advise
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Hello
I am looking for some advise regarding the UPS brand I need for my pfsense.
The UPS will be dedicated to secure only the fiewall and the DSL moden nothing more.
The firewall is on a recycled I3 basic computer.
The point is that I have to make sure that the pfsense package ( apcupsd/nut ) interact very welle with the UPS device especially when the UPS go to a low battery situation during a power outage and make the pfsense shutdown nicely.
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@PierreFrench said in Your UPS advise:
I am looking for some advise regarding the UPS brand I need for my pfsense.
Hi,
I have here (a little bit more to protect than in your case but not very much more) a BK350EI from APC and it works well with apcupsd - I havent tryed NUT.
Regards,
fireodo -
APC will have by far the best chance of compatibility with APCUPSD/NUT
https://networkupstools.org/stable-hcl.html
I connect my APC UPS to pfSense as a NUT UPS Master and all other clients/servers on the same UPS are NUT UPS Slaves.
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@PierreFrench while yes is it for sure best to be able to talk with ups and shutdown before battery is empty.. But how long are your outages normally?
Because unless your getting like the smallest possible ups, you could have some really long run times with such a small load, unless you got pfsense running on some monster pc its going to be very low.. Like what 20W, and modems uses all most nothing, a few watts.. You prob have a good hour or so of run time. If not more..
I have been using the cyberpower upses for many years.. Never had any issues with them.. I had my oldest one batteries finally give out, took the opportunity to update it to a full sinewave model..
Example - 50W should give you like 100 minutes of run time.. And your prob less than that with just pfsense and a modem.
I currently don't have mine hooked up to monitor yet, I just redid the office and moved everything to a rack and don't have the upses being monitored as of yet.. Thinking about just monitoring the 2 I have in the rack with just a pi, and letting the other devices look to it for if they need to shut down.
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FWIW, I also recommend APC UPSs. One thing I would suggest, is that when you compare various models be sure to check efficiency as well as run time graphs. A large UPS may give a long run time when power fails, but will usually also have a significant efficiency penalty when on mains.
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@PierreFrench Pretty much any APC unit will serve you well BUT make sure it has an HID / USB interface so it can communicate status to and accept controls from the host device like a netgate firewall. Some low end UPS units lack this, so be careful.
Ted
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While APC is never going to be a "wrong" choice.. They do seem to be a bit more in cost compared to cyberpower..
So I just got that cp1500pfclcd model for 219, it has 12 outlets - (6 surge, 6 battery) while say the apc br1500ms2 only has 10 looks to be 276 both on amazon.
If wanted to could add network card to the cyberpower, they have a cloud monitoring card for like 80 bucks.. The local network card is higher. But it as option that don't see in the what looks to be comparable apc model.
Also the connection is just usb B to A cable on the cyber, while apc looks to have the rj45 connection so special cable.
50 bucks is 50 bucks ;)
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@johnpoz said in Your UPS advise:
While APC is never going to be a "wrong" choice.. They do seem to be a bit more in cost compared to cyberpower..
Personal preference I guess. I've had CyberPower and APC, as well as Tripp Lite. I prefer APC.
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@dennypage same.. Lots of APC at work, and Tripp Lite as well.. But is it really the APC, guess they kept the brand name - but everything at new gig is Schneider Electric.. Which didn't they buy APC like forever ago.. I know the upses at new gig all the web interfaces into the ups are SE branded.
Unless your buying some really off brand, you should be fine I know NUT supports pretty much everything.
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@johnpoz said in Your UPS advise:
@dennypage same.. Lots of APC at work, and Tripp Lite as well.. But is it really the APC, guess they kept the brand name - but everything at new gig is Schneider Electric.. Which didn't they buy APC like forever ago.. I know the upses at new gig all the web interfaces into the ups are SE branded.
17 years ago. To my knowledge, smaller stuff is still APC, larger stuff is SE (formerly MGE).
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@dennypage Man that is insane it was that long ago.. How time flies..
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@PierreFrench I am using a Smart APC UPS to backup my Pfsense and my Cisco wireless APs by backing up my Cisco POE+ switch. I think you can through my modem in there also.
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Thanks a lot for all your feedback/advises
So definitly on the brand choice I will say that :
"APC is the Way"
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At work, we use APC, Eaton, Powercom, Powerware and other brands. If I were to buy a UPS today, I would prefer the Eaton 5SC for the NUT.
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I currently use Eaton 5P UPS, have bad experiences with older APC Smart-UPS units cooking and bloating the battery so much that couldn't get it out for replacement.
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@mvikman said in Your UPS advise:
bad experiences with older APC Smart-UPS units cooking and bloating the battery
Sad to hear that - I am using for almost 20 years APC UPS'es and had never a blown up battery - for my defense I have to say I always used good quality batteries ...
just my 2 cents
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@fireodo I once had an Eaton UPS blow up the battery. I dropped Eaton from my list of devices to consider (big smile on my face). This will likely happen to any manufacturers product.
Ted
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@tedquade said in Your UPS advise:
This will likely happen to any manufacturers product.
I agree with you. Maybe I had a lot of luck until today!
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@fireodo said in Your UPS advise:
I agree with you. Maybe I had a lot of luck until today!
No, it's a known problem for the SMART series of APC. This is the so-called battery thermal runaway, mostly happening with old batteries that were not replaced in time. I have replaced many of those swollen and leaked batteries, and I have also replaced capacitors on the UPS board. Known issues, known solutions. Not bad at all, but you will need some skills. New items should work for 5+ years without issues.
Why I prefer Eaton now? Just because of their ABM technology and price. Extended battery life is important for me. As far as I know, APC uses trickle charge till nowadays — when the battery is full, so it rests/pulse charges. Depending on your room temperature (ex. over 30 Celsius UPS temperature), this may dry your liquid acid battery in 2-3 years, making it unusable very quickly. That's why you should always buy a UPS with sufficient power. More power means more time until the battery life ends, and you will also have more on-battery time.
Yes, I know that Eaton also has problems, including with their ABM technology. There are situations when, after a power outage, if the battery was in rest/storage mode, the remaining capacity might be incorrectly determined, and the battery runtime can be critically reduced. However, this only happened to us once, and the batteries were initially sold old along with the UPS. Not everyone is aware that lead-acid batteries need to be charged every six months… at least.
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FWIW, I have moved to Lithium for my main UPS. Really good units, offering 8-10 years of battery life rather than 3-5.
